THE EFFECT OF HAPTIC INTERACTION AND LEARNER CONTROL ON STUDENT PERFORMANCE IN AN ONLINE DISTANCE EDUCATION COURSE

Today’s learners are taking advantage of a whole new world of multimedia and hypermedia experiences to gain understanding and construct knowledge. While at the same time, teachers and instructional designers are producing these experiences at rapid paces. Many angles of interactivity with digital content continue to be researched, as is the case with this study. The purpose of this study is to determine whether there is a significant difference in the performance of distance education students who exercise learner control interactivity effectively through a traditional input device versus students who exercise learner control interactivity through haptic input methods. This study asks three main questions about the relationship and potential impact touch input had on the interactivity sequence a learner chooses while participating in an online distance education course. Effects were measured by using criterion from logged assessments within one module of a distance education course. This study concludes that learner control sequence choices did have significant effects on learner outcomes. However, input method did not. The sequence that learners chose had positive effects on scores, the number of attempts it took to pass assessments, and the overall range of scores per assessment attempts. Touch input learners performed as well as traditional input learners, and summative first sequence learners outperformed all other learners. These findings support the beliefs that new input methods are not detrimental and that learner-controlled options while participating in digital online courses are valuable for learners, under certain conditions

Thriving in a colder and more challenging climate

Hawkridge, D., Ng, K., & Verjans, S. (Eds.) (2011). Thriving in a colder and more challenging climate. The 18th annual conference of the Association for Learning Technology (ALT-C 2011). September, 6-8, 2011, University of Leeds, England, UK. URI:http://repository.alt.ac.uk/2159Here are the proceedings of the 2011 ALT Conference ‘‘Thriving in a colder and more challenging climate’’. Proceedings papers report on a piece of research, possibly in its early stages, or they can be ‘‘thoughtpieces’’ which state a point of view or summarise an area of work, perhaps giving new insights. The conference has six themes: . Research and rigour: creating, marshalling and making effective use of evidence . Making things happen: systematic design, planning and implementation . Broad tents and strange bedfellows: collaborating, scavenging and sharing to increase value . At the sharp end: enabling organisations and their managers to solve business, pedagogic and technical challenges . Teachers of the future: understanding and influencing the future role and practices of teachers . Preparing for a thaw: looking ahead to a time beyond the disruptive discontinuities of the next few years. Interestingly, there were very few proposals for the conference as a whole against the sixth theme: and no proceedings papers. Perhaps the thaw is still perceived as being too far away to warrant any preparation yet!Association for learning technolog

Experts on e-learning: insights gained from listening to the student voice!

The Student Experience of e-Learning Laboratory (SEEL) project at the University of Greenwich was designed to explore and then implement a number of approaches to investigate learners’ experiences of using technology to support their learning. In this paper members of the SEEL team present initial findings from a University-wide survey of nearly a 1000 students. A selection of 90 ‘cameos’, drawn from the survey data, offer further insights into personal perceptions of e-learning and illustrate the diversity of students experiences. The cameos provide a more coherent picture of individual student experience based on the totality of each person’s responses to the questionnaire. Finally, extracts from follow-up case studies, based on interviews with a small number of students, allow us to ‘hear’ the student voice more clearly. Issues arising from an analysis of the data include student preferences for communication and social networking tools, views on the ‘smartness’ of their tutors’ uses of technology and perceptions of the value of e-learning. A primary finding and the focus of this paper, is that students effectively arrive at their own individualised selection, configuration and use of technologies and software that meets their perceived needs. This ‘personalisation’ does not imply that such configurations are the most efficient, nor does it automatically suggest that effective learning is occurring. SEEL reminds us that learners are individuals, who approach learning both with and without technology in their own distinctive ways. Hearing, understanding and responding to the student voice is fundamental in maximising learning effectiveness. Institutions should consider actively developing the capacity of academic staff to advise students on the usefulness of particular online tools and resources in support of learning and consider the potential benefits of building on what students already use in their everyday lives. Given the widespread perception that students tend to be ‘digital natives’ and academic staff ‘digital immigrants’ (Prensky, 2001), this could represent a considerable cultural challenge

Evaluating the Emotional State of a User Using a Webcam

In online learning is more difficult for teachers identify to see how individual students behave. Student’s emotions like self-esteem, motivation, commitment, and others that are believed to be determinant in student’s performance can not be ignored, as they are known (affective states and also learning styles) to greatly influence student’s learning. The ability of the computer to evaluate the emotional state of the user is getting bigger attention. By evaluating the emotional state, there is an attempt to overcome the barrier between man and non-emotional machine. Recognition of a real time emotion in e-learning by using webcams is research area in the last decade. Improving learning through webcams and microphones offers relevant feedback based upon learner’s facial expressions and verbalizations. The majority of current software does not work in real time – scans face and progressively evaluates its features. The designed software works by the use neural networks in real time which enable to apply the software into various fields of our lives and thus actively influence its quality. Validation of face emotion recognition software was annotated by using various experts. These expert findings were contrasted with the software results. An overall accuracy of our software based on the requested emotions and the recognized emotions is 78%. Online evaluation of emotions is an appropriate technology for enhancing the quality and efficacy of e-learning by including the learner´s emotional states