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This thesis investigates the potential of narrative theory to inform the design of tools for sharing and annotating stories, in the context of professional knowledge sharing. We begin with a detailed review of the literature on modelling narrative, to establish the theoretical foundations for a narratologically-grounded annotation schema. Medicine is then selected for a tri-part study, since narrative-based approaches in healthcare education and practice are seen by many as significant. The first part seeks evidence of narrative among medical professionals communicating spontaneously and informally online. The frequency and range of stories identified shows that this appears to be a common and valued mode of communication. The second part envisions a Web story database ("storybase") supporting flexible annotation grounded in a narratological metadata scheme. The model draws on various narrative structure theories, and in particular, point-structure. A story can be annotated via a graphical user interface on various dimensions, enabling multiple interpretations. The third part analyses users annotating representative samples of the stories abstracted from the corpus in part 1. Data is analysed quantitatively (annotation value clustering, questionnaire responses and task phase durations) coupled with a qualitative account of participant behaviour based on grounded theory video analysis. While this study has limitations, it validates both the expressiveness and usability of the story annotation schema, and shows that participants found the experience to be enjoyable and stimulating. Interaction analysis demonstrates the centrality of interface design in shaping annotation behaviour. This work motivates further storybase research, informing the design of future studies and storybase technologies.

Three mathematical software modes are investigated in this thesis: black-box software showing no mathematical steps; glass-box software showing the intermediate mathematical steps; and open-box software showing and allowing interaction at the intermediate mathematical steps. The glass-box and open-box software modes are often recommended over the black-box software to help understanding but there is limited research comparing all three. This research investigated students' performance and their approaches to solving three mathematical task types when assigned to the software boxes. Three approaches that students may undertake when solving the tasks were investigated: students' processing levels, their software exploration and their self-explanations. The effect of mathematics confidence on students' approaches and performance was also considered. Thirty-eight students were randomly assigned to one of the software boxes in an experimental design where all audio and video data were collected via a web-conference remote observation method. The students were asked to think-aloud whilst they solved three task types. The three task types were classified based on the level of conceptual and procedural knowledge needed for solving: mechanical tasks required procedural knowledge, interpretive tasks required conceptual knowledge; and constructive tasks used both conceptual and procedural knowledge. The results indicated that the relationship between students' approaches and performance varied with the software box. Students using the black-box software explored more for the constructive tasks than the students in the glass-box and open-box software. These black-box software students also performed better on the constructive tasks, particularly those with higher mathematics confidence. The open-box software appeared to encourage more mathematical explanations whilst the glass-box software encouraged more real-life explanations. Mathematically confident students were best able to appropriate the black-box software for their conceptual understanding. The glass-box software or open-box software appeared to be useful for helping students with procedural understanding and familiarity with mathematical terms.

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This thesis identifies and explores the issues and barriers that appear to influence children's and adults' experiences of children's engagement in self-directed empirical research in five English primary schools associated with the Children's Research Centre at The Open University. As far as is known, this is the first in-depth study of children as independent researchers in the context of English primary schools. A flexible, multimethod research design was adopted. Predominantly qualitative data was generated through focus groups held with, and questionnaires distributed to, the young researchers and their peers and through individual unstructured interviews with adults. The qualitative data generated through these methods was analysed in the style of Grounded Theory (Glaser and Strauss, 1967; Strauss and Corbin, 1998). Quantitative data was subject to exploratory data analysis. This complemented and informed the qualitative analyses. The central categories which emerged from the data and, in particular, the identification of important issues by the children, have together informed the staged construction of a new model. This model illustrates the factors and processes that had an impact on both the children's experiences of research training and the research process and outcomes. The model demonstrates that these are inextricably interrelated. It is hoped that consideration of the issues and barriers identified will provide a basis for the further implementation and evaluation of young researcher initiatives in schools. The findings of the study have been drawn on to make recommendations for policy, practice and future research, particularly in those areas which are identified as significant by, and to, the children involved. It is also hoped that this study will address a gap in our knowledge and understanding of children as researchers and inform critical debate concerning children's voice and participation, adult-child power relationships and children's rights in English primary schools and more widely.

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In recent years, new ways to access or control digital information through the manipulation of physical objects have become possible. These technologies, often described as tangible interfaces, are being increasingly used to design systems for learning. The assumption has been that interacting with physical materials might provide some benefit to the learner. However, few coherent frameworks or theories have been .- presented to motivate the use of tangible interfaces for learning. Nor have there been compelling empirical demonstrations of the benefits of using physical materials.. This thesis aims to add to our understanding of tangible interfaces for learning. After relating work on tangible interfaces to literature on embodiment, external cognition and learning, it makes two contributions to this aim. First, it presents an analytic framework, to facilitate future research and development. It comprises six themes: possible learning benefits; learning domains; exploratory and expressive activity; concreteness and sensory directness; integration of representations; and effects of physicality. It then presents a series of three empirical studies designed to explore the final framework theme: the effects of using physical materials on learning. These studies compare the outcomes and behavioural correlates of leanllng for participants who completed discovery learning tasks using either physical or graph.ical materials. The design was progressively optimised to magnify any potential effects of physicality.. No differences were found between the physical and graphical interface groups on any of the learning measures, providing no support for the view that using physical materials is beneficial to learning. Some differences are found in the amount of descriptive dialogue produced by participants using physical materials, which are discussed in terms of awareness work. While it is difficult to draw strong conclusions from these negative findings, a hypothesis was proposed that in many cases, culturally-learned representational systems can free individuals from reliance upon sensori-motor aspects of cognition. If this is the case, then tangible interfaces might be expected to be of greatest benefit in situations where alternative representations are unavailable.

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No description available.