Visualization tools are frequently used to help people understand everyday data in their lives. One such example is visualization in behaviour feedback tools. Behaviour feedback tools are used to try to help people improve their health or personal well-being or to carry out sound environmental sustainability practices. However, understanding and reasoning about personal data (e.g., pedometer counts, blood pressure readings or home electricity consumption) or gaining a deeper understanding of one's current practices and learning how to make a change can be challenging when using data alone. My literature review of this field showed that two of the main challenges in actual practice are providing a context in which to reason about the data and reducing the cost of maintenance to fit those tools into everyday life routines. Thus, I propose to integrate time-varying feedback data within a personal digital calendar. This combination of calendar and feedback data can provide contextual information to interpret data and make the data accessible in an attentionally ambient way that is suitable for maintaining awareness. I propose that the familiarity and common practice of using digital calendars can minimize the cost of learning and maintenance for people and easily fit into one's daily life routines. The viability of this approach was confirmed in my quantitative lab experiments. The results showed that visualization of feedback data integrated on a digital calendar is comprehensible, and it does not interfere with regular calendar use with proper visual encodings. After confirming the viability of my proposal, I implemented the on-calendar visualization as a web application that was synchronized with Google Calendar API and a real-time feedback data stream. To further investigate this approach in a real life situation, I deployed the application in the field for longitudinal field studies: two case studies as pilot deployment and an eight-week field study. Results showed that people liked the idea of integrating feedback data into their personal digital calendars. It required a low cost in learning and maintenance. The calendar events provided rich context for people to visualize and reason about their feedback data. The design enabled people to quickly identify and explain repeated patterns and anomalies. Meanwhile, I found that people's existing information use habits (in this case, how they use digital calendars) can highly influence the effectiveness of the feedback design. Moreover, I derived a feedback model that identifies basic components in feedback design and illustrates the role of feedback tools. With that I articulated possible design barriers that could prevent ongoing use of feedback tools. Reflecting on the effects of the on-calendar design approach, I discussed design implications inspired by this work. This work introduces a reflective approach in feedback design that can easily fit into people's existing information ecosystem (specifically, a personal digital calendar in this work). The main contributions of this thesis are: the first systematic literature review of personal visualization design used in everyday life; the design and implementation of an on-calendar design that integrates feedback data on people's personal digital calendars to provide context for reasoning and support easy access for ongoing use; the extended definition of ambience from spatial location to attentional demand; a viability study to confirm the on-calendar design approach; longitudinal studies to investigate the effects of the on-calendar design approach and the feedback model of design mechanism to inspect ongoing factors in feedback designs. / Graduate / 0984, 0384 / dhuangca@gmail.com

Thesis. 1975. Ph.D.--Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Architecture. / Bibliography: leaves 153-159. / Ph.D.

Syftet med studien är att bidra med kunskap om hur 5-åringar kan samspela i problemlösning runt tekniska problem i bygg- och konstruktionslek i förskolans vardagliga miljö. Studien har genomförts som en designstudie med videoobservation som datainsamlingsmetod. Fyra 5åringar fick i studien genomföra en bygg- och konstruktionsaktivitet, där ett samhälle skulle byggas med hjälp av olika typer av material och verktyg. Resultatet visar att de fyra barnen använder sig av samspel för att skapa förståelse gällande tekniska problem. Genom språk, både tal och kroppsspråk, utbyter de erfarenheter och skapar därigenom mening i det som sker under aktiviteten. Barnen visar att de har kunskap om sammanfogning i konstruktionssyfte, de använder sig av uttryck som tyder på att de förstår att hållbarhet och metod gör skillnad på slutresultatet. De visar även att de har kunskaper kring trafik och samhällsbyggnad som tekniska system. I aktiviteten beskriver barnen dessa fenomen utifrån sina egna erfarenheter och delger varandra i samspel. Aktiviteten skapar tillfälle för barnen att reflektera över sina kunskaper och ger dem möjlighet att utvidga sin och andras förståelse genom samspel. / The purpose of the study is to contribute with knowledge of how 5-year-olds can interact in problem-solving around technical problems in construction and design play in the preschool's everyday activity. The study has been conducted as a design study with video observation as the data collection method. Four 5-year-olds participated in a building and construction activity in the study, where a society should be built using different types of materials and tools. The result shows that the four children use interaction to create understanding of technical problems. Through language, both speech and body language, the children exchange experiences and thus creates meaning about what is happening during the activity. The children show that they have knowledge of joining of materials for design purposes, they use expressions that indicate that they understand that sustainability and choice of method make a difference in the final result. They also demonstrate that they have knowledge of traffic and community construction as technical systems. In the activity the children describe these phenomena based on their own experiences and communicates in interaction. The activity creates opportunities for the children to reflect on their knowledge and gives them the opportunity to expand their and others' understanding through interaction.

Thesis. 1977. Ph.D.--Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning. / MICROFICHE COPY AVAILABLE IN ARCHIVES AND ROTCH. / Bibliography : leaves 167-169. / Ph.D.

