Multimedia and E-Content Trends

Peter A. Bruck (Ed.) Multimedia and E-Content Trends

VIEWEG+TEUBNER RESEARCH Smart Media und Applications Research Herausgeber: Prof. Dr. Peter A. Bruck

Peter A. Bruck (Ed.)

Multimedia and E-Content Trends Implications for Academia

VIEWEG+TEUBNER RESEARCH

Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available in the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de.

1st Edition 2008 All rights reserved © Vieweg+Teubner | GWV Fachverlage GmbH, Wiesbaden 2008 Readers: Christel A. Roß | Anita Wilke Vieweg+Teubner is part of the specialist publishing group Springer Science+Business Media. www.viewegteubner.de No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the copyright holder. Registered and/or industrial names, trade names, trade descriptions etc. cited in this publication are part of the law for trade-mark protection and may not be used free in any form or by any means even if this is not specifically marked. Cover design: KünkelLopka Medienentwicklung, Heidelberg Printing company: STRAUSS GmbH, Mörlenbach Printed on acid-free paper Printed in Germany ISBN 978-3-8348-0754-0

Preface This book contains a selection of papers and presentations from the 6th EADiM Academic Network Conference held in Graz in November 2007. The Academic Network originates from the assessment process of the EUROPRIX Multimedia Awards. Many enthusiastic teachers and instructors have encouraged their students and graduates to take part in this competition with their final projects or first products in terms of innovation and added value for users. The network was formally established in 2002 by instructors of award-winning interactive e-content projects. Participants in the network share an interest in identifying successful approaches in teaching and in optimizing their teaching methods. The network has started off a European masters program and a number of other cooperation projects. The Academic Network’s annual conference provides a forum for the exchange of latest experiences, it is a meeting place for nominees and winners from the EUROPRIX Multimedia Awards, and it reflects on the development of e-content technology and industry. Academics, instructors, and professors from all parts of Europe present their new approaches to successful and effective teaching. They discuss methods on how teaching models can better meet the requirements of companies and industry at large. Discussions have been raised how academia can come up to the rapid development of the ICT industries and the fast change of platforms for which content is needed. This book provides a good overview of the range of issues addressed and the work done by the academics associated with EUROPRIX. It is also meant to contribute to the development of teaching models and methods to keep track with the development of IT technologies. Graduates from departments for interactive media will benefit from these developments and become the future content creators of these technologies. The approach of using such IT technologies (mobile, interactive storytelling) for teaching and to transport learning content easily and comprehensively to the students is of further interest. In that sense academia uses the available tools to support learning, and in doing so it seeks to promote the content creation for these applications and devices.

VI

Preface

The books includes papers from the following conference panels: • Augmented Realities and Smart Interfaces • Mobile Location Based Applications • The Mobile Content Paradigm • Current Mega Trends for e-Content Development • Teaching Models – Expectations to Academia and How They Could be Addressed. We invite all readers to join the network and the next conferences. All those instructors, teachers, professors, and tutors are invited who can contribute to the aforementioned discussions and wish to join the circle for the exchange of experiences or to seek new instruments for the effective and successful teaching with interactive media. Please check current information at: www.academics.europrix.org. We would like to thank Melissa Lee Price, the past Chair of the Academic Network during the period covered by this book, for her enthusiasm and ideas which she has brought to the network over and over again. We would also like to thank Rodica Mocan and Emin Dogan Aydin, Chair and Vice Chair of the current period, for their active contribution to the network and their willingness to strengthen the community, follow its goals, and prepare the next conference. We are grateful to Jak Boumans and Cai Melakoski, our colleagues in EADiM, for their support and all the work they do to prepare the conferences and to keep EADiM alive and developing. Without them neither the Academic Network nor this book would exist.

Peter A. Bruck and Jana Egger

Content Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

V

Introduction: The Technological and Economic Dynamics of the Multimedia Content Industry Peter A. Bruck . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

1

A Augmented Realities and Smart Interfaces TangibleCubes – Implementation of Tangible User Interfaces through the Usage of Microcontroller and Sensor Technology Stephan Setscheny . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

5

Investigation on the Relationships among Media Characteristics, Presence, Flow, and Learning Effects in Augmented Reality Based Learning Kye Bokyung . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

21

Visualization of Machine-Aided Measurements of People Counts in Different Infrastructures Christoph Perhab . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

39

B Mobile Location Based Applications Pushing Location Based Games Further – How to Gain End User Suitability Andreas Jakl, Christoph Grün, Jens Krösche and Stephan A. Drab . . . . . . . .

59

Mobile Game Based Learning: Designing a Mobile Location Based Game Sandra Schadenbauer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

73

Thessaloniki’s City Guide: a Tourist Site for Handheld Devices Niki Theodorou . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

89

C The Mobile Content Paradigm The Mobile Paradigm for Content Development Chris Bennewith and Richard Vickers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101

VIII

Content

The Complexities of Developing Accessible Web Content For Mobile Devices Richard Hancock . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111

D Current Mega Trends in e-Content Creation Teen Appeal – Touching the Moving Point Christina Handford . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117 Happiness and the Family 2.0 Paradigm Rodica Mocan and Stefana Racorean . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127 Aesthetics as an Attribute to Usability: a Critique of (Some) Previous Works Raphael Kominis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137

E Teaching Models Is it Possible to Conciliate “e-Learning”, “Learning By Doing” and “Cross Cultural” Approaches When Learning New Technologies? Carina Roels and Alain Gourdain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147 Events as Organisational Stories: an Event Based Approach for Learning Media Production Tomi Numento and Pekka Uotila . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167 The Learning Effectiveness of Cross-Discipline Collaboration Within a Media Production BA Project Mik Parsons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179

About the Authors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191

Introduction: the Technological and Economic Dynamics of the Multimedia Content Industry Peter A. Bruck, Austria Technology liquefies business models Multimedia content production is no easy business. The technological spiral of innovation is continuously changing the value chains and business models. While this might be true for many sectors of the ICT industry, it is particularly relevant for those who deal with creative contents and innovative applications. Every new wave of innovation in technology has an immediate impact on the value chain by shortening all material production and distribution cycles and stretching the creative and design cycles. The effects can be clearly seen even in the hardware industry when one looks at the previous successes and recent struggles of Dell and the demise of the old, hardware selling IBM and its re-engineering as an IT integrator and service company. It can also be demonstrated for the software industry where the changes in the cycle of software development are fast paced. The digital interactive content industry appears, however, to be the sector even more affected when it comes to consequences of the innovation spiral. Being the top layer of the information and communication technology system, the content industry is the mainly unasked recipient of innovation from the network layer, the hardware layer and the software layer. Innovations for the content layer do not come in stages; rather, they are continuous, multiplying each other in effects and creating a fluid base for producers, creators and designers. The networks are transmitting faster, platforms are converging, software more computational intensive, applications more virtual reality. The ubiquity of multimedia is today already a fact in most European countries and its effects will deepen in the years to come. Nonetheless, there might be some reassurance on the horizon. The convergence of networks and rapid diffusion of high-speed broadband and the market advent of 3G mobile services will shift attention in all ICT sectors from provision of connectivity and the sale of devices towards content and applications that promise new business opportunities, growth and employment. A new era of demand has the potential to give a significant boost to the digital economy. The potential for digital content growth is thus quite high and growth might only just beginning. Demand for content from consumers and intermediaries exploit-

