At present, human-computer interaction (HCI) is no longer limited to traditional input hardware like mouse and keyboard. In the last few years, Augmented and Virtual Reality (AR, VR) have dramatically changed the way we interact with a computer. Currently, one of the many design challenges of these systems is the integration of the physical and digital aspects in an accessible and usable way. The design success of AR systems depends on the fluid and harmonious fusion of the material and digital world. Pointing, which is a radical gesture in communication, can enable easy and intuitive interaction within the AR application. This study explores two pointing techniques that can be used in an AR application. I developed two prototypes, and the concept of laser pointing was used, by shooting out a laser from the point of origin into the application, to perform pointing. The point of origin for the laser is the camera, in the first prototype called camera laser and the fiducial, in the second prototype called pen laser. The camera laser showed promising results in terms of ease of use and reliability, but the pen laser felt more natural to the user. In this study, I present the prototypes, followed by the user study and the results. / För närvarande är interaktionen mellan människa och dator (HCI) inte längre begränsad till traditionaell ingångshårdvara som mus och tangentbord. Under de senaste åren har Augmented och Virtual Reality (AR, VR) dramatiskt förändrat vårt sätt att interagera med en dator. För närvarande är en av de måmga designutmaningarna för dessa system att sammanföra de fysiska och digitala aspekterna på ett tillgångligt och användbart sätt. AR-systemens framgång beror på den löpande och harmoniska sammansmältningen av den materiella och digitala världen. Pekande, som är ett radikalt sätt att kommunicera på, kan möjliggöra enkel och intuitiv interaktion inom AR-användning. Denna studie undersöker två pektekniker som kan användas i AR-användning. Jag utvecklade två prototyper. Laserpekning användes genom att skjuta ut en laser från startpunkten till applikationen, för att utföra pekning. Utgångspunkten för lasern är kameran, i den första prototypen som kallas kameralaser och fiducial, i den andra prototypen som kallas pennlaser. Kameralasern visade lovande resultat när det gäller användarvånlighet och tillförlitlighet, men pennlasern upplevdes mer naturlig för användaren. I denna studie presenterar jag prototyperna följt av användarstudien och resultaten.

Learning materials have multiple forms, such as books, overhead slides, computer files, blackboard notes by teachers, narration to the notes, video/audio tapes etc. Since the forms are highly inhomogeneous, it becomes difficult to collect and practically use them by a particular learner for individual study at home. Such multiple media are also expensive in management, since human resources are needed to keep the material repositories in order. One solution of the problem lies in centralized active digital repositories. Such repositories aim to simplify the learner’s work and boost learning efficiency. With introduction of interactivity and live communication tools such repositories become learning platforms exceeding the functionality of “passive” digital libraries. Such learning platforms could be easily used both for on-campus and distance education. This dissertation presents an evaluation of a digital repository of interactive multimedia content in the field of Heat and Power Technology: Computerized Educational Platform (CompEdu HPT). The platform evaluation consisted of integration of the tool into the university curriculum and then collection of feedback from students and teachers. The evaluation concerned usefulness of the platform for learning, aspects of instruction improvement, collecting observations about how the platform is used by students, as well as their opinions about the IT application direction chosen. The methods included: online feedback forms, questionnaires, interviews, discussions and observations. The evaluation demonstrated that the main strength of the platform is the integration of learning materials in one portable package. The students appreciated structured and logically arranged information that was available for easy access. Coverage of a broad area of knowledge related to heat and power technology was also pointed out as an advantage with reflection on the very low price of acquisition of the materials. The most popular elements of the content in use included: simulations, lecture notes, the print function, the glossary, and calculation exercises. A major part of the students declared the high value of CompEdu in facilitating home study. Nevertheless, not all the students had a positive impression: around one-fifth of them did not find the platform useful and expressed preference for more traditional learning media. The majority of the negative opinions concerned content quality, which directly related to weaknesses of the content production and review process. The evaluation emphasized the importance of material quality and amount as the key issue for a good learning platform with relatively smaller importance of presentation forms. The evaluation also considered aspects of functionality from the user point of view. Differentiation between popularity of simulations showed that simulations used by teachers during lectures have higher educational value than those for individual use only. The popularity of the printing option indicated a need for adaptation of digital materials for paper publishing. The general conclusion for practical use of multimedia tools in education was that high usability and simplicity of information access should be the focus point of any chosen approach in the direction. The CompEdu evaluation suggested that after thorough content review and addition of an efficient search mechanism the platform can successfully deliver rich learning content. The platform gave an extensive real-case illustration of how multimedia can be used in educational practice. Due to the evaluation, the CompEdu e-learning group has collected rich experience and know-how in the field of active knowledge repositories. The experience will be used for development of a more sophisticated learning platform working in the global Internet environment with major focus on information accessibility by easy search. / QC 20101129

