UX Theory - Web Design

This lecture introduces UX theory and focusses on applying this to web based design.

Can you tell if they're learning?

The proliferation of Web-based learning objects makes finding and evaluating online resources problematic. While established Learning Analytics methods use Web interaction to evaluate learner engagement, there is uncertainty regarding the appropriateness of these measures. In this paper we propose a method for evaluating pedagogical activity in Web-based comments using a pedagogical framework, and present a preliminary study that assigns a Pedagogical Value (PV) to comments. This has value as it categorises discussion in terms of pedagogical activity rather than Web interaction. Results show that PV is distinct from typical interactional measures; there are negative or insignificant correlations with established Learning Analytics methods, but strong correlations with relevant linguistic indicators of learning, suggesting that the use of pedagogical frameworks may produce more accurate indicators than interaction analysis, and that linguistic rather than interaction analysis has the potential to automatically identify learning behaviour.

The use of computer-based learning tools for teaching and clinical purposes: Interactive computing strategy for Iraq

Medical universities and teaching hospitals in Iraq are facing a lack of professional staff due to the ongoing violence that forces them to flee the country. The professionals are now distributed outside the country which reduces the chances for the staff and students to be physically in one place to continue the teaching and limits the efficiency of the consultations in hospitals. A survey was done among students and professional staff in Iraq to find the problems in the learning and clinical systems and how Information and Communication Technology could improve it. The survey has shown that 86% of the participants use the Internet as a learning resource and 25% for clinical purposes while less than 11% of them uses it for collaboration between different institutions. A web-based collaborative tool is proposed to improve the teaching and clinical system. The tool helps the users to collaborate remotely to increase the quality of the learning system as well as it can be used for remote medical consultation in hospitals.

Interdisciplinarity: perceptions of the value of computer-supported collaborative work in design for the built environment

This paper presents the findings from a study into the current exploitation of computer-supported collaborative working (CSCW) in design for the built environment in the UK. The research is based on responses to a web-based questionnaire. Members of various professions, including civil engineers, architects, building services engineers, and quantity surveyors, were invited to complete the questionnaire. The responses reveal important trends in the breadth and size of project teams at the same time as new pressures are emerging regarding team integration and efficiency. The findings suggest that while CSCW systems may improve project management (e.g., via project documentation) and the exchange of information between team members, it has yet to significantly support those activities that characterize integrated collaborative working between disparate specialists. The authors conclude by combining the findings with a wider discussion of the application of CSCW to design activity-appealing for CSCW to go beyond multidisciplinary working to achieve interdisciplinary working.

Uses of mobile phones in higher education

This brief paper explores the current and potential usage of mobile phones within higher education. It reports on the outcomes of a brain storming session regarding this subject undertaken with a cohort of final year Computer Science students undertaking a Social, Legal and Ethical Aspects of Information Technology course at The University of Reading. Subsequent analysis was undertaken as a result of online discussion using a Managed Learning Environment and a web based survey completed by over 250 undergraduates from around the UK.

Standardized evaluation of algorithms for computer-aided diagnosis of dementia based on structural MRI: The CADDementia challenge

Algorithms for computer-aided diagnosis of dementia based on structural MRI have demonstrated high performance in the literature, but are difficult to compare as different data sets and methodology were used for evaluation. In addition, it is unclear how the algorithms would perform on previously unseen data, and thus, how they would perform in clinical practice when there is no real opportunity to adapt the algorithm to the data at hand. To address these comparability, generalizability and clinical applicability issues, we organized a grand challenge that aimed to objectively compare algorithms based on a clinically representative multi-center data set. Using clinical practice as the starting point, the goal was to reproduce the clinical diagnosis. Therefore, we evaluated algorithms for multi-class classification of three diagnostic groups: patients with probable Alzheimer's disease, patients with mild cognitive impairment and healthy controls. The diagnosis based on clinical criteria was used as reference standard, as it was the best available reference despite its known limitations. For evaluation, a previously unseen test set was used consisting of 354 T1-weighted MRI scans with the diagnoses blinded. Fifteen research teams participated with a total of 29 algorithms. The algorithms were trained on a small training set (n = 30) and optionally on data from other sources (e.g., the Alzheimer's Disease Neuroimaging Initiative, the Australian Imaging Biomarkers and Lifestyle flagship study of aging). The best performing algorithm yielded an accuracy of 63.0% and an area under the receiver-operating-characteristic curve (AUC) of 78.8%. In general, the best performances were achieved using feature extraction based on voxel-based morphometry or a combination of features that included volume, cortical thickness, shape and intensity. The challenge is open for new submissions via the web-based framework: http://caddementia.grand-challenge.org.