2

Peter A. Bruck

ing the potential of multiple content delivery channels is extending and supplanting infrastructure push as a major driver. Wire line broadband and mobile high speed connections have to be considered disruptive technologies. They are challenging established business models while creating important development opportunities in many sectors. Mobile content and applications will be major drivers of mobile telecommunication services and content industry revenues in developed countries. Games will be a key application sector for wire line and wireless, other e-content areas will follow. The relationships between content originators and final users are changing, intermediaries are being created or replaced, and attitudes to content ownership and acquisition are changing. User generated contents are a true revolution not just in terms of the development of the media but also in terms of the broader organisation of society. The technologies which enable virtually all citizens of a European country to publish in text, image and sound have brought about a new area for political and economic relations. For the content industry and its professionals, these developments pose enormous challenges and require them to sharpen their roles in the social organisation of information provision and knowledge creation. Many aspects of their work have become redundant or are not any longer being paid for due to the advances in user generation of content and the flood of blogs, information sharing sites and social software platforms. However, complete disintermediation has its clear limits in the value add for instance of editorial selection and commentary or the success of proprietary solutions due to their leadership in technology and service. Rather, the experience of the last three years shows that the major brands from media (in Austria: ORF, Standard), telecom industries (in Europe: Vodafone live, T-zones) or IT (Apple music) systematically increase their market share in paid, legal contents while universities, cultural and government institutions dominate the free access market. Industry ground shifts challenge Academia’s teaching canon The above discussed developments add up to significant shifts in the grounding not only of the economic and business side of digital content industry. The changes affect as well all teaching and research in universities and colleges. Some key issues are worth recounting at the beginning of this book: Wiki Movement: Users are challenging established ownership and distribution arrangements, whether through P2P networks or open access/open archive publishing conventions, or through new mass distribution and inter-community trading. Network availability and broadband applications create possibilities for new

Introduction

3

forms of expression by users. See the success of Wikipedia and currently 256 language versions where users are the content creators for entire encyclopaedias. Different sectors react differently: Scientific, technical and medical publishing has gone towards full digitisation and digital delivery while lifestyle magazines are staying largely print. In the games sector a new on-line segment multiplayer has developed where multiplayer involvement points to entirely new intensities and content formats. Intellectual property and copying issues remain crucial. Three modes of pay: Internet content is seen widely as having to be free of charge. Digital media subscription, pay per use/view and access charges remain the key ways for generating revenues. Companies survive if they are able to generate positive revenue feedback cycles when growing numbers of paying users foster the marketing, development, and distribution of online content and services, which in turn might draw more paying users. Content Gap and Economic Issues: The creative ICT applications and digital content industries are challenged to adapt to broadband, both mobile and fixed; to co-operate and change roles among value chain players (in particular between content owners, network operators, Internet service providers, hardware and consumer electronics suppliers); to fight digital piracy and deal with the role of file-sharing. Major concerns are the role of intellectual property in protecting ownership in both products and services, the enforcement of copyright in a digital world, defining and monitoring fair use and the boundaries of legitimate use, and the interaction between competition law and copyright; to create a regime for digital rights management and customer authentication; to put into place efficient payment methods (especially for micro-payments). . Content Gap and SMEs: Operating in the new interactive content industries is highly complex and challenging: legal issues are critical, the definition of software and application products complex and licensing negotiations often more lengthy and complicated due to intricate technical issues and differing legal regimes across platforms and countries. In addition, oligopolistic content markets with a strong role of market leaders, exclusive access to content or networks (network access gatekeepers) make it very difficult if not impossible for SMEs to stay in the market in the longer run and deploy broadband applications and content. Financing Cycles: The climate for private investment in the creative ICTs is acyclical to the technological advance: Three to five years ago money was readily available, but the technology mostly narrowband; today rich media (DVDOffline) and broadband (Online and Mobile) can deliver new contents and innovative services, but many investors have been burnt five to seven years ago. Often, investment in digital content and digital delivery has to be sustained by

4

Peter A. Bruck

margins derived from traditional market activity. Only few successful new ways of generating revenue have emerged. Moore’s Law is working to increase Content Gap: Performance increases and productivity gains also increase functionalities and reduce prices for users. Often, these gains require structural changes in content creation and delivery industries. On the supply side the new generations of ICTs are leading to changes in the market structure of telecommunications, information services and content firms. Essentially, all the players must reinvent themselves. Network operators need to generate revenue to support investment in next-generation networks and replace loss of traditional business (see: Telecoms around Europe have started TV via ADSL in the last years -> Triple Play). For intermediaries, the market churn is very high and there are few winners. Market complexities increase: New sets of business activities and new roles emerge in the creative ICT and content industry: content design and aggregation, marketing of publishing offers, rights acquisition / management, packaging and distributing content, content protection, management of emerging publishing services, design and sale of interactive advertisement spaces, profiling users, integrated billing management, payment management, customer relation management, security/control services, access management. In order to successfully manage multiple roles and the often combined but then again separate activities a critical size of company or organisation is required. They involve a high degree of co-ordination as well as competition along value chains. Politics is simple: In many countries, public policies do not keep up with the changes in technologies and markets. They adjust individual policies and the regulatory environment sufficiently quickly for smaller market players. However, it is often the case that neither speed nor direction have been recognised and measured and that too little economic analysis is available for networked and traditional businesses in content sectors. Key factors: Governments and their agencies have to recognise their role as content creators and model users, of the importance of procurement and the establishment of best practice know-how and guidelines (see: www.EUROPRIX.org; World Summit Award www.wsis-award.org). Governments have to cooperate with industry to speed up the creation of infrastructures for and the public acceptance of micro-payment systems, electronic signatures, and authentication. They have to counteract piracy and assist in the clarification of use rights along content creation. Finally, governments should consider supporting and investing in the creation of content clusters and a digital content funding for all those areas where there is a significant public interest (health, education, cultural identity).

A

Augmented Realities and Smart Interfaces

TangibleCubes - Implementation of Tangible User Interfaces through the Usage of Microcontroller and Sensor Technology Stephan Setscheny, Austria Abstract The interaction between human beings and technology builds a central aspect in human life. The most common form of this human-technology interface is the graphical user interface which is controlled through the mouse and the keyboard. In consequence of continuous miniaturization and the increasing performance of microcontrollers and sensors for the detection of human interactions, developers receive new possibilities for realising innovative interfaces. As far as this movement is concerned, the relevance of computers in the common sense and graphical user interfaces is decreasing. Especially in the area of ubiquitous computing and the interaction through tangible user interfaces a highly impact of this technical evolution can be seen. Apart from this, tangible and experience able interaction offers users the possibility of an interactive and intuitive method for controlling technical objects. The implementation of microcontrollers for control functions and sensors enables the realisation of these experience able interfaces. Besides the theories about tangible user interfaces, the consideration about sensors and the Arduino platform builds a main aspect of this work. As a result, a practical realisation of this theoretical point of view illustrates the possibilities of the integration of sensors and microcontrollers in technical input devices. A theoretical and practical evaluation of various sensors and their qualification as human-technology interfaces is based on this realisation. The result of this evaluation was the TangibleCubes application, which integrates a tangible interaction concept.

1 Introduction The interaction between humans and computers is affected by the mouse and the keyboard as most usual input devices and the graphic user surface as the output medium. Because of the need to open new interaction possibilities to users, the tangible interaction technology gains in importance.

6

Stephan Setscheny

This more intuitive human technique interaction by tangible user interface is made possible by the use of sensors, actuators and microcontrollers, which enable a detection and interpretation of human actions. The areas of tangible user interface, microcontroller and sensor technology raise different questions. In the context of this thesis following questions are treated: •

What differentiates the tangible user interface from conventional graphical interfaces?

•

Which possibilities are offered by the realisation of new interaction interfaces through the microcontroller technology?

•

Which role do sensors play within a realisation of a human technique interaction?

In order to answer these questions the paper gives a short introduction about the human technology interaction by the use of tangible user interfaces and an overview about the Arduino platform, which is the essential element in the developed application. The main content of this paper focuses on the TangibleCubes application. This application has been realised in context of a diploma thesis and shows an example of an intuitive tangible user interface. This interface exists of two physical cubes, which contain several sensors and a central microcontroller for detecting human interactions. These uncommon interactions can be placed by the user through rotating and moving the cube. As the development includes two physical cubes the TangibleCubes application shows an intuitive way of human and/or group computer interaction. The prototype of this application and the implemented interaction functionalities are explained in the main part of this paper.