yes / The Final Year Project is an integral part of an engineering degree programme. At the University of Bradford's School of Engineering, Design and Technology (SoEDT), the project spans two semesters and is worth 30 credits or the equivalent of 300 hours of work. A student works under the guidance of a supervisor on a particular topic that usually involves some experimental activity, and is required to apply a variety of personal and technical skills as part of the project process. At Bradford, the Final Year Engineering Project (FYEP) concludes with summative assessment, in terms of a technical report and poster presentation, both of which occur at the end of the second semester. For most students the FYEP represents a new way of working, while the nature of supervision can vary from hugely rewarding to very disappointing. There is possible scope for improving the FYEP experience, from the perspectives of supervisor and student, through the use of e-portfolio tools, which make use of the Web to provide the means for maintaining communication, monitoring progress and developing a student¿s skills portfolio. If e-portfolio tools are to be considered as a possible integral part of the FYEP process, then an appreciation of the current FYEP experience among students and supervisors must first be gained. In this paper, quantitative and qualitative results are presented based on face-to-face semi-structured interviews with academic supervisors and responses to on-line questionnaires from supervisors and final year engineering students at the SoEDT. The results provide an insight into the practices and techniques employed as part of the FYEP, and identify where training is needed to develop particular project skills. The results provide a basis for the development of an e-portfolio application that supports the FYEP experience, which is introduced to conclude the paper. / National HE STEM Programme

Worldwide, people who are unable to study full-time at residential higher education institutions choose distance education as their mode of study. Such students who are mostly employed adults with multiple responsibilities face many challenges in the process. Students majoring in Mathematics often struggle to master the mathematics content of the major modules and therefore have to attempt the examination several times. The UODL at the Potchefstroom campus of the NWU incorporated IWBs as learning technology in order to improve the communication and support to their students. This study aims to determine how scaffolding of mathematics concepts can be facilitated via IWBs in order to enhance the learning experience of teacher-students towards their understanding of the fundamental principles of mathematics. The study is based on the Stoner model for implementing ICT learning technologies and the focus of the study relates specifically to the design integration phase of the Stoner cycle. The population for the study consisted of all OLG teacher-students who were registered for NWPK 512—a mathematics major module within the ACE programme. A group of ten participants attending at the White River centre and a control group of ten participants from another centre were used during the study. The study followed a mixed-method research design and was performed according to a Kirkpatrick evaluation for training programmes which involves evaluation on five different levels, namely reaction, perception whether learning occurred, change in behaviour, results and return on investment. The qualitative data were analysed through ATLAS.ti ™ augmented with descriptive statistical techniques. Descriptive statistical techniques and effect sizes were calculated to analyse the quantitative data. Reliability and validity of the instrument were calculated. Findings of the study indicated that scaffolding of mathematical concepts via IWBs enhanced students’ understanding of the fundamental concepts of mathematics. The group of participants performed significantly better after they have attended the scaffolding IWB sessions. The introduction to and incorporation of scaffolds for learning mathematics over distance can create an environment of effective mathematics education for all teacher-students as well as for the students in their respective classrooms. / MEd (Curriculum Development), North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2015