Understanding digital literacies: a practical introduction

Understanding Digital Literacies provides an accessible and timely introduction to new media literacies. It supplies readers with the theoretical and analytical tools with which to explore the linguistic and social impact of a host of new digital literacy practices. Each chapter in the volume covers a different topic, presenting an overview of the major concepts, issues, problems and debates surrounding the topic, while also encouraging students to reflect on and critically evaluate their own language and communication practices. Features include: coverage of a diverse range of digital media texts, tools and practices including blogging, hypertextual organisation, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Wikipedia, websites and games an extensive range of examples and case studies to illustrate each topic, such as how blogs have affected our thinking about communication, how the creation and sharing of digital images and video can bring about shifts in social roles, and how the design of multiplayer online games for children can promote different ideologies a variety of discussion questions and mini-ethnographic research projects involving exploration of various patterns of media production and communication between peers, for example in the context of Wikinomics and peer production, social networking and civic participation, and digital literacies at work end of chapter suggestions for further reading and links to key web and video resources a companion website providing supplementary material for each chapter, including summaries of key issues, additional web-based exercises, and links to further resources such as useful websites, articles, videos and blogs.

Changes in physical activity following a genetic-based internet-delivered personalized intervention: randomized controlled trial (Food4Me)

Background: There is evidence that physical activity (PA) can attenuate the influence of the fat mass- and obesity-associated (FTO) genotype on the risk to develop obesity. However, whether providing personalized information on FTO genotype leads to changes in PA is unknown. Objective: The purpose of this study was to determine if disclosing FTO risk had an impact on change in PA following a 6-month intervention. Methods: The single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) rs9939609 in the FTO gene was genotyped in 1279 participants of the Food4Me study, a four-arm, Web-based randomized controlled trial (RCT) in 7 European countries on the effects of personalized advice on nutrition and PA. PA was measured objectively using a TracmorD accelerometer and was self-reported using the Baecke questionnaire at baseline and 6 months. Differences in baseline PA variables between risk (AA and AT genotypes) and nonrisk (TT genotype) carriers were tested using multiple linear regression. Impact of FTO risk disclosure on PA change at 6 months was assessed among participants with inadequate PA, by including an interaction term in the model: disclosure (yes/no) × FTO risk (yes/no). Results: At baseline, data on PA were available for 874 and 405 participants with the risk and nonrisk FTO genotypes, respectively. There were no significant differences in objectively measured or self-reported baseline PA between risk and nonrisk carriers. A total of 807 (72.05%) of the participants out of 1120 in the personalized groups were encouraged to increase PA at baseline. Knowledge of FTO risk had no impact on PA in either risk or nonrisk carriers after the 6-month intervention. Attrition was higher in nonrisk participants for whom genotype was disclosed (P=.01) compared with their at-risk counterparts. Conclusions: No association between baseline PA and FTO risk genotype was observed. There was no added benefit of disclosing FTO risk on changes in PA in this personalized intervention. Further RCT studies are warranted to confirm whether disclosure of nonrisk genetic test results has adverse effects on engagement in behavior change.

ANFIS BASED MODELS FOR ACCESSING QUALITY OF WIKIPEDIA ARTICLES

Wikipedia is a free, web-based, collaborative, multilingual encyclopedia project supported by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. Due to the free nature of Wikipedia and allowing open access to everyone to edit articles the quality of articles may be affected. As all people don’t have equal level of knowledge and also different people have different opinions about a topic so there may be difference between the contributions made by different authors. To overcome this situation it is very important to classify the articles so that the articles of good quality can be separated from the poor quality articles and should be removed from the database. The aim of this study is to classify the articles of Wikipedia into two classes class 0 (poor quality) and class 1(good quality) using the Adaptive Neuro Fuzzy Inference System (ANFIS) and data mining techniques. Two ANFIS are built using the Fuzzy Logic Toolbox [1] available in Matlab. The first ANFIS is based on the rules obtained from J48 classifier in WEKA while the other one was built by using the expert’s knowledge. The data used for this research work contains 226 article’s records taken from the German version of Wikipedia. The dataset consists of 19 inputs and one output. The data was preprocessed to remove any similar attributes. The input variables are related to the editors, contributors, length of articles and the lifecycle of articles. In the end analysis of different methods implemented in this research is made to analyze the performance of each classification method used.