2 Related Work Researches have shown that in the areas of tangible user interfaces and input devices, which are based on the rotation of cubes, comparable developments can be identified. 2.1 Telekom Austria Cube A design study in 2007 was conducted by the Research Studios Austria in cooperation with the Telekom Austria. The result of this study was the Telekom Austria Cube. The cube is a new variant of a remote control. The usual functions of a classical remote control (On/Off, volume regulation, transmitter choice as well as portal navigation) are implemented through intuitive movements of the cube, such as rotation, movement and vibrating. The aim of this study was to develop an intui-

Tangible Cubes

7

tive control element for most household and entertainment devices and to realise this device in the purpose of Pervasive Computing. 2.2 ToolStone The ToolStone forms a cordless physical input device, developed by June Rekimoto andEduardo Sciammarella. With this input device the user is able to select software tools by changing the physical position of the device. This physical input device was developed in order to extend the reduced function range of the mouse but it should not displace it. The background is that inefficient development is accelerated by the constantly growing complexity of program products and the variety of menus and available tools for development. To get rid of this problem the ToolStone shifts these visual selection and marking tools into the physical area of manipulation.

3 HCI with Tangible User Interfaces Tangible user interface serve to more intuitive and more productive interaction between users and computers. Tangible user faces make this possible by an interaction with physical objects. Further digital information is represented in a physical form, so that the separation between input device and representation is waived. These physical objects and artefacts implements the parts of input and output in one object. Ullmer and Ishii define the expression “tangible user interfaces”:„Tangible interfaces give physical form to digital information, employing physical artefacts both as representations and controls for computational media.” In comparison to this, the graphical interfaces make a fundamental distinction between “input devices,” such as the keyboard and mouse, as controls, and graphical “output devices,” such as monitors and head-mounted displays, as portals for representations facilitating human interaction with computational systems. Tangible interfaces, in the tradition of the abacus, explore the conceptual space opened by the elimination of this distinction.

4 Arduino Platform Arduino is an open-source electronics prototyping platform based on flexible, easy-to-use hardware and software. It is intended for artists, designers, hobbyists, and anyone interested in creating interactive objects or environments. Arduino can sense the environment by receiving input from a variety of sensors and can affect its surroundings by controlling lights, motors and other actuators. The microcontroller on the board is programmed using the Arduino programming language (based on Wiring) and the Arduino development environment (based

8

Stephan Setscheny

on Processing). Arduino projects can be stand-alone or they can communicate with software that is running on a computer (e.g. Flash, Processing,MaxMSP). The practical prototype that was developed is based on this platform. Therefore the Arduino version Arduino BT is integrated in the input devices to fulfill central control and communication tasks. The Arduino BT is an Arduino board with an Atmel168 microcontroller and a built-in bluetooth module that enables a wireless communication. Figure 1 illustrates the Arduino BT board, which is integrated in the input devices of the TangibleCubes prototype.

Figure 1: Arduino BT Board [7]

5 Tangible Cubes Application In the context of this thesis a tangibles user interface, which makes it possible to control a software application through direct interaction with physical cubes, was developed. The aim of this tangible interaction technology was to create an intuitive input device, which gets along without the use of a mouse pointer and

Tangible Cubes

9

which is totally controlled by movements of two physical cubes. Apart from the characteristic of the cubes as tangible interaction devices, these cubes form physical containers for carrying digital files, which are administered on a central server. The motivation for its functionality as data containers is founded in the fact, that music, picture and film files are stored on computer systems, although people duplicate these files on more mobile sources as for instance CDs and DVDs. The example of the TangibleCubes tries to go around this unnecessary duplication of files, by serving them just as carriers of references to these centrally saved files.The defined goal of this practice realisation was the development of a device, which unites both an intuitive, tangible input device and the characteristic as storage medium. In this case the TangibleCubes application should demonstrate the possibilities for new input devices through the integration of microcontrollers and advanced sensor technology. 5.1 System Overview The system contains two physical cubes with integrated control electronics, which are connected to a desktop computer over Bluetooth. The software on the computer makes the interpretation of user interactions possible. Beside this it includes an administrative and a playing mode and enables to store a ID reference of the media files on the cube. The server side file management takes place over a MySQL data base, which administers file information and file references. Figure 2 illustrates the communication ways of the system.

Figure 2: System overview

10

Stephan Setscheny

5.2 Software design For the successful realisation of the TagnibleCubes application it was necessary to program the Atmel168 microcontroller, which is integrated in the Arduino platform, with a hardware near programming language. Besides this, the realisation of an example application for the data exchange and the data replay at the medium computer was necessary. Further more, the connection establishment and data exchange over Bluetooth between the cubes and the software running on the media computer represented a critical component during the development of the application.

5.2.1

Media Computer Software

The software running on the media computer was developed with the Macromedia Flash 8 authoring environment and builds a central part in the functionality of the application. This software adopts the connection establishment to the individual cubes as well as the entire interpretation and the processing of the detailed sensor data which is measured from the cube interaction. Apart from the sensor data interpretation the supply of an administrative interface between the connected cubes, the server-based data storage and the possibility of the medium replay are central tasks of the software.

5.2.2

Microcontroller Software

Programming the software running on the microcontroller and planning the routines forms the second emphasis during the software-technical application development. The microcontroller that is integrated in the cube and the program running on it serves on the one hand as transmission interface to the software of the medium computer, as for example during the transmission of the sensor data, and on the other hand as a direct signal interpretation and control element.

5.3 Hardware Design Apart from the software part the hardware realisation builds another focus in the development process. The challenge was to develop two hardware input devices, which enable a simultaneous Bluetooth connection with the media computer and the possibility of a simultaneously control of the program. This realisation of the practical example contains the draft and the construction of two hardware cubes and the implemented electronics circuits. The technical hard of the electronic

Tangible Cubes

11

was realised through the microcontroller Arduino BT board, which allows a fast development of prototypes.

Figure 3: Design of the cubes

With the technical realisation to enable the interaction and feedback possibilities the followingcomponents with a value of 180.48 Euros were integrated into the cube: • Arduino BT board (microcontroller) • Accelerometer sensor (detecting of inclination and vibration) • Tilting sensor (180 degree interaction) • Light resistance (measurement of luminous intensity) • Engine with force weight (vibration feedback) • 8-bit LCD (display for status feedback) • LED - red, green, blue (signal lights and ambient lighting)

Figure 4: T-module with integrated electric circuit

12

Stephan Setscheny

5.4 Interaction Human computer interaction includes input and output methods. The TangibleCubes application integrates a tangible interaction concept and various kinds of feedback methods. The following chapter gives an overview about the realised interaction options.

5.4.1

Input methods

The application works through innovative tangible input devices. These input devises are formed by two physical cubes, which enable the user to interact with a GUI through different input methods. These methods are explained in this section.

5.4.1.1

Rotation and angle of inclination

The rotation and the angle of inclination along the x and y axis of the cube forms the most important input functionality. In principle a direction-independent inclination recognition is possible by the implemented accelerometer sensor. For the realised application only a recognition of inclination along the axis x and y was integrated, as this recognition for the application control is sufficient. This input by the measurement of the angle of inclination serves as main navigation and control possibility. As the interaction was kept as intuitive as possible, either the x or the y axis as navigation direction and the other direction serves for controlling various elements and their interaction possibilities. As a result of not statically fixed direction on performing a navigation and/or a control function, their suitability depends on the viewed interacting direction. By slopes of the inclination along the y axis the user can change between the different control elements in this application mode. During inclination of the cube along the x axis the active data list can be paged through.

Tangible Cubes

13

Figure 5: Rotation and angle of inclination with detection borders

Beside control elements with the descriptive inclination interaction, the software includes elements that are directly depending on the inclination degree of the cube. The volume bar of the player mode for example, sets the volume on 75 percent in case of a 45 degree inclination and a simultaneous strong pressure on the pressure detection area.