Worldwide, people who are unable to study full-time at residential higher education institutions choose distance education as their mode of study. Such students who are mostly employed adults with multiple responsibilities face many challenges in the process. Students majoring in Mathematics often struggle to master the mathematics content of the major modules and therefore have to attempt the examination several times. The UODL at the Potchefstroom campus of the NWU incorporated IWBs as learning technology in order to improve the communication and support to their students. This study aims to determine how scaffolding of mathematics concepts can be facilitated via IWBs in order to enhance the learning experience of teacher-students towards their understanding of the fundamental principles of mathematics. The study is based on the Stoner model for implementing ICT learning technologies and the focus of the study relates specifically to the design integration phase of the Stoner cycle. The population for the study consisted of all OLG teacher-students who were registered for NWPK 512—a mathematics major module within the ACE programme. A group of ten participants attending at the White River centre and a control group of ten participants from another centre were used during the study. The study followed a mixed-method research design and was performed according to a Kirkpatrick evaluation for training programmes which involves evaluation on five different levels, namely reaction, perception whether learning occurred, change in behaviour, results and return on investment. The qualitative data were analysed through ATLAS.ti ™ augmented with descriptive statistical techniques. Descriptive statistical techniques and effect sizes were calculated to analyse the quantitative data. Reliability and validity of the instrument were calculated. Findings of the study indicated that scaffolding of mathematical concepts via IWBs enhanced students’ understanding of the fundamental concepts of mathematics. The group of participants performed significantly better after they have attended the scaffolding IWB sessions. The introduction to and incorporation of scaffolds for learning mathematics over distance can create an environment of effective mathematics education for all teacher-students as well as for the students in their respective classrooms. / MEd (Curriculum Development), North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2015

Business information systems (BIS) comprise technological (e.g. programs), informational (e.g. content) and social artifacts (e.g. collaboration structures). Typically, such systems are constantly and collectively developed (co-developed) further by a variety of individuals within the organization. By recognizing these varying types of actors (concerning their goals, technical expertise and language means) and their predominantly developed artifact type, one can distinguish two types of subsystems: technical subsystems wherein the development of the system behavior is conducted by software developers; and business subsystems dominated by end-users developing informational artifacts. So far, co-development structures within and between these subsystems are not well understood, especially the aspect that - potentially driven by appropriate measures such as the provision of domain-specific languages - co-development might shift between these subsystems. This paper presents an approach for characterizing the co-development of real-world BIS with respect to direct participation from different kinds of contributors. This multilayered approach allows us to analyze the co-development with programming languages, domain-specific languages and end-user tools. The approach is suited to assess the direct participation of individuals from different subsystems in the development of evolving BIS. We focus on the intersection of these subsystems, present appropriate metrics and a multilayered analysis scheme. Contributions to artifacts are analyzed using social network analysis to detect structural properties of continuous co-development. The application to Learn@WU, a real-world BIS, demonstrates how end-user enabling technologies have shifted the co-development effort of the system from a small group of developers to a several orders of magnitude larger group of contributors. We observed an increase of direct participation over time on both informational and executable artifacts, while the number of technical experts was more or less constant. Our approach may act as a trigger for the application and further development of rigorous instruments for assessing co-development of BIS. (authors' abstract)

This thesis explores the role of modularity for achieving a better adaptation of learning technology to pedagogical requirements. In order to examine the interrelations that occur between pedagogy and computer science, a theoretical framework rooted in both fields is applied. During the twentieth century, the focus of pedagogical research and practice has gone from behaviourism, via cognitivism, to learning theory based on constructivism. Changes in learning objectives and an increasing cognitive complexity of learning tasks are likely to have contributed to this evolvement. This puts new requirements on the design and implementation of pedagogical instruction (instructional design) and its application to learning technology. Using instructional design together with technology requires the pedagogical process to be predetermined, which is partly contradicted by the nature of constructivism. Many constructivist approaches require social interaction and dynamic learning environments that can adapt to changes that are required by different pedagogical approaches. Those requirements have been met using modular approaches for content, i.e., learning objects, implemented in non-modular web-based virtual learning environments (VLE), like learning management systems (LMS). This thesis argues that modularity promotes adaptability and adaptivity, but that the current practice of using learning objects and LMSes is too restricted to fulfill the increasing needs for flexibility. The reasons are that the learning object concept is still too ill-defined to function as a component framework, and there are complex and unsolved issues regarding the representation of pedagogical instructions. This is especially complicated from a constructivist perspective where pedagogical instructions cannot always be assumed to be predetermined, which needs to be encountered for by technology. This thesis contributes to the research field by suggesting a modular approach that includes both digital learning content and VLEs. This was accomplished by suggesting a taxonomy and an abstract model for learning objects, which address both functional and technical properties. Furthermore, six action areas are suggested in order to enhance the technical quality of learning objects. Using the abstract model as a basis, the software architecture of learning objects was addressed in order to separate data, logics and presentation – including the separation of the representation of pedagogical process from the components that implement it. This facilitates the combination of modularity and representation of pedagogical instruction that utilizes machine-processable semantics, enabling the utilization of modularity at composition time as well as at run-time. This approach has resulted in a SOA-based architecture framework that has been used as blueprint for implementing two prototypes of modular VLEs, using different technology platforms. The objective was to verify the taxonomy, the abstract model, and the architecture framework. The experiments have shown that it is possible to incorporate learning content and the VLE into the same modular framework in order to provide the flexibility needed for learning technology to better adapt to changing pedagogical requirements. The experiments have also shown how pedagogical processes benefit from being represented using machine-processable semantics in being able to better utilize the flexibility offered by modularity in keeping the components of the VLE together by representing context and structure. This has been illustrated by adding semantic annotations that were used to dynamically connect pedagogical instruction to annotated learning objects, using machine-processable semantics. / QC 20100903

