Constructing a user experience user experience-based mobile learning environment

Mobile learning, in the past defined as learning with mobile devices, now refers to any type of learning-on-the-go or learning that takes advantage of mobile technologies. This new definition shifted its focus from the mobility of technology to the mobility of the learner (O'Malley and Stanton 2002; Sharples, Arnedillo-Sanchez et al. 2009). Placing emphasis on the mobile learner’s perspective requires studying “how the mobility of learners augmented by personal and public technology can contribute to the process of gaining new knowledge, skills, and experience” (Sharples, Arnedillo-Sanchez et al. 2009). The demands of an increasingly knowledge based society and the advances in mobile phone technology are combining to spur the growth of mobile learning. Around the world, mobile learning is predicted to be the future of online learning, and is slowly entering the mainstream education. However, for mobile learning to attain its full potential, it is essential to develop more advanced technologies that are tailored to the needs of this new learning environment. A research field that allows putting the development of such technologies onto a solid basis is user experience design, which addresses how to improve usability and therefore user acceptance of a system. Although there is no consensus definition of user experience, simply stated it focuses on how a person feels about using a product, system or service. It is generally agreed that user experience adds subjective attributes and social aspects to a space that has previously concerned itself mainly with ease-of-use. In addition, it can include users’ perceptions of usability and system efficiency. Recent advances in mobile and ubiquitous computing technologies further underline the importance of human-computer interaction and user experience (feelings, motivations, and values) with a system. Today, there are plenty of reports on the limitations of mobile technologies for learning (e.g., small screen size, slow connection), but there is a lack of research on user experience with mobile technologies. This dissertation will fill in this gap by a new approach in building a user experience-based mobile learning environment. The optimized user experience we suggest integrates three priorities, namely a) content, by improving the quality of delivered learning materials, b) the teaching and learning process, by enabling live and synchronous learning, and c) the learners themselves, by enabling a timely detection of their emotional state during mobile learning. In detail, the contributions of this thesis are as follows: • A video codec optimized for screencast videos which achieves an unprecedented compression rate while maintaining a very high video quality, and a novel UI layout for video lectures, which together enable truly mobile access to live lectures. • A new approach in HTTP-based multimedia delivery that exploits the characteristics of live lectures in a mobile context and enables a significantly improved user experience for mobile live lectures. • A non-invasive affective learning model based on multi-modal emotion detection with very high recognition rates, which enables real-time emotion detection and subsequent adaption of the learning environment on mobile devices. The technology resulting from the research presented in this thesis is in daily use at the School of Continuing Education of Shanghai Jiaotong University (SOCE), a blended-learning institution with 35.000 students.

Global Standards: Recent Developments betweend the Poles of Privacy and Cloud Computing

The development of the Internet has made it possible to transfer data ‘around the globe at the click of a mouse’. Especially fresh business models such as cloud computing, the newest driver to illustrate the speed and breadth of the online environment, allow this data to be processed across national borders on a routine basis. A number of factors cause the Internet to blur the lines between public and private space: Firstly, globalization and the outsourcing of economic actors entrain an ever-growing exchange of personal data. Secondly, the security pressure in the name of the legitimate fight against terrorism opens the access to a significant amount of data for an increasing number of public authorities.And finally,the tools of the digital society accompany everyone at each stage of life by leaving permanent individual and borderless traces in both space and time. Therefore, calls from both the public and private sectors for an international legal framework for privacy and data protection have become louder. Companies such as Google and Facebook have also come under continuous pressure from governments and citizens to reform the use of data. Thus, Google was not alone in calling for the creation of ‘global privacystandards’. Efforts are underway to review established privacy foundation documents. There are similar efforts to look at standards in global approaches to privacy and data protection. The last remarkable steps were the Montreux Declaration, in which the privacycommissioners appealed to the United Nations ‘to prepare a binding legal instrument which clearly sets out in detail the rights to data protection and privacy as enforceable human rights’. This appeal was repeated in 2008 at the 30thinternational conference held in Strasbourg, at the 31stconference 2009 in Madrid and in 2010 at the 32ndconference in Jerusalem. In a globalized world, free data flow has become an everyday need. Thus, the aim of global harmonization should be that it doesn’t make any difference for data users or data subjects whether data processing takes place in one or in several countries. Concern has been expressed that data users might seek to avoid privacy controls by moving their operations to countries which have lower standards in their privacy laws or no such laws at all. To control that risk, some countries have implemented special controls into their domestic law. Again, such controls may interfere with the need for free international data flow. A formula has to be found to make sure that privacy at the international level does not prejudice this principle.