Figure 6: Volume control through the angle of inclination

14

5.4.1.2

Stephan Setscheny

Pressure sensitive button

The integration of a push-button actuator gives the user the possibility by manipulation of the pressure area to navigate through the application and to control elements. The integration of such an additional input mode was necessary for the activation of rotation and angle of inclination functionality of the application. This input mode avoids inadvertently interactions by just carrying or picking up the cube. The interaction distinguishes between two possible states of the pressure area. In order to be able to interact with the software, the user must exert a light pressure on the detecting surface so that the inclination recognition gets accessible. The interaction with some elements of the application needs stronger pressure on the detection area, which is the second state. Elements that require this pressure state are for example the file copy function and the volume bar.

Figure 7: Interaction through pressure activation

5.4.1.3

180 degree rotation

A cube rotation of 180 degrees along its y axis makes it possible to change between data administration mode and player mode.The current adjustment of the cube is measured by a digital tilting sensor. In case of a straight position this sensor returns the value 1 volt, and thus the data processing mode. Otherwise it returns 0 Volt and the software shows the player mode.

Tangible Cubes

15

Figure 8: 180 degree rotation

5.4.1.4

Agitation

The third interaction possibility forms the strong agitation of the cube. The software reacts on this interaction by deleting song references from the represented lists in the data administration mode. Detecting, whether the physical cube is shacked along the y axis by the user, is similar to the inclination recognition, realised by the usage of the accelerometer sensor. The measurement takes place via counting of excursions of the axle sensor along its y axis. This is made possible by the G-forces, which result from acceleration and stopping the cube with the integrated sensor.

Figure 9: Agitation interaction and detection borders

5.4.2

Feedback methods

The TangibleCubes application implements different techniques for giving feedback to user. These techniques use the physical as well as the digital way for the representation of information.

16

5.4.2.1

Stephan Setscheny

Graphical user Interface

The graphic software feedback with the GUI of the medium computer is the only expenditure, which is not directly indicated to the user at the cube. This software forms the most important feedback component of the application in regard to the inclination and rotation input. 5.4.2.2

Vibration

The haptic feedback is realised by the implementation of a vibration motor in the cube. The TangibleCubes application, comparable to the usual vibration alarm that signals calls on mobile phones, uses the feedback of the vibration to announce changes of the connecting status.

5.4.2.3

Light

The light based feedback is divided into two parts. On the one hand there are the signal lights with the colours red and green and on the other hand there is the blue ambient background light. The red signal light which is integrated into the cube strengthens the vibration feedback by a visual feedback component. Beside the red LED a green LED is integrated into the cube, which signals the user the manipulation of the pressure sensor and hence the availability of the inclination interaction.The blue ambient light should help the user to find the cubes in dark areas. This blue LED depends on the measurement of a light sensor, which is integrated into the cube. The integrated microcontroller interprets the measured strength of the ambient light and turns on the blue LED if necessary. 5.4.2.4

LCD-Display

The two-line LCD forms the second, digital representation beside the graphic user interface. The 16x2 sign matrix, which is available at the integrated display, signals the developed connections in the first line of the announcement and in the second line the up-to-date implemented functionality mode of the cube. 5.5 Further fields of usage Besides controlling media files the TangbileCubes application presents some further fields of usage, which are described beneath: 5.5.1

Control of household and entertainment media

Based on the technical extension of a direct Bluetooth connection between two or even more microcontroller a controlling of various Bluetooth household appliances or the control of televisions and other entertainment devices would be

Tangible Cubes

17

conceivable. Further more, the cubes could serve as carriers for configuration attitudes of these devices. 5.5.2

Emotional Computing

An interesting operational area would be the emotional computing conceivable by biotechnical or thermal technical sensor extensions for detecting emotions of the user. 5.5.3

3D interaction

The three-dimensional freedom, which the cube offers to the user, makes a more intuitive control of three-dimensional applications possible. Both, the control of 3D-authoring programs as well as the interaction in 3D-games are possible fields of usage.

6 Usability Tests To examine the usability of the implemented TangibleCubes application and the implemented tangible interaction methods, usability tests were organised. The aim of the tests was to find answers for the following questions: •

Do the integrated interaction possibilities form an intuitive and understandable input device?

•

Does existing knowledge in the area of the information technology affect the way of the interaction?

•

How far does the familiarity with the application and the system influence the users by their efficiency in fulfilling tasks?

•

Which hardware- and software-technical improvements can be made?

6.1 Test method The performed test method was a Co-Discovery test, with groups of two persons. This methodology is similar to the Thinking Aloud test, except that it is performed with more than one person. The test was arranged with three groups, which distinguish from each other by their amount of previous knowledge about information technology and the interaction functionalities of the TangibleCubes application. 6.2 Results The evaluation of the accomplished questionings, the logging and the video recording showed both problems and possibilities for improvement and positive factors of this innovative input technique.

18

6.2.1

Stephan Setscheny

Hardware design

With the concluding questioning both the size of the cube with an evaluation of 2.67 out of 5 points and the weight of the cube with the average of 3.33 points were criticized. From the questioning an optimal size of the physical cube results with a side length of 65mm, whereby these data is naturally depending on the individual hand size. 6.2.2

Interaction functionalities

With an average evaluation of over 4 out of 5 points, the integrated possibilities to control the program were seen positively. In particular the 180 degree rotation for changing between the modes and the vibration function for the deletion of unwanted files did not represent any problems for the tested persons. The configured sensitivity was a critical point in case of the inclination interaction but in general this was seen positively. At the beginning the interaction activation over exercising a light pressure on the pressure area produced little confusion. In the course of the tasks this interaction activation became a natural interaction for the users. The interaction over exercising a strong pressure on the pressure area can be seen as problematic for first time users as well as for those who have experiences in information technology. This prevents first time users from partly fulfil some tasks. Despite this, the task fulfilment was no problem for users with basic knowledge skills in the interaction functionalities. 6.2.3

Feedback methods

The feedback possibilities of the application were evaluated differently. It became evident that physical feedback functionalities like the vibration and the light signals in contrast to the common digital functionalities, as the LCD display and the three-dimensional cube representation of the software, were assessed more positively. This evaluation illustrates the meaning and the important role, which the physical feedback method has in the realisation of input devices.

7 Conclusion The implementation of new tangible input devices through the usage of the microcontroller and sensor technology was the goal defined at the beginning of this thesis. In case of this, the focus was on the possibilities for interfaces between human and technology and the associated bidirectional interaction. In context of this viewpoint the subsection of the tangible user interface was an important point of view which was illustrated with examples of related applications. During the theoretical part the bases of the Arduino platform microcontroller tech-

Tangible Cubes

19

nology and the human technology interaction which were necessary for the realisation of such input devices were described. Based on this theoretical consideration the example application TangibleCubes was realised on basis of the open source platform Arduino. By this application an experienceable input device and storage medium was created, which unites the typical characteristics of tangible user interface and different feedback techniques. Usability tests examined this example application and the integrated interaction possibility on their applicableness as a human technology interface. According to the results of the usability tests, as well as by the theoretical and practical treatment of the subject the conclusion is that the intensified implementation of microcontrollers and sensors enables new possibilities for interaction interfaces. It can be seen that by the advancements in the field of sensor technology new intuitive and interactive interaction methods can be realised. In contrast to these methods common input devices are mostly based on simple buttons and switches. The implemented application of the TangibleCubes illustrates such an innovative interaction interface between humans and technology on basis of a prototype.