This research achieves two main goals: First it proposes a set of extensions to the existing Opencast Matterhorn lecture video capture system, which should enhance its effectiveness and enable the collection of fine-grained datasets for further research. These extensions allow users to quickly and easily create, find, tag, annotate, and share `clipshows' of their video recorded classes both publicly and privately. Second, the tracking data generated when users create or view the clipshows using these extensions are used to analyze the efficacy of the system.

abstract: The goal of this research was to understand the different kinds of learning that take place in Mod The Sims (MTS), an online Sims gaming community. The study aimed to explore users' experiences and to understand learning practices that are not commonly observed in formal educational settings. To achieve this goal, the researcher conducted a four-year virtual ethnographic study that followed guidelines set forth in Hine (2000). After Hine, the study focused on understanding the complexity of the relationships between technology and social interactions among people, with a particular emphasis on investigating how participants shaped both the culture and structure of the affinity space. The format for the dissertation consists of an introduction, three core chapters that present different sets of findings, and a concluding chapter. Each of the core chapters, which can stand alone as separate studies, applies different theoretical lenses and analytic methods and uses a separate data set. The data corpus includes hundreds of thread posts, member profiles, online interview data obtained through email and personal messaging (PM), numerous screenshots, field notes, and additional artifacts, such as college coursework shared by a participant. Chapter 2 examines thread posts to understand the social support system in MTS and the language learning practices of one member who was a non-English speaker. Chapter 3 analyzes thread posts from administrative staff and users in MTS to identify patterns of interactions, with the goal of ascertaining how users contribute to the ongoing design and redesign of the site. Chapter 4 investigates user-generated tutorials to understand the nature of these instructional texts and how they are adapted to an online context. The final chapter (Chapter 5) presents conclusions about how the analyses overall represent examples of participatory learning practices that expand our understanding of 21st century learning. Finally, the chapter offers theoretical and practical implications, reflections on lessons learned, and suggestions for future research. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. Curriculum and Instruction 2012

abstract: The present study explored the use of augmented reality (AR) technology to support cognitive modeling in an art-based learning environment. The AR application used in this study made visible the thought processes and observational techniques of art experts for the learning benefit of novices through digital annotations, overlays, and side-by-side comparisons that when viewed on mobile device appear directly on works of art. Using a 2 x 3 factorial design, this study compared learner outcomes and motivation across technologies (audio-only, video, AR) and groupings (individuals, dyads) with 182 undergraduate and graduate students who were self-identified art novices. Learner outcomes were measured by post-activity spoken responses to a painting reproduction with the pre-activity response as a moderating variable. Motivation was measured by the sum score of a reduced version of the Instructional Materials Motivational Survey (IMMS), accounting for attention, relevance, confidence, and satisfaction, with total time spent in learning activity as the moderating variable. Information on participant demographics, technology usage, and art experience was also collected. Participants were randomly assigned to one of six conditions that differed by technology and grouping before completing a learning activity where they viewed four high-resolution, printed-to-scale painting reproductions in a gallery-like setting while listening to audio-recorded conversations of two experts discussing the actual paintings. All participants listened to expert conversations but the video and AR conditions received visual supports via mobile device. Though no main effects were found for technology or groupings, findings did include statistically significant higher learner outcomes in the elements of design subscale (characteristics most represented by the visual supports of the AR application) than the audio-only conditions. When participants saw digital representations of line, shape, and color directly on the paintings, they were more likely to identify those same features in the post-activity painting. Seeing what the experts see, in a situated environment, resulted in evidence that participants began to view paintings in a manner similar to the experts. This is evidence of the value of the temporal and spatial contiguity afforded by AR in cognitive modeling learning environments. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Educational Technology 2016