Design and Evaluation of a Virtual Reality Game to Improve Physical and Cognitive Acuity

Physical and mental health are both integral to healthy living and ageing, and a causal-cum-symbiotic relationship has been observed between the two. Physical and cognitive activities such as exercise and board games are known to promote healthy ageing. In this regard, highly engaging lightboard games are known to improve hand-eye coordination, reflexes, and motor skills for individuals. Immersivity of virtual reality games can transform mundane and repetitive exercise routines into stimulating experiences, and they can be utilized by users to improve physical and cognitive performance from the comfort of their homes. In this study, we adopt design science framework to design, develop and evaluate a VR BATAK lightboard game to improve physical reaction, hand-eye coordination, visual memory and cognitive processing. Based on the findings from evaluation over three phases, we propose three design principles related to accessibility, sensory cueing and cognitive loading, as theoretical and practical contributions of this study

Implications of User Generated Content on Facebook

The purpose of this study is to examine the implications (user benefits and costs) of user generated content posted by users on Facebook to individual users. Although motivations to use social networking sites are widely researched and published, studies on implications of information on social networking sites is sparse. Hence, this study addresses this gap by an interpretive analysis of user generated content posted by users on Facebook. Content posted by a selected number of users on Facebook is classified based on an information classification framework. Implications eventuating from the classified user generated content to individual users are established using thematic analysis. Findings indicate that Self presentation and relationship building are the major user benefits eventuating from basic user information, whereas loss of privacy, security risk, and identity theft are the major user costs. Users entail professional career development by posting information on user’s education. Employment details of user entail benefits of professional career development and impression management. On the other hand, posting textual communication entails benefits of impression management, enjoyment, and relationship building, whereas costs include social conflict and emotional distress. Findings of this study add to the theory on implications of user generated content posted by users on Facebook

Clustering Similar Questions In Social Question Answering Services

Social Question Answering (SQA) services are defined as dedicated platforms for users to respond to other users’ questions, resulting in the building of a community where users share and interactively give ratings to questions and answers (Liu et al., 2008). SQA services are emerging as a valuable information resource that is rich not only in the expertise of the user community but also their interactions and insights in the form of user comments and ratings. In SQA services each user interaction is different and since there are a variety of complex questions, identifying similar questions for re-using answers is difficult. Scholarly inquiries have yet to dovetail into a composite research stream in identifying similar questions by harnessing the information richness in SQA services. This paper aims to develop a quadripartite graph-based clustering (QGC) approach by harnessing relationship of a question with common answers and associated users. It was found that QGC approach outperformed other baseline clustering techniques in identifying similar questions in SQA corpora. We believe that these findings can serve to guide future developments in the reuse of similar question in SQA service

Research Issues In Community Based Question Answering

Community based Question Answering (CQA) services are defined as dedicated platforms for users to respond to other users’ questions, resulting in the building of a community where users share and interactively give ratings to questions and answers (Liu et al., 2008). CQA services are emerging as a valuable information resource that is rich not only in the expertise of the user community but also their interactions and insights. However, scholarly inquiries have yet to dovetail into a composite research stream where techniques gleaned from various research domains could be exploited for harnessing the information richness in CQA services. This paper explores the CQA domain by first understanding the service and its modules and then exploring previous studies that was conducted in this domain. This paper then compares a CQA service with traditional question answering (QA) systems to identify possible research challenges that need to be focused. This paper also identifies two nontrivial research issues that are prominent in this domain and proposes various recommendations for addressing them in future

Identifying Similar Questions in Healthcare Social Question Answering: A Design Science Research

Healthcare Social Question Answering (SQA) are services where users can ask, respond and receive answers for their posts from other social media users in health domain. The activities of social media users such as asking, responding, liking and posting comments results in building reusable content. This study identifies similar content (i.e. questions) from user posts which contributes towards providing better health care services. For identifying similar questions, this study uses a quadri-link cluster analysis to analyze the attributes of questions, answers and users. A design science methodology was used to develop the algorithm and calculate the similarity measures. The results of cluster analysis based on the proposed similarity measures on a pilot data set indicate that identifying similar questions will be a contribution in the transition of traditional healthcare services into social media enabled healthcare services. The results exemplify the future of digital transformation in health care SQA

Redesigning Learning Spaces During a Pandemic

The COVID19 pandemic has forced students into an online learning environment without providing enough lead time for such transitions. With respect to teaching and learning in IT education, there are significant differences in learning spaces provided by online environments when compared with face-to-face environments. In this practice paper, we draw on our personal teaching experiences during the pandemic and examine differences in learning spaces through the lens of digital transformation components in the literature. We make several suggestions that could be adopted by stakeholders of higher education institutions to enhance learning spaces for students and adopt new behavioural norms for a successful transition in IT education