References Arduino Homepage. Guide to Arduino;04.06.2007 Arduino Homepage. ArduinoBT: Information about the Arduino BT; http://www.arduino.cc/en/Guide/ArduinoBT; 06.06.2007 pcb Europe Homepage. Arduino BT; http://pcbeurope.net/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=29&products_id=52&osC sid=189c984a2d25cda feb04d741dc9ed1ac; 09.06.200 Rekimoto J.; Sciammarella E.: ToolStone: Effective Use of the Physical Manipulation, Vocabularies of Input Devices. Sony Computer Science Laboratories 2000 Sharlin E.; Watson B.; Kitamura Y.; Kishino F.; Itoh Y.: On tangible user interfaces, humans and spatiality. In: Personal and Ubiquitous Computing, Volume 8, pp. 338-346. 2004 Telekom Austria Cube: Pressekonferenz; http://wai.telekom.at/Content.Node/innovation/pr-cube-ferscha.pdf; 09.05.2007 Ullmer B.; Ishii H.: Emerging frameworks for tangible user interfaces. In: IBM SYSTEMS JOURNAL, Volume 39, pp. 915-931. 2000

Investigation on the Relationships among Media Characteristics, Presence, Flow, and Learning Effects in Augmented Reality Based Learning Kye Bokyung, Republic of Korea

Abstract This study’s goal is to examine which factors of augmented reality (AR), the fruit of future technologies, help to improve learning effects and reveal the relationships of those factors. To that end, we studied preceding researches and selected five factors which can influence learning effects in augmented reality based learning. We discovered the effectiveness structure of media utilization in augmented reality based learning through investigating relations of those factors. The five factors selected were: sensory immersion, navigation, manipulation, presence, and flow. A questionnaire was made based on these research questions and a survey was conducted on 290 fifth graders at two elementary schools. A total of 272 cases were examined for this study (incomplete and untrustworthy questionnaires were excluded) and analyzed using a structural equation model. The results showed that with the exception of navigation, all the factors such as sensory immersion, manipulation, presence, and flow had meaningful influence on satisfaction, knowledge & understanding, and learning effects of application. In particular, manipulation factor was proved to have a direct effect on satisfaction and the application aspect of learning effects, indicating that strengthening manipulation through the tangible interface of augmented reality can be an important factor in learning satisfaction and application fields. In addition, sensory immersion was proved to have a meaningful influence on immersion in learning and learning effects. In terms of learning effects, application of augmented reality media was shown to have more influence on application factors than on knowledge & understanding. Based on such study results, we propose the following tasks

1 Introduction Media has always been an object of interest even before the emergence of advanced types of media, and efforts have been continuously made to link media

22

Kye Bokyung

with education. Thanks to the development of computer technology, the fundamental question of, “Will media improve education capabilities?” has now expanded into a different question: “How will technology change education?”(Banathy, 1991: Reigeluth, 1991). The main area of concern for media researchers, however, still lies in the effectiveness of teaching media(Kim Youngsoo, et al., 2006; Na Ilju, 1994). Despite expectations that media can raise the interest or attention of learners by providing a variety of information, it is difficult to find specific studies examining how media improves learning effects or which features of media are related to learning activities. This study’s goal is to examine which factors of augmented reality (AR), the fruit of future technologies, help to improve learning effects and reveal the relationships of those factors. This study examines the relations of those factors based on the following aspects. First, this study, by separating sensory immersion through audio-visual effects from flow, was to examine whether augmented reality’s sensory immersion effect would lead to actual immersion in learning contents and courses and ultimately, to learning effects. Second, in terms of the cognitive aspect of learning effects, we separated acquisition of knowledge from understanding & application for this study. augmented reality technology, which tends to enhance circumstances and context through the combination of reality and virtual reality, is expected to have an effect not only on acquisition and understanding of simple concepts, but also on knowledge application by expanding the scope of learning (Ryu Jihyeon, et al., 2006). Therefore, this study examined whether augmented reality based learning can be meaningfully utilized not in the acquisition of decontextualized knowledge, but in an actual context of knowledge application.

2 Theoretical Background 2.1 Augmented Reality Augmented reality (AR) is a technology that provides a more advanced sense of absorption and reality for users by seamlessly combining the real world with virtual world in real time (Azuma, 1997). Both virtual reality and augmented reality are based on virtuality. Augmented reality is located in the middle, between reality such as TV monitors, and virtual reality, which allows users to become immersed in a computer-created virtual location. Augmented reality also increases a sense of reality by adding virtual information to the user's real environment. Augmented reality differs from virtual reality technology (which completely replaces a real environment with a virtual reality) in that it maintains the

Augmented Reality Based Learning

23

information of the user's real environment. Figure 1 displays the position of augmented reality on the continuum between real and virtual environments. Since Mark Weiser's published article on visions of “Ubiquitous Computing” in 1991, the world has been rapidly changing its direction toward a new paradigm that makes technology invisible. In order for computers to become ubiquitous and invisible, the union between the physical environment and digital information is essential along with a tangible manipulation method that is superior to the existing graphic user interface (GUI) (Ishii & Ullmer, 1997). Augmented reality is a three-dimensional medium which supports such a tangible interface and enables seamless interaction between people and information. 2.2 Presence Marvin Minsky, a professor of artificial intelligence at MIT, was the first scholar to show an interest in presence theory (1979). The definition of presence varies depending on researchers, but it can be divided into the following two parts with a perceptual concept as its common basis. The first part is a condition in which people do not recognize the existence of media when something is presented through the given media. People who do not recognize the media itself when watching TV or movies are a case in point. The second part is a sense of "being there", in which people feel as though they are together with the media even when they are somewhere else. Presence is diversely classified according to scholars. Heeter (1992) classified presence into these three aspects, positing a subjective personal presence, social presence, and environmental presence. He argued that subjective personal presence was important given that recognizing one’s self is a primary issue not only in the real world but also in virtual reality. He also argued that social presence was a necessary next stage, enabling people to recognize the existence of others, and, for the final stage, environment presence of virtual reality, which enables people to react as if they were in the real world, enhances presence. This study, based on these discussions about presence, defines presence as a cognitive condition in which people in an augmented reality environment feel virtual objects in a real world. In contrast, presence in virtual reality means a cognitive condition in which people feel that “I am in a virtual reality.” This differs from the presence of augmented reality, in which people actually feel that “there are virtual objects in the real world where I am.” 2.3 Flow If some factors such as technologies or challenges reach a certain level as people are engaged in various activities in their daily lives, people become engrossed in them. Flow is the condition in which people feel the present experience as an

24

Kye Bokyung

optimum experience of complete absorption. This concept was first presented in a paper titled, “Beyond Boredom and Anxiety” written by Csikszentmihalyi in 1975. He argued that absorption is a psychological and physical energization that people feel when they are completely absorbed in their activities. He also maintained that when a difficult task is combined with high quality competence, in-depth participation and optimal absorption are achieved, which is difficult to attain in the real world. Flow is a result of successive reactions stimulated by interactions, and it is essentially interesting and accompanies a complete loss of self-consciousness. Also, it is characterized by voluntary reinforcement (Novak & Hoffman, 1996). Flow has the following nine characteristics: (1) clear goals (2) immediate feedback (3) balance between challenge and skill level (4) concentration on the task at hand (5) action-awareness merging (6) loss of self-consciousness (7) altered sense of time (8) sense of control and (9) autotelic experience (Csikszentimihalyi, 1975). Csikszentimihalyi (1990) reorganized these nine aspects of flow and categorized them into four stages according to the passage of time: prelude to flow, threshold, experience, and result. Chen (1999) categorized these into the following five stages in his research about computer users. 2.4 Preceding researches and hypothetical concept models Studies on augmented reality have focused on technological approaches. The possibility of its application to diverse fields such as medical science, military and entertainment is being investigated on a laboratory level. However, few researches have proved augmented reality’s effectiveness through its adoption and utilization in the field of education given the fact that augmented reality has just recently been introduced. Therefore, this study examines preceding researches about virtual reality, which are the most similar to augmented reality in terms of media, as well as those on the web environment as a virtual space, and then analyzes the relations between related factors. Lavroff (1994) argued that Virtual Reality and augmented reality are media characterized by a strong presence based on virtuality, and that Virtual Reality has three characteristics (immersion, navigation, and manipulation) which determine presence. Immersion is not a feeling that participants feel when they observe something through a window. It is a feeling that they are actually experiencing a virtual world. This is, primarily, it is a function of hardware, highly dependent upon senses such as sight and hearing. Navigation is a condition in which participants can freely explore and interact in a cyber world created by computing technologies. The feeling of being able to freely walk around enables participants to feel as though the world is real. Manipulation, the third factor enhancing augmented reality system’s sense of reality, means the user's ability to