Missing Links in the Proposed EU Data Protection Regulation and Cloud Computing Scenarios: A Brief Overview

Applying location-focused data protection law within the context of a location-agnostic cloud computing framework is fraught with difficulties. While the Proposed EU Data Protection Regulation has introduced a lot of changes to the current data protection framework, the complexities of data processing in the cloud involve various layers and intermediaries of actors that have not been properly addressed. This leaves some gaps in the regulation when analyzed in cloud scenarios. This paper gives a brief overview of the relevant provisions of the regulation that will have an impact on cloud transactions and addresses the missing links. It is hoped that these loopholes will be reconsidered before the final version of the law is passed in order to avoid unintended consequences.

Mobile Games for Learning

Today, pupils at the age of 15 have spent their entire life surrounded by and interacting with diverse forms of computers. It is a routine part of their day-to-day life and by now computer-literacy is common at very early age. Over the past five years, technology for teens has become predominantly mobile and ubiquitous within every aspect of their lives. To them, being online is an implicitness. In Germany, 88% of youth aged between 12-19 years own a smartphone and about 20% use the Internet via tablets. Meanwhile, more and more young learners bring their devices into the classroom and pupils increasingly demand for innovative and motivating learning scenarios that strongly respond to their habits of using media. With this development, a shift of paradigm is slowly under way with regard to the use of mobile technology in education. By now, a large body of literature exists, that reports concepts, use-cases and practical studies for effectively using technology in education. Within this field, a steadily growing body of research has developed that especially examines the use of digital games as instructional strategy. The core concern of this thesis is the design of mobile games for learning. The conditions and requirements that are vital in order to make mobile games suitable and effective for learning environments are investigated. The base for exploration is the pattern approach as an established form of templates that provide solutions for recurrent problems. Building on this acknowledged form of exchanging and re-using knowledge, patterns for game design are used to classify the many gameplay rules and mechanisms in existence. This research draws upon pattern descriptions to analyze learning game concepts and to abstract possible relationships between gameplay patterns and learning outcomes. The linkages that surface are the starting bases for a series of game design concepts and their implementations are subsequently evaluated with regard to learning outcomes. The findings and resulting knowledge from this research is made accessible by way of implications and recommendations for future design decisions.

Das Internet der Dinge unter dem Aspekt der Selbststeuerung-Ein Überblick

In den letzten Jahren wurde die Vision einer Welt smarter Alltagsgegenstände unter den Begriffen wie Ubiquitous Computing, Pervasive Computing und Ambient Intelligence in der Öffentlichkeit wahrgenommen. Die smarten Gegenstände sollen mit digitaler Logik, Sensorik und der Möglichkeit zur Vernetzung ausgestattet werden. Somit bilden sie ein „Internet der Dinge“, in dem der Computer als eigenständiges Gerät verschwindet und in den Objekten der physischen Welt aufgeht. Während auf der einen Seite die Vision des „Internet der Dinge“ durch die weiter anhaltenden Fortschritte in der Informatik, Mikroelektronik, Kommunikationstechnik und Materialwissenschaft zumindest aus technischer Sicht wahrscheinlich mittelfristig realisiert werden kann, müssen auf der anderen Seite die damit zusammenhängenden ökonomischen, rechtlichen und sozialen Fragen geklärt werden. Zur Weiterentwicklung und Realisierung der Vision des „Internet der Dinge“ wurde erstmals vom AutoID-Center das EPC-Konzept entwickelt, welches auf globale netzbasierte Informationsstandards setzt und heute von EPCglobal weiterentwickelt und umgesetzt wird. Der EPC erlaubt es, umfassende Produktinformationen über das Internet zur Verfügung zu stellen. Die RFID-Technologie stellt dabei die wichtigste Grundlage des „Internet der Dinge“ dar, da sie die Brücke zwischen der physischen Welt der Produkte und der virtuellen Welt der digitalen Daten schlägt. Die Objekte, die mit RFID-Transpondern ausgestattet sind, können miteinander kommunizieren und beispielsweise ihren Weg durch die Prozesskette finden. So können sie dann mit Hilfe der auf den RFID-Transpondern gespeicherten Informationen Förderanlagen oder sonstige Maschinen ohne menschliches Eingreifen selbstständig steuern.

