Personal Access Tutor - helping students to learn MS Access

The paper describes Personal Access Tutor (PAT),an Intelligent Tutoring System which helps students to learn how to create forms and reports in MS Access. We present the architecture and components of PAT and also the services that PAT provides to the students. Results for an external (system) evaluation of PAT (both qualitative and quantitative data) are presented and discussed.

Conveying identity with mobile content

A series of mobile phone prototypes called The Swarm have been developed in response to the user needs identified in a three-year empirical study of young people’s use of mobile phones. The prototypes take cues from user led innovation and provide multiple avatars that allow individuals to define and manage their own virtual identity. This paper briefly maps the evolution of the prototypes and then describes how the pre-defined, color coded avatars in the latest version are being given greater context and personalization through the use of digital images. This not only gives ‘serendipity a nudge’ by allowing groups to come together more easily, it provides contextual information that can reduce gratuitous contact.