Augmented Reality Based Learning

25

manipulate the environment of virtual reality. Manipulation allows participants to open a virtual door or shoot a virtual enemy. While navigation is an interaction through which one can explore a virtual place on one’s own, manipulation is an interaction with objects as if they were in the real world, when participants can stimulate objects in virtual reality, such as moving, turning, and constructing them. Flauland (2002), Schubert et al. (1999), Sheridan (1992), and Slater & Wilbur (1995) have proved the influence of immersion, navigation and manipulation factors on presence through theoretical and exploratory researches. Strengthening presence in augmented reality based learning can create immersion in learning contents by enhancing the relationship between learning tasks and reality. Seo Haerim (2003), Koh Jaehyeok (2001), and Novak & Hoffman (1996) have proved that presence is an important factor in learning immersion. Although a large number of researches, including that of Larson (1988), have shown that presence is related to learning achievements, no research about augmented reality has been conducted. Webster, Trevino & Ryan (1993), Massimini & Carli (1988), Novak & Hoffman (1996), Kim Younghee, Kim Youngsoo (2006), Um Myeongyong et al. (2005), and Bricken & Byrun (1993) have proved that immersion had a positive influence on satisfaction levels through researches on web environment. And Larson (1998), Mayer (1978), Novak & Hoffman (1996), Kim Youngjin (2000), Baek Jaehyeon (2006), Park Seongik, Kim Yeonkyeong (2006), and Kim Heesu (2001) showed that learning immersion had a meaningful effect on the enhancement of understanding about learning contents. Also, Antonietti & Cantoia (2000), Gibson (1986), and Shim Gyuchul et al. (2003) have pointed out that encouraging learners who are utilizing Virtual Reality to conduct a high level of reasoning such as analysis and synthesizing had a meaningful influence on the application aspect of learning effects. These preceding researches indicate that augmented reality, as a new learning medium, can provide vivid learning experiences for learners not as an abstract symbol but through direct navigation and manipulation of three-dimensional materials. In addition, it is also expected to increase satisfaction levels in understanding and application abilities of learners by providing relevant learning contents and allowing learners to explore learning tasks. Figure 1. is the conceptual model of the relationship between variables which were selected based on theoretical background and on preceding researches of augmented reality based learning environment that were examined above.

26

Kye Bokyung

Figure 1. Concept Model Drawn from Preceding Researches

3 Research Methods This study was conducted on 290 fifth graders at two elementary schools in Gyeonggi province, where the school facilities and class environments were similar. A total of 272 questionnaires were analyzed after excluding the questionnaires of 4 absent students, 12 incomplete ones, and 2 untrustworthy ones. The program this study used was titled, “Journey of Water”, jointly developed by the Korea Education & Research Information Service(KERIS) and the digital experience center of Pohang University of Science and Technology. The "Journey of Water" program was designed for fifth graders and its contents were experiment activity type learning contents of tangible manipulation in which students could observe and experiment the circulation process of water including its evaporation, precipitation, and flowing. This study went through the process of designing a theoretical model through analyzing preceding researches, developing measuring tools, holding augmented reality based classes, conducting survey and achievement evaluations, and confirming a final model through the analysis of confirmatory factors and structural equation modeling. All the data obtained from the survey and achievement evaluation was processed using SPSS 12.0 for Windows, and AMOS 5.0 was used to verify a hypothetical model.

4 Research Results Confirmatory Factor Analysis(CFA) is a way to confirm a hypothesis model when researchers have knowledge about variables and factors (concepts) and theoretical background about them. This study used Maximum and Likelihood (ML), which supposes multivariate normality for confirmatory factor analysis, and evaluated fitness to check the optimum state of the structure concept and

Augmented Reality Based Learning

27

variable configuration. The fit index and its standard that were utilized for the result model were GFI (Goodness-of-Fit Index: over 0.9), AGFI (Adjusted Goodness-of-Fit Index: over 0.9), TLI (Tucker-Lewis Index: over 0.9), CFI (Comparative Fit Index: over 0.9), and RMSEA (Root Mean Square Error of Approximation: below 0.05). According to the first confirmatory factor analysis, most indexes exceeded the recommended standard (χ2=718.340, df=362, GFI=0.847, AGFI=0.816, TLI=0.904, CFI=0.914, RMSEA=0.060), showing that the overall fitness of the model was high. However, GFI, AGFI, RMSEA indexes fell short of the standard. Therefore, to exclude variables whose factor loading was less than 0.5 from the analysis, the following among factors were excluded one by one from the first measurement equation: NA1 among navigation factors, IM2 among sensory immersion, MA1 among manipulation factors, PR3 among presence factors, FL4 (specific feedback), FL7 (loss of self-consciousness), FL8 (loss of concept of time), and FL9 (self-purposive experience). After the measurement equation was modified in this manner, fit index of this equation changed to χ2=268.847, df=174, GFI=0.916, AGFI=0.900, TLI=0.962, CFI=0.968, RMSEA=0.045, an equation fitness superior to the first one, with improved indexes including GFI and AGFI. To verify the overall structure of the research model, the fitness of the model was analyzed with χ2 verification and fit index, as in the confirmatory factor analysis, and a significant result of χ2=318.086, df=217 was produced. And, according to the fit index evaluation result, the fit index was proved to be satisfactory with GFI=0.909 (recommended level is above 0.9), AGFI=0.885 (recommended level is above 0.9), TLI=0.963 (recommended level is above 0.9), CFI=0.968 (recommended level is above 0.9), RMSEA=0.041 (below 0.05 is good fitness, below 0.08 is reasonable fitness, below 0.1 is ordinary fitness). To improve the values of AGFI and NFI, which were somewhat lower than the recommended level, we explored an optimum model through the addition of free parameters. The results of exploration showed that the modification index of “manipulation satisfaction” was 24.479 and that of “manipulation application” was 11.419, both of which exceeded 10, a conservative standard, proving that there is room for modification in this model. Therefore, through the investigation of the theoretical background which could support these results, the routes that showed the direct effect of “manipulation- satisfaction” and “manipulation application” were added. The final model modified in this manner can be seen in Figure 2.

28

Kye Bokyung

Figure 2. Final model of the relationship between variables

As seen in Figure 2. among a total of eight hypothetical routes which were established in the beginning of the research, seven routes proved to be meaningful at the .001 level of significance, and one hypothetical route of manipulation>presence was proved not to have a meaningful influence at the .05 level of significance. In addition, new hypothetical routes (manipulation satisfaction, manipulation application) were added at the .001 and .01 level of significance, respectively. Based on this final model, for an analysis of the media utilization effectiveness model in an augmented reality based learning environment, the regression coefficient, standard error, and t-value were measured. As seen in Table 1, the results found no large standard error exceeding 2.5 which could cause problems when distinguishing models.

