Orchestration signals in the classroom: managing the jigsaw collaborative learning flow

The orchestration of collaborative learning processes in face-to-facephysical settings, such as classrooms, requires teachers to coordinate students indicating them who belong to each group, which collaboration areas areassigned to each group, and how they should distribute the resources or roles within the group. In this paper we present an Orchestration Signal system,composed of wearable Personal Signal devices and an Orchestration Signal manager. Teachers can configure color signals in the manager so that they are transmitted to the wearable devices to indicate different orchestration aspects.In particular, the paper describes how the system has been used to carry out a Jigsaw collaborative learning flow in a classroom where students received signals indicating which documents they should read, in which group they were and in which area of the classroom they were expected to collaborate. The evaluation results show that the proposed system facilitates a dynamic, visual and flexible orchestration.

Remote collaborative multi-user informal learning experiences: design and evaluation

This paper presents a customizable system used to develop a collaborative multi-user problem solving game. It addresses the increasing demand for appealing informal learning experiences in museum-like settings. The system facilitates remote collaboration by allowing groups of learners tocommunicate through a videoconferencing system and by allowing them to simultaneously interact through a shared multi-touch interactive surface. A user study with 20 user groups indicates that the game facilitates collaboration between local and remote groups of learners. The videoconference and multitouch surface acted as communication channels, attracted students’ interest, facilitated engagement, and promoted inter- and intra-group collaboration—favoring intra-group collaboration. Our findings suggest that augmentingvideoconferencing systems with a shared multitouch space offers newpossibilities and scenarios for remote collaborative environments and collaborative learning.

Collaborative quality improvement to manage pain in acute care hospitals.

Objective. Collaborative quality improvement programs have been successfully used to manage chronic diseases in adults and acute lung complications in premature infants. Their effectiveness to improve pain management in acute care hospitals is currently unknown. The purpose of this study was to determine whether a collaborative quality improvement program implemented at hospital level could improve pain management and overall pain relief. Design.To assess the effectiveness of the program, we performed a before-after trial comparing patient's self-reported pain management and experience before and after program implementation. We included all adult patients hospitalized for more than 24 hours and discharged either to their home or to a nursing facility, between March 1, 2001 and March 31, 2001 (before program implementation) and between September 15, 2005 and October 15, 2005 (after program implementation). Setting.A teaching hospital of 2,096 beds in Geneva, Switzerland. Patients.All adult patients hospitalized for more than 24 hours and discharged between 1 to 31 March 2001 (before program) and 15 September to 15 October 2005 (after program implementation). Interventions.Implementation of a collaborative quality improvement program using multifaceted interventions (staff education, opinion leaders, patient education, audit, and feedback) to improve pain management at hospital level. Outcome Measures.Patient-reported pain experience, pain management, and overall hospital experience based on the Picker Patient Experience questionnaire, perceived health (SF-36 Health survey). Results.After implementation of the program only 2.3% of the patients reported having no pain relief during their hospital stay (vs 4.5% in 2001, P = 0.05). Among nonsurgical patients, improvements were observed for pain assessment (42.3% vs 27.9% of the patients had pain intensity measured with a visual analog scale, P = 0.012), pain management (staff did everything they could to help in 78.9% vs 67.9% of cases P = 0.003), and pain relief (70.4% vs 57.3% of patients reported full pain relief P = 0.008). In surgical patients, pain assessment also improved (53.7.3% vs 37.6%) as well as pain treatment. More patients received treatments to relieve pain regularly or intermittently after program implementation (95.1% vs 91.9% P = 0.046). Conclusion.Implementation of a collaborative quality improvement program at hospital level improved both pain management and pain relief in patients. Further studies are needed to determine the overall cost-effectiveness of such programs.

Key cognitive and collaborative aptitudes in ambulance people

The aim of our study was to identify and document some key cognitive aptitudes used by ambulance people in emergency situations. Better knowing such aptitudes is necessary for a school of ambulance people in order to improve the selection and education of students. The idea was to better consider real work activity requirements and characteristics, and to develop and implement genuine educational content and selection tools. We followed the work activity of ambulance professionals involved in real emergency situations. Some interventions were filmed and post-analyzed. We completed and validated our analysis by means of interviews with ambulance personnel. We selected some video sequences and used them as a support for the interviews. We identified and documented many different key aptitudes like orientation and spatial sense, the capacity to perform complex cognitive tasks and delicate manipulations in the context of divided attention, as well as diverse aptitudes relevant in collaborative work.