Social Work, Mobility and Membership

Social work is more involved in the collective life of its clientele than are other human service activities, because it is directly concerned with the bonds and conflicts between individuals, and the co-operative and competitive aspects of groups and communities. Hence it relies on being sited in organisations relevant to service users' lives, and on being able to influence these collectivities. This article argues that the 'organisational landscape' is being transformed, as commercial enterprises (more mobile and adaptable than either state or non-government organisations) take over important aspects of collective provision. The implications of this transformation for practice are analysed, by reference to examples from the United Kingdom in particular.

They're Natural and Everywhere: How Evaluative Practices Permeate the Organization

How do evaluative practices become natural and ubiquitous in an organization? In this paper we integrate findings from previous empirical work on the adoption of evaluative practices in organizations with insights from institutional theory and social psychology research for advancing the understanding of possible states of evaluative practices within organizations and the processes through which organizations become permeated by evaluative practices. Our conceptual model suggests that once evaluative practices have gained a foothold in an organization, they tend to be applied to an increasing number of organizational problems and become taken for granted.

RFIDice - Augmenting Tabletop Dice with RFID

Augmented dice allow players of tabletop games to have the result of a roll be automatically recorded by a computer, e.g., for supporting strategy games. We have built a set of three augmented-dice-prototypes based on radio frequency identification (RFID) technology, which allows us to build robust, cheap, and small augmented dice. Using a corresponding readout infrastructure and a sample application, we have evaluated our approach and show its advantages over other dice augmentation methods discussed in the literature.

Generisches Framework Studi-App

Mit der Idee eines generischen, an vielfältige Hochschulanforderungen anpassbaren Studierenden-App-Frameworks haben sich innerhalb des Arbeitskreises Web der ZKI ca. 30 Hochschulen zu einem Entwicklungsverbund zusammengefunden. Ziel ist es, an den beteiligten Einrichtungen eine umfassende Zusammenstellung aller elektronischen Studienservices zu evaluieren, übergreifende Daten- und Metadatenmodelle für die Beschreibung dieser Dienste zu erstellen und Schnittstellen zu den gängigen Campusmanagementsystemen sowie zu Infrastrukturen der elektronischen Lehre (LMS, Druckdienste, elektronischen Katalogen usw.) zu entwickeln. In einem abschließenden Schritt werden auf dieser Middleware aufsetzende Studienmanagement-Apps für Studierende erstellt, die die verschiedenen Daten- und Kommunikationsströme der standardisierten Dienste und Kommunikationskanäle bündeln und in eine für den Studierenden leicht zu durchschauende, navigationsfreundliche Aufbereitung kanalisiert. Mit der Konzeption eines dezentralen, über eine Vielzahl von Hochschulen verteilten Entwicklungsprojektes unter einer zentralen Projektleitung wird sichergestellt, dass redundante Entwicklungen vermieden, bundesweit standardisierte Serviceangebote angeboten und Wissenstransferprozesse zwischen einer Vielzahl von Hochschulen zur Nutzung mobiler Devices (Smartphones, Tablets und entsprechende Apps) angeregt werden können. Die Unterstützung der Realisierung klarer Schnittstellenspezifikationen zu Campusmanagementsystemen durch deren Anbieter kann durch diese breite Interessensgemeinschaft ebenfalls gestärkt werden. Weiterhin zentraler Planungsinhalt ist ein Angebot für den App-Nutzer zum Aufbau eines datenschutzrechtlich integeren, persönlichen E-Portfolios. Details finden sich im Kapitel Projektziele weiter unten.