Dichotomy in the design studio : adapting to new blended learning environments

Since the architectural design studio learning environment was first established in the early 19th century at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, there has been a complete transformation in how the discipline of architecture is practiced and how students of architecture acquire information. Digital technologies allow students to access information instantly and learning is no longer confined to the rigid boundaries of a physical campus environment. In many schools of architecture in Australia, the physical design studio learning environments however, remain largely unchanged. Many learning environments could be mistaken for those last refurbished 30 years ago, being devoid of any significant technological intervention. While some teaching staff are eagerly embracing new digital technologies and attempting to modify their pedagogical approaches, the physical design studio learning environment is resistant to such efforts. In a study aimed at better understanding how staff and students adapt to new blended learning environments, a group of 165 second year architecture students at a large school of architecture in Australia were separated into two different design studio learning environments. 70% of students were allocated to a traditional design studio setting and 30% to a new, high technology embedded, prototype digital learning laboratory. The digital learning laboratory was purpose designed for the case-study users, adapted Student-Centred Active Learning Environment for Undergraduate Programs [SCALE-UP] principles, and built as part of a larger university research project. The architecture students attended the same lectures, followed the same studio curriculum and completed the same pieces of assessment; the only major differences were the teaching staff and physical environment within which the studios were conducted. At the end of the semester, all staff and students were asked to complete a questionnaire about their experiences and preferences within the two respective learning environments. The questionnaire response rate represented the opinions of 100% of the 10 teaching staff and over 70% of the students. Using a qualitative grounded theory approach, data were coded, extrapolated and compared, to reveal emerging key themes. The key themes formed the basis for in-depth interviews and focus groups of teaching staff and students, allowing the researchers to understand the data in more detail. The results of the data verified what had become increasingly evident during the course of the semester: an underlying negative resistance to the new digital studio learning environment, by both staff and students. Many participants openly exhibited a yearning for a return to the traditional design studio learning environments, particularly when the new technology caused frustration, by being unreliable or failing altogether. This paper reports on the study, discusses the negative resistance and explores the major contributors to resistance. The researchers are not aware of any similar previous studies across these particular settings and believe that it offers a necessary and important contribution to emergent research about adaptation to new digital learning environments.

Imagem & tecnologia: webmuseu de arte

Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo (FAPESP)

Informação na Web colaborativa: um olhar para o direito autoral e as alternativas emergentes

Pós-graduação em Ciência da Informação - FFC

Web semântica: uma análise focada no uso de metadados

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)

Ambientes informacionais digitais e usuários surdos: questões de acessibilidade

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)

Acessibilidade em ambientes informacionais digitais

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)

Arquitetura da informação pervasiva: contribuições conceituais

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)

Recomendações de usabilidade e de acessibilidade em projetos de ambientes informacionais digitais para idosos

The usability and accessibility, when applied to digital information environments, provide ease of use and access to information, respectively. Thus, we aim to discuss these concepts and apply them in specific digital environments to the elderly through the documentary and bibliographic study of specific recommendations on projects for elderly users. This study was conducted in conjunction with students at the Universidade Aberta à Terceira Idade (UNATI) - UNESP - Marilia, who assisted in the classification of recommendations for usability and accessibility are essential (Priority 1), important (Priority 2) and optional (Priority 3). The results indicate the importance of this type of study for the digital and social inclusion of older people by facilitating elements of access and use of information, providing the building more inclusive informational architectures. The resulting recommendations can be used as a starting point for the design of digital environments for the elderly in a specific heuristic evaluation, for example. However, it remains important to the application of usability testing with users, including the application to validate these recommendations, since different contexts may arise from the implementation of different elements, resources and information services.

Representação e descrição de recursos informacionais: aspectos estruturantes no delineamento de ambientes informacionais digitais

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)

Information flows and environments in business contexts: the meat sector case of Salmanca/Spain

Organizational environments are related to hierarchic levels existing in a determined organization, and they influence in the formal and informal flows origin and in their monitoring and/or extinction. Informational environments are a result of organizational environments, of which focus is information and knowledge. Information flows are a fundamental element to informational environments, in a way that there´s no informational environments if there´s no information flows. Informational flows are natural reflections from their environments, in terms of content and in the way they occur. This qualitative and quantitative research was developed in three stages, in a way to allow the comprehension of the phenomena related to information and knowledge environments and information flows that occur in the meat sector from the Province of Salamanca, Spain. We used Laurence Bardin´s ‘Analysis of Content’, more specifically the ‘Categorical Analysis’ technique to data analysis. As data collection procedure we accomplished a field research, applying a questionnaire as an intentional sample of the meat industries segment from the Province of Salamanca, Spain. From data tabulation and analysis, we infer that information environments and flows are relevant to these companies business development, as well as we emphasized the need of information and knowledge management deployment, in a way to insure organizational processes quality, industrial chain production and companies competition to conquer potential markets.