Discourse strategies and power roles in student-led distance learning

The assertion of identity and power via computer-mediated communication in the context of distance or web-based learning presents challenges to both teachers and students. When regular, face-to-face classroom interaction is replaced by online chat or group discussion forums, participants must avail themselves of new techniques and tactics for contributing to and furthering interaction, discussion, and learning. During student-only chat sessions, the absence of teacher-led, face-to-face classroom activities requires the students to assume leadership roles and responsibilities normally associated with the teacher. This situation raises the questions of who teaches and who learns; how students discursively negotiate power roles; and whether power emerges as a function of displayed expertise and knowledge or rather the use of authoritative language. This descriptive study represents an examination of a corpus of task-based discussion logs among Vietnamese students of distance learning courses in English linguistics. The data reveal recurring discourse strategies for 1) negotiating the progression of the discussion sessions, 2) asserting and questioning knowledge, and 3) assuming or delegating responsibility. Power is defined ad hoc as the ability to successfully perform these strategies. The data analysis contributes to a better understanding of how working methods and materials can be tailored to students in distance learning courses, and how such students can be empowered by being afforded opportunities and effectively encouraged to assert their knowledge and authority.

Uma avaliacão fenomenográfica dos cursos suecos baseados na web

O propósito deste texto é discutir a avaliação de um curso superior oferecido por uma universidade sueca. Para tanto, parti de uma análise das avaliações feitas pelos estudantes, no ano de 2011-2012, quanto ao conteúdo, as aulas ministrada e a relação estabelecida entre o professor e os estudantes. O curso analisado foi o de Brasil Contemporâneo, da Universidade de Dalarna. O curso é oferecido na forma EBW e faz parte da graduação em Português.       As conclusões alcançadas e fundamentadas na análise do questionários  apontam para uma necessidade de uma sistematização do conteúdo e de uma melhor exposição do mesmo. Os estudantes, na sua maoria estrangeiros, têm uma percepção sobre a realidade brasileira que ao se contrapor à literatura do curso leva-os a reverem e a redefinirem a imagem que os mesmos tinham sobre o Brasil. Entrentanto, as avaliações apontam para a necessidade de desenvolvimento e formento de trabalhos em grupos que auxiliam na aprendizagem dos estudantes. Esta é um importante desáfio dos cursos baseados na Web, na rede de ensino superior sueca.

Visualization of spirography-based objective measures in Parkinson's disease

Objective: To investigate whether advanced visualizations of spirography-based objective measures are useful in differentiating drug-related motor dysfunctions between Off and dyskinesia in Parkinson’s disease (PD). Background: During the course of a 3 year longitudinal clinical study, in total 65 patients (43 males and 22 females with mean age of 65) with advanced PD and 10 healthy elderly (HE) subjects (5 males and 5 females with mean age of 61) were assessed. Both patients and HE subjects performed repeated and time-stamped assessments of their objective health indicators using a test battery implemented on a telemetry touch screen handheld computer, in their home environment settings. Among other tasks, the subjects were asked to trace a pre-drawn Archimedes spiral using the dominant hand and repeat the test three times per test occasion. Methods: A web-based framework was developed to enable a visual exploration of relevant spirography-based kinematic features by clinicians so they can in turn evaluate the motor states of the patients i.e. Off and dyskinesia. The system uses different visualization techniques such as time series plots, animation, and interaction and organizes them into different views to aid clinicians in measuring spatial and time-dependent irregularities that could be associated with the motor states. Along with the animation view, the system displays two time series plots for representing drawing speed (blue line) and displacement from ideal trajectory (orange line). The views are coordinated and linked i.e. user interactions in one of the views will be reflected in other views. For instance, when the user points in one of the pixels in the spiral view, the circle size of the underlying pixel increases and a vertical line appears in the time series views to depict the corresponding position. In addition, in order to enable clinicians to observe erratic movements more clearly and thus improve the detection of irregularities, the system displays a color-map which gives an idea of the longevity of the spirography task. Figure 2 shows single randomly selected spirals drawn by a: A) patient who experienced dyskinesias, B) HE subject, and C) patient in Off state. Results: According to a domain expert (DN), the spirals drawn in the Off and dyskinesia motor states are characterized by different spatial and time features. For instance, the spiral shown in Fig. 2A was drawn by a patient who showed symptoms of dyskinesia; the drawing speed was relatively high (cf. blue-colored time series plot and the short timestamp scale in the x axis) and the spatial displacement was high (cf. orange-colored time series plot) associated with smooth deviations as a result of uncontrollable movements. The patient also exhibited low amount of hesitation which could be reflected both in the animation of the spiral as well as time series plots. In contrast, the patient who was in the Off state exhibited different kinematic features, as shown in Fig. 2C. In the case of spirals drawn by a HE subject, there was a great precision during the drawing process as well as unchanging levels of time-dependent features over the test trial, as seen in Fig. 2B. Conclusions: Visualizing spirography-based objective measures enables identification of trends and patterns of drug-related motor dysfunctions at the patient’s individual level. Dynamic access of visualized motor tests may be useful during the evaluation of drug-related complications such as under- and over-medications, providing decision support to clinicians during evaluation of treatment effects as well as improve the quality of life of patients and their caregivers. In future, we plan to evaluate the proposed approach by assessing within- and between-clinician variability in ratings in order to determine its actual usefulness and then use these ratings as target outcomes in supervised machine learning, similarly as it was previously done in the study performed by Memedi et al. (2013).