Augmented Reality Based Learning

29

Table 1. Effect analysis result of relations between factors

1. immersion(ξ1) 2. navigation(ξ2) 3. manipulation(ξ3) 4. presence(η1) 5. flow(η2)

**

Path → → → → →

6. flow(η2)

→

7. flow(η2)

→

8. comprehension(η4) 9. manipulation(ξ3) 10.manipulatio n(ξ3)

→

p <.01,

***

→ →

presence(η1) presence(η1) presence(η1) flow(η2) satisfaction(η3) comprehension(η4) application(η5) application(η5) application(η5) application(η5)

Estimates 0.532

S.E 0.136

t 3.914***

0.160

0.107

1.490

0.308

0.074

4.162***

0.505 0.604

0.063 0.087

7.979*** 6.948***

0.623

0.087

7.148***

0.434

0.103

4.200***

0.462

0.059

7.807***

0.326

0.058

5.601***

new

0.207

0.065

3.170**

new

p <.001

The direct and indirect effects as well as total effects among media characteristics, presence, flow, and learning effect factors in augmented reality based learning are presented in the following table2. and its results are as follows:

30

Kye Bokyung

Table 2. Effects of related variables in augmented reality based learning Product Variables

Predicting Variables

immersion(ξ1) navigation(ξ2) presence (η1) manipulation(ξ3) flow (η2) immersion(ξ1) navigation(ξ2) manipulation(ξ3) presence(η1) satisfaction immersion(ξ1) (η3) navigation(ξ2) manipulation(ξ3) presence(η1) flow(η2) Comprehenimmersion(ξ1) sion (η4) navigation(ξ2) manipulation(ξ3) presence(η1) flow(η2) application immersion(ξ1) navigation(ξ2) (η5) manipulation(ξ3) presence(η1) flow(η2) comprehension(η4) ** p <.01, *** p <.001

Direct effects 0.467 0.140 0.381

Effects Indirect effects

0.282 0.085 0.230 0.604

0.383

0.136 0.041 0.111 0.291

0.481 0.121 0.036 0.099 0.260 0.430

0.185 0.261 0.404

0.123 0.037 0.100 0.263 0.174

Total Effects 0.467 0.140 0.381 0.282 0.085 0.230 0.604 0.136 0.041 0.494 0.291 0.481 0.121 0.036 0.099 0.260 0.430 0.123 0.037 0.285 0.263 0.435 0.404

Total Explanatory Power 0.762

0.365

0.549

0.185

0.431

First, in this model, media characteristic factors (sensory immersion, navigation, manipulation) were proven to have the greatest influence on presence, explaining for 76.2% of all its variables. Among media characteristics, sensory immersion in particular was proven to have a direct effect of 0.467 and a manipulation of 0.381, indicating that sensory immersion and manipulation make a great contribution to the prediction of presence. This result supports the theory of Slater and Wilbur (1995) examined by preceding researches and that of Lavroff (1994) which stated that sensory immersion and manipulation had an impact on presence, as well as case studies on virtual environment by Fauland (2002) showing that the higher the sensory immersion perceived by learners, the higher the level of presence in augmented reality based learning. On the other hand, the path coefficient of navigation was 0.140 and did not prove to make a statistically meaningful contribution to the overall improvement of explanation capabilities at the 0.05 level of significance.

Augmented Reality Based Learning

31

Second, media characteristic factors (sensory immersion, navigation, and manipulation), independent variables, and presence, which is a parameter, explain 36.5% of all variables of flow. In particular, presence had a significant relationship with flow, showing a great effect of 0.604 on the factors’ relative importance and contribution. This result supports the research results of Goh Jaehyeok (2001) and Seo Haerim (2003) which were discussed earlier. In addition, sensory immersion and manipulation proved to have a significant impact on flow, using presence as a parameter. It was proved that navigation did not make a statistically significant contribution to the overall improvement of explanation capabilities. Third, media characteristic factors (sensory immersion, navigation, and manipulation), independent variables, and the parameters of presence and flow explained 54.9% of all variables of satisfaction. First of all, flow had a high level effect of 0.481 in the level of satisfaction, being in line with the results of other exploratory researches by Novak and Hoffman (1996), Massimini and Carli (1988), Um Myeong-yong, et al. (2005) and Kim Younghee and Kim Youngsoo (2006), which were conducted online, and proving that the higher the flow, the higher the level of satisfaction in the augmented reality based learning environment as well. Also, sensory immersion, manipulation, and presence were all proven to be important factors in predicting satisfaction. Their relative importance and contribution were: manipulation 0.383, presence 0.291, and sensory immersion 0.136. In particular, manipulation, whose importance was not predicted by the existing hypothetic model, was shown to have a significant influence of 0.494 in satisfaction level, revealing that strengthening manipulation through the tangible interface of augmented reality media makes a great contribution to the level of satisfaction. Fourth, media characteristic factors (sensory immersion, navigation and manipulation), independent variables, and the parameters of presence and flow explained 18.5% of all variables in the knowledge and understanding aspects of learning effects. First, flow showed a high level of prediction capability, with a high degree of influence of 0.430 on learning effect of knowledge and understanding. This result supports the previously discussed theories of Mayers (1978), Csikszentmihalyi & Larson (1993), and is consistent with exploratory research results of Kim Youngjin (2000) and, Park Sung-ik and Kim Yeonkyung (2006), showing that the more learners are absorbed in learning, the higher their learning effect in the aspects of knowledge and understanding. Apart from flow, presence showed a relative importance and contribution of 0.260 and immersion of 0.121 as factors significantly explaining learning effects in knowledge and understanding aspects, while navigation and manipulation did not have significant prediction capabilities.

32

Kye Bokyung

Fifth, media characteristic factors (sensory immersion, navigation and manipulation), independent variables, and the parameters of presence and flow explained 43.1% of all variables in the application aspect of learning effect. First of all, flow had a large effect of 0.435 in the application aspect of learning effect. This result is in line with the previously discussed structure model of Novak and Hoffman (1996) even though their research was about the online environment, showing that the more learners are absorbed in learning, the higher their achievement in terms of application. Also, learning effect in terms of knowledge and understanding had a direct effect of 0.404 on the learning effect of application, proving that the higher the achievement in knowledge and understanding in augmented reality based learning, the higher the achievement in terms of application. In addition, sensory immersion, manipulation and presence provided meaningful explanations of learning effect in terms of application, while navigation did not prove to make a statistically significant contribution to the overall improvement of explanation capabilities. As to the relative importance and contribution level of factors, flow was 0.435 followed by knowledge & understanding 0.404, manipulation 0.285, presence 0.263, and sensory immersion 0.123. In particular, manipulation, whose effect was not predicted by the existing hypothetic model, was shown to have a medium-level influence of 0.185 in application, demonstrating that the methods of augmented reality’s tangible interface manipulation made a contribution to the effects of application as well as on the satisfaction level of learning. This research proves that sensory immersion and manipulation, as media characteristic factors, are important factors in determining presence and flow and that these media characteristic factors are determining factors in learning effect in terms of satisfaction, knowledge & understanding, and application. It also indicates that effective designs of three-dimensional objects and strengthening manipulation through tangible interface are the most essential factors when designing augmented reality based learning media.

5 Conclusions and Suggestions Whenever a new medium is introduced to education, people are always curious about whether it is better than existing traditional teaching methods. Also, as researches on this topic have been conducted along with the emergence of new media, the same questions are being posed for this advanced media (Na Ilju, 1995). These researches about media can be classified into two categories: the efforts to determine a comparative advantage of the media and the efforts to investigate the unique capabilities of a given medium. This study is to discover

Augmented Reality Based Learning

33

the distinct characteristics and effectiveness of augmented reality as an emerging learning and teaching medium. This study examined media characteristic factors, unique features of augmented reality, and the causal relationship between these factors and learning effects. It was also to prove the effectiveness of the application of augmented reality technology as a new technology in the education field. With the exception of navigation, the research result showed that immersion, manipulation, presence, and flow proved to have a meaningful influence on learning effects such as satisfaction, knowledge & understanding, and transfer. The manipulation factor, whose effect was not predicted in the first theoretical model, was shown to have not only an indirect but also a direct effect on satisfaction and the application aspect of learning effect. In particular, as to the factors that were focused on when research variables were selected, first, sensory immersion was proven to have a meaningful influence on knowledge & understanding and application aspects of cognitive learning effect, using presence and flow as parameters. This result showed that the application of augmented reality technology makes a meaningful contribution to the absorption in and effect of learning, in addition to providing sensual enjoyments. Second, in terms of learning effect, the application of augmented reality media had more influence on application factor (43.1%) than on the knowledge & understanding factor (18.5%). This result shows that the application of augmented reality media had a meaningful effect in actual context, going beyond the acquisition of noncontextualized knowledge focused on the understanding of existing concepts. It also confirms the research result of Kim Hoe-su (1999) that the application of augmented reality techniques contributes to the improvement of scientific analysis and general capabilities, as well as the prediction that augmented reality will have an effect not only on acquisition and understanding of simple concepts but also on their application by raising situational awareness (Azuma, 1997; New Media Consortium and Educause Learning Initiative, 2006; Romero, Santiago, & Correia, 2004). Also, the manipulation factor discussed earlier through tangible interface, one of the distinct characteristics of augmented reality, proved to have not only an indirect but also a direct effect on satisfaction and application aspects of learning effect. This result is assumed to have resulted from the good combination of experience activity type of augmented reality contents, which was used in this study, with the manipulation method of augmented reality media through the utilization of tangible interface. This result supports the research of Shelton (2003), which argues that learners can increase their achievements and satisfaction of learning by enhancing their sense of control through the manipulation of learning contents, as well as that of Billinghurst (2003) where the interaction