Encontrabilidade da Informação: atributos e recomendações para ambientes informacionais digitais

At first, this paper presents the epistemological and theoretical bases that support the inclusion of an operational concept for the findability of information in the field of Information Science. In a second moment, it defines the key attributes and recommendations for the findability of information, with a view to their understanding in a practical perspective, from the epistemological and theoretical support presented. From a theoretical, exploratory, bibliographic and documentary study, the results reveal that epistemologically the findability of information fits in Information Science in post-custodial paradigm that focuses on access to information and is significantly influenced by Information and Communication Technologies. The theoretical conclusions of this concept focus on the evolution of the Web and from the perspective of the dimensions of language, where there is as pragmatic trend, as technological development that combines the actions taken by informational and institutional individuals in digital information environments. Given that these actions turn enable or not the findability of information, these individuals can be understood as mediators. Therefore, the concept of infocommunicational mediation is the basis for the findability of information. For its application in digital information environments, were defined attributes and guidelines which should be considered in the context of Information Architecture. The attributes characterizing the concept and guidelines point at practical actions for the design and for evaluation of the findability of information. Epistemological, theoretical and practical concepts addressed underpin the called operative concept in information science and should be further explored in this scientific field.

Acessibilidade em Ambientes Informacionais Digitais

The current nature of World Wide Web (Web), which highlights the collaborative participation of users in some digital information environments, lead to development of guidelines with a focus on Inclusive Digital Information Architecture for a different audiences in multiples informational ambiences. This research proposes guidelines for a inclusive digital information environment, aiming to identify the elements of accessibility that allow the promotion of inclusion digital information, in order to highlight the references of the Architecture of Digital Information, the international recommendations and the structures representation of information (specially accessibility attributes), with the look of Information Science and New Technologies of Information and Communication. The thesis is as to the need to develop methodologies with guidelines that contemplate the elements of digital accessibility focused on the task of the user. The research problem is that actual methodologies and recommendations used for the development of digital information environments do not cover all the elements of accessibility with a focus on user needs. The proposition is to present, through a methodological approach (exploratory and descriptive), a theoretical-methodological proposal to promote elements of digital accessibility to the development of digital information environments, for users with or without special needs. The overall objective of this study is to contribute to the development of inclusive digital information environments, in perspective of union of theories, recommendations and technologies for the development of digital accessibility guidelines. In a theoretical dimension, the research covers a critical review of the specialized literature in the areas of Information Science and Computer Science and, in the applied part, the analysis and development of a proposal of guidelines for the architecture of a digital information environment with accessibility.

Assessment of Web Content Accessibility Levels in Spanish Official Online Education Environments

Diversity-based designing, or the goal of ensuring that web-based information is accessible to as many diverse users as possible, has received growing international acceptance in recent years, with many countries introducing legislation to enforce it. This paper analyses web content accessibility levels in Spanish education portals according to the international guidelines established by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI). Additionally, it suggests the calculation of an inaccessibility rate as a tool for measuring the degree of non-compliance with WAI Guidelines 2.0 as well as illustrating the significant gap that separates people with disabilities from digital education environments (with a 7.77% average). A total of twenty-one educational web portals with two different web depth levels (42 sampling units) were assessed for this purpose using the automated analysis tool Web Accessibility Test 2.0 (TAW, for its initials in Spanish). The present study reveals a general trend towards non-compliance with the technical accessibility recommendations issued by the W3C-WAI group (97.62% of the websites examined present mistakes in Level A conformance). Furthermore, despite the increasingly high number of legal and regulatory measures about accessibility, their practical application still remains unsatisfactory. A greater level of involvement must be assumed in order to raise awareness and enhance training efforts towards accessibility in the context of collective Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), since this represents not only a necessity but also an ethical, social, political and legal commitment to be assumed by society.

Multimodal literacy, digital games and curriculum

Digital games offer enormous potential for learning and engagement in mathematics ideas and processes. This volume offers multidisciplinary perspectives—of educators, cognitive scientists, psychologists and sociologists—on how digital games influence the social activities and mathematical ideas of learners/gamers. Contributing authors identify opportunities for broadening current understandings of how mathematical ideas are fostered (and embedded) within digital game environments. In particular, the volume advocates for new and different ways of thinking about mathematics in our digital age—proposing that these mathematical ideas and numeracy practices are distinct from new literacies or multiliteracies. The authors acknowledge that the promise of digital games has not always been realised/fulfilled. There is emerging, and considerable, evidence to suggest that traditional discipline boundaries restrict opportunities for mathematical learning. Throughout the book, what constitutes mathematics learnings and pedagogy is contested. Multidisciplinary viewpoints are used to describe and understand the potential of digital games for learning mathematics and identify current tensions within the field.Mathematics learning is defined as being about problem solving; engagement in mathematical ideas and processes; and social engagement. The artefact, which is the game, shapes the ways in which the gamers engage with the social activity of gaming. In parallel, the book (as a textual artefact) will be supported by Springer’s online platform—allowing for video and digital communication (including links to relevant websites) to be used as supplementary material and establish a dynamic communication space.

Designing learning spaces for (partially) online lives : recombinant architecture

The notion of recombinant architecture signals a loosening of spatial connections between physical and digital-online environments (Mitchell, 1996; 2000; 2003). Such an idea also points to the transformative nature of the designing approaches concerned with the creation of spaces where bits meet bodies to fulfil human needs and desires and, at the same time, pursuing those human dimensions of space and place which are so important to our senses of belonging, physical comfort and amenity. This paper proposes that recombinant spaces and places draw on familiar architectural forms and functions and on the transforming functions of digital-online modes. Perspectives, approaches and resources outlined in the paper support designing and re-designing enterprises and aim to stimulate discussion in the Digital Environments strand of this online conference: 'Under Construction: a world without walls'.