Den litteraturvetenskapliga receptionsforskningen och internet : en metoddiskussion

Reader-Response Criticism and the Internet: A Methodological Discussion This article explores connections between Internet-based research and reader-response criticism, aiming to critically discuss the methodologies used in this particular field of research. First, the history of reader-response studies is briefly presented, with reference to theorists such as Richards, Rosenblatt, Robbe-Grillet, Iser and Jauss. It is noted that, for the past 15 years, people have utilised the Internet as a basis for the discussion of literary and reading-related topics. Researchers in this field may access reviews and commentaries on open web-based venues such as personal homepages, blogs and online forums (i.e. message boards and discussion sites). The material available on these sites is interesting because of its "spontaneous" nature; that is, such material has been formulated and uploaded without the interference of the researcher. The article presents one concrete example of an Internet-based reader-response study, discussing a number of pros and cons of the chosen methodology– including some important ethical considerations that arise when the researcher’s corpus is composed of material taken from the Internet. One of the conclusions of the paper is that many aspects of the general public’s web-based responses to literature are yet to be explored by the research community.

AvalWeb : sistema interativo para gerência de questões e aplicação de avaliações na web

Neste trabalho, é realizado um estudo dos processos de avaliação de alunos em ambiente WBT (Web Based Training). Para tanto, foram analisadas várias ferramentas de avaliação disponíveis no mercado. Com base nestas análises, foi proposto um sistema de gerência de questões e aplicação de avaliações, onde o termo “gerência” é utilizado com o objetivo de (i) atender requisições dos professores para elaboração de avaliações, (ii) escolher o nível de dificuldade das questões que comporão a avaliação e (iii) usar estratégias interativas para aplicação de provas, como por exemplo, a utilização de níveis de dificuldade progressivos das questões submetidas aos alunos, dependendo de suas respostas anteriores. Integrando o sistema de gerência de questões foi proposto um módulo de auto-avaliações, com retorno imediato para o aluno sobre qual é a resposta correta juntamente com uma explicação do professor, auxiliando no entendimento do estudante sobre a matéria ao invés de simplesmente atribuir determinada nota. Enfim, foi implementado um protótipo demonstrando a viabilidade das idéias presentes no modelo de avaliação aqui proposto. A proposta conceitual estabelecida para o modelo é bem mais ampla e flexível do que a atual versão da implementação realizada.

Utilizing cross-domain SOAP Web services using client-side languages in an enterprise mashup platform

Service oriented architectures (SOA) based on Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) Web services have attracted the attention of enterprises mainly for business-to-business integration and to create composite applications that execute business processes. An existing problem is the lack of preoccupation with non technical users due to the fact that to create a composite application to fulfill users needs, it is necessary to be in contact with IT staff. To overcome this issue, enterprises can take advantage of web 2.0, 'introducing in the development stage some technologies like mashups and some concepts like user empowerment, collaborative work and collective intelligence. Some results [3] [13] have shown how web 2.0 concepts can help non technical users to produce relative complex business processes. However, traditional enterprise requirements goes beyond typical web 2.0 solutions in several aspects: (1) traditional enterprise systems are based on heterogeneous stack of technologies that are not directly exploitable from a web-based client (where SOAP web services play an important role); (2) web browsers set some cross-domain security constraints making difficult to integrate services from diverse domains. In this paper, a contribution to two web 2.0 research projects [14] [15] partially solves the problems described: provide a way to invoke cross-domain backend services (based on SOAP technologies) directly only using clientside languages, without a need for any adaptation layer. © 2010 ACM.