The aim of this study was to design short interventions based on the literature study, which will change the pupils’ posture on mathematics and connections between problem-solving in mathematics and everyday life. An experimental group of 17 pupils in fifth grade participated in the study and were educated in everyday mathematics 20 minutes a day during four weeks. The intervention was measured in a pre- and after questionnaire, in order to control the design and discover possible changes in the pupils’ posture on mathematics and connections between problems and everyday life. The design was meant to be a first cycle, where the result can contribute to improvement in other cycles and further studies. The result showed that the pupils had got a more positive view on mathematics and its field of application, and some improvement in problem-solving towards mathematics related to their everyday life.

published_or_final_version / abstract / toc / Education / Master / Master of Science in Information Technology in Education

No description available.

No description available.

The purpose of the study was born out of a perceived need to establish an assessment strategy framework for the fashion programme of one Eastern Cape comprehensive university. The study focused on one Eastern Cape comprehensive university. The programme, National Diploma: Fashion, is offered by the university at two campuses (120km apart). Although this programme is currently offered at both of the sites under the auspices of the university, disparity exists in many of the academic functions within the programme. The most challenging is assessment and the implications of a non-existent standard framework for assessment across both campuses. This research undertook to identify a framework that would best serve the Fashion programme of the researched university. Assessment in the context of this study referred to the process of both gathering evidence of student learning as well as assigning grades to that learning. The lack of an assessment framework affects the quality of assessment. Consistency in the assessment process across both campuses is important. At present assessment is not consistent as it is done independently on each campus. This lack of consistency could prove to favour students at the one campus while marginalizing students at the other campus and vice versa. Inconsistency arises from staff having no common assessment framework to refer to when assessment takes place. This study was a case study. Interviews were conducted with a sample of lecturers and students from both sites. A document analysis of relevant policies was done. The documents included the Higher Education Quality Committee document Criteria for Programme Accreditation, 2004, the South African Qualification Authority document Criteria and Guidelines for Assessment of NQF Registered Unit Standards and Qualifications, 2001, and the South African Qualification Authority document Guidelines for Integrated Assessment, 2005. University policy documents pertaining to assessment were also included in the research.The findings of this study lead to the conclusion that there is no clear assessment framework currently in place for the National Diploma: Fashion at one Eastern Cape comprehensive university. The assessment methods currently in use are not fully understood and comprehended by lecturers or students. The assessment types are limited with little or no variety as to how assessment is practiced. Although continuous assessment is advocated in the department, a lack of understanding by lecturers and students as to the true practice of continuous assessment is evident. Much of the assessment is done at the end of a teaching module, rather than embedded in the teaching module. This means that assessment is done of learning rather than for learning.

Thesis (MTech (Design))--Cape Peninsula University of Technology, 2016. / This study explores appropriate responses to some of the challenges inherent to life today, and how a holistic design education can bring about a new reality. The approach to design learning advocated here acknowledges the present reality of fragmentation and reductionism as the fundamental and pervasive mode of understanding our world and ourselves, and seeks to develop instead a design approach grounded in inclusion, context and connectedness. Under the primary concept of profound engagement with self, culture and environment, I developed a complementary design education model exploring the role of designer as mediator between culture and nature. This model proposes future design knowing situated in environmental, social and self-awareness so as to offer a vital interface between ecology, public and the personal. Three themes emerged during the research that helped me to approach and engage with complexity during particular experiences of teaching and learning. These themes are: Wild, representing quality; Conversation, representing experience; and Transformation, representing consciousness. With these themes in mind I entered into the untamed territory of my research seeking the dynamic connections and interrelationships of living processes in education. The Ensembles or modules constituting this model evolved from the work of Rudolf Steiner’s concepts of higher perception: Imagination, Inspiration and Intuition, made clear through following Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s phenomenological method. Goethe’s phenomenological method – “delicate empiricism” – is essentially a participatory, perceptive practice with which to harness qualitative ways of knowing. The methodology supports students to cross the divide between abstraction and holistic relational modes of knowing that are context-sensitive. The research study reconsiders the current worldview and determines ways in which to develop relational awareness through deliberate learning experiences. These ways imply re-focusing existing awareness with personal qualities and active participation. The Ensembles open up new ways of perceiving emergent process rooted in integrated, flexible and evolutionary processes. Students’ learning experiences are traced as they develop their capacity for interconnected decision making modelled on living processes. This in turn helps develop the model further, so that in the future designers may embrace ways of thinking and doing design that are more flexible, mobile, delicate and sustainable. The radical humanist perspective and qualitative methods used in the study advance the pedagogical approach embedded in human engagement and interaction, and encompass logic, intellect, creativity, imagination and philosophical reflection. Thus the critical shift, from perceiving the world as abstract and as “something out there” to a deeper inner knowing and understanding, is embedded in the education model as an opus of Ensembles reflecting a pedagogy of lived experience, grounded in embodied creative practice.