Acting Rehearsal in Collaborative Multimodal Mixed Reality Environments

This paper presents the use of our multimodal mixed reality telecommunication system to support remote acting rehearsal. The rehearsals involved two actors, located in London and Barcelona, and a director in another location in London. This triadic audiovisual telecommunication was performed in a spatial and multimodal collaborative mixed reality environment based on the 'destination-visitor' paradigm, which we define and put into use. We detail our heterogeneous system architecture, which spans the three distributed and technologically asymmetric sites, and features a range of capture, display, and transmission technologies. The actors' and director's experience of rehearsing a scene via the system are then discussed, exploring successes and failures of this heterogeneous form of telecollaboration. Overall, the common spatial frame of reference presented by the system to all parties was highly conducive to theatrical acting and directing, allowing blocking, gross gesture, and unambiguous instruction to be issued. The relative inexpressivity of the actors' embodiments was identified as the central limitation of the telecommunication, meaning that moments relying on performing and reacting to consequential facial expression and subtle gesture were less successful.

Creativity in Collaborative Learning across the Life Span

Peer-reviewed

JXTA-Overlay P2P Platform and Its Application for Robot Control

The design of an efficient collaborative multirobot framework that ensures the autonomy and the individualrequirements of the involved robots is a very challenging task. This requires designing an efficient platform for inter-robot communication. P2P is a good approach to achieve this goal. P2P aims at making the communication ubiquitous thereby crossing the communication boundary and has many attractive features to use it as a platform for collaborative multi-robot environments. In this work, we present the JXTA Overlay P2P system and its application for robot control. Since JXTAOverlay is able to overcome Firewalls, Routers and NATs, it is possible to control end-devices in a WAN without changing the network security policy. We used JXTA-Overlay for the control of robot motors. We evaluated the proposed system by many experiments and have shown that the proposed system has a good performance and can be used successfully for the control of robot.

DFMA- Analysis and Aspects of Applying Internet Based Collaborative Design for Axial Eccentric Oil-Pump Design

The integrated system of design for manufacturing and assembly (DFMA) and internet based collaborative design are presented to support product design, manufacturing process, and assembly planning for axial eccentric oil-pump design. The presented system manages and schedules group oriented collaborative activities. The design guidelines of internet based collaborative design & DFMA are expressed. The components and the manufacturing stages of axial eccentric oil-pump are expressed in detail. The file formats of the presented system include the data types of collaborative design of the product, assembly design, assembly planning and assembly system design. Product design and assembly planning can be operated synchronously and intelligently and they are integrated under the condition of internet based collaborative design and DFMA. The technologies of collaborative modelling, collaborative manufacturing, and internet based collaborative assembly for the specific pump construction are developed. A seven-security level is presented to ensure the security of the internet based collaborative design system.

Acting rehearsal in collaborative multimodal mixed reality environments

This paper presents the use of our multimodal mixed reality telecommunication system to support remote acting rehearsal. The rehearsals involved two actors, located in London and Barcelona, and a director in another location in London. This triadic audiovisual telecommunication was performed in a spatial and multimodal collaborative mixed reality environment based on the 'destination-visitor' paradigm, which we define and put into use. We detail our heterogeneous system architecture, which spans the three distributed and technologically asymmetric sites, and features a range of capture, display, and transmission technologies. The actors' and director's experience of rehearsing a scene via the system are then discussed, exploring successes and failures of this heterogeneous form of telecollaboration. Overall, the common spatial frame of reference presented by the system to all parties was highly conducive to theatrical acting and directing, allowing blocking, gross gesture, and unambiguous instruction to be issued. The relative inexpressivity of the actors' embodiments was identified as the central limitation of the telecommunication, meaning that moments relying on performing and reacting to consequential facial expression and subtle gesture were less successful.

A programming environment having three levels of complexity for mobile robotics = Entorno de programación con tres niveles de complejidad para robótica móvil

This paper presents a programming environment for supporting learning in STEM, particularly mobile robotic learning. It was designed to maintain progressive learning for people with and without previous knowledge of programming and/or robotics. The environment was multi platform and built with open source tools. Perception, mobility, communication, navigation and collaborative behaviour functionalities can be programmed for different mobile robots. A learner is able to programme robots using different programming languages and editor interfaces: graphic programming interface (basic level), XML-based meta language (intermediate level) or ANSI C language (advanced level). The environment supports programme translation transparently into different languages for learners or explicitly on learners’ demand. Learners can access proposed challenges and learning interfaces by examples. The environment was designed to allow characteristics such as extensibility, adaptive interfaces, persistence and low software/hardware coupling. Functionality tests were performed to prove programming environment specifications. UV BOT mobile robots were used in these tests