34

Kye Bokyung

with augmented reality contents through the use of tangible interface will enable an active learning process and increase the application capability of knowledge. On the other hand, in this study, navigation was proved not to have a significant influence on flow, which runs counter to the commonly discussed research results on immersive Virtual Reality. This result is assumed to show the differentiated media characteristics of augmented reality, which differ from those of immersive Virtual Reality. Learning contents, in an immersive Virtual Reality, are generally processed into artificial objects according to the attributes of tools, whereas navigation factor based on the curiosity about a new virtual world made up of artificial objects is assumed to have a major effect on presence. On the other hand, it is also assumed that, in augmented reality in which the real world is combined with virtuality, sensory immersion and manipulation, rather than navigation enabling exploration into the unknown world, had more influence on learners because of its learning experiences, in which people can manipulate virtual objects in a real world. However, as the results of this study are based on the application of tangible activity type augmented reality in fixed locations, the relations of factors may vary if the conditions of augmented reality based learning activities change, for example, to mobile based augmented reality.

References Antonietti, A., & Cantoia, M. (2000). To see a painting versus to walk in a painting: an experiment on sense-making through virtual reality. Computers & Education, 34, 213-223. Azuma, R. T. (1997). A survey of augmented reality. In Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environment, 6(4), 355-385. Banathy, B. H. (1991). Systems design of education. NJ: Educational Technology Publications. Billinghurst, M. (2003). Augmented reality in education. New Horizons for Learning Online Journal http://www.newhorizons.org/strategies/technology/billinghurst.htm. Bricken, M. & Byrne, C. M. (1992). Summer students in virtual reality : A pilot study on educational applications of virtual reality technology. Proceedings of American Educational Research Associations, San Francisco, CA. Chen, H. (1999). Exploring web users flow experience. Unpublished doctoral dissertation. Syracuse University, New York.

Augmented Reality Based Learning

35

Csikeszentmihalyi, M. (1975). Beyond boredom and anxiety, San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.(1990). Flow : The psychology of optimal experience. New York: Harper and Row. Fauland, R. (2002). Using immersive scientific visualizations for science inquiry: Co-construction of knowledge by middle and high school students. Proceedings of American Educational Research Associations, New Orleans, LA. Gibson, J. J. (1979). The ecological approach to visual perception, Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Goh, Jaehyeok (2001). A study of the correlation between perception level of reality and internet immersion, Unpublished master’s dissertation, Seoul: Yonsei University Heeter, C. (1992). Being There: The subjective experience of presence, Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments, MA: MIT Press. Ishii, H., & Ullmer, B. (1997), Tangible bits: Towards seamless interfaces between people, bits and atoms, Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems CHI 1997, ACM Press, 234-241. Kim, Heesoo., Shin, Youngsuk., Kim, Yeosang., & Suh, Myongseok (2001). The use of 3D virtual reality technique in the web-based earth science education. Journal of Educational Technology, 17(3), 85-116. Kim, Youngjin (2000). A Study of the Immersion Program in English Education of Children: Kindergarten Immersion group vs EFL group. English Linguistic Science, (5)1, 535-548. Kim, Younghee & Kim, Youngsoo (2006). Study on the relationships among learner's individual differentiation factors, flow, language learning strategies, achievement, and satisfaction in online english writing learning. The Journal of Educational Information and Media, (12)4, 289-315. Kim, Youngsoo., Yang, Youngsun., Heo, Heook., & Du, Minyoung (2006). The trend of educational media research. Kwno, Sungho & Lim, chulil (Eds.), The trend of educational technology: Retrospect and prospect (pp.61-92). Seoul: KyoYook Book Larson, R. (1988). Flow and writing. In M. Csikszentmihalyi & I. Csikszentmihalyi (Eds.), Optimal experience: Psychology studies flow in consciousness. NY: Cambridge University Press. Lavroff, N. (1994). Virtual Reality Playhouse, NY: Waite Group Press. Massimoni, F. & Carli, M. (1988). The systematic assessment of flow in daily experience. In M. Csikszentmihalyi & I. Csikszentmihalyi (Eds.), Optimal Ex-

36

Kye Bokyung

perience: Psychological Studies of Flow in Consciousness (pp.266-287). NY: Cambridge University Press. Mayers, P. (1978). Flow in adolescence and its relation to the school experience. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Chicago. Na Ilju (1995). Directions for future research on instructional media. Journal of Educational Technology, 11(1), 47-71. New Media Consortium and Educause Learning Initiative (2006). The horizon report. annual report. CA: Stanford. Novak, T. P. & Hoffman, D. L. (1996). Measuring the flow Experience Among Web Users. working paper, Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University. Park, Seongik & Kim, Yeonkyung (2006). An Inquiry on the Relationships among Learning Flow Factors, Flow Level, Achievement under On line Learning Environment. The Journal of Yeolin Education ,14(1), 93-115. Reigeluth, C. M. (1991). A third-wave educational system. In B. H. Banathy(1991). Systems design of education(pp.201-221). NJ: Educational Technology Publications. Romero, L., Santiago, J., & Correia, N. (2004). Contextual information access and storytelling in mixed reality using hypermedia. ACM Computers in Entertainment, 2(3), 1-16. Ryu, jeeheon., Jo, Ilhyun., Heo, Heook., Kim, Jeonghyun., & Kye, Bokyung (2006). The next generation of learning model for augmented reality e. Seoul: Korea Education & Research Information Service. Schubert, T. W., Friedmann, F., & Regenbrecht, H. T. (1999). Decomposing the sense of presence: factor analytic insights. Second International Workshop on Presence, University of Essex, Colchester, 6th and 7th April 1999. http://www.uni~jena.de/~sth/vr/insights.html (2003). How augmented reality helps students learn dynamic spatial relationships. Unpublished doctorial dissertation, University of Washington, Washington. Seo, Haerim (2003). A study on the immersion experience through digital media : focused on online game players. Unpublished master’s dissertation, Seoul: Ewha Womans University. Sheridan, T. B. (1992). Musings on telepresence and virtual presence, Presence: Teleoprator and Virtual Environments., 1, 120-125. Shim, Gyuchul., Ryu, Sujung., Kim, Hyunsub., Kim, Heosu., Park, Youngchul., The Effect of Biology Educational Material Based on Virtual Reality Technol-

Augmented Reality Based Learning

37

ogy on the Knowledge Achievement: The Structure and Function of Eye. Journal of the Korean Association for Research in Science Education, 23(1), 1-8. Slater, M., & Wilbur, S. (1997). A Framework for immersive Virtual Environments(FIVE): Speculations on the role of Presence in Virtual Environments. Presence: Teleoperator and Virtual Environments, 6(6), 603-616. Um, Myoungyong, Kim, Taeung, & Kim, Chungkoo (2005). An exploratory study for investigating loyalty in on-line games: Focus on interactivity and the sense of presence. Korean management science review, 22(1), 47-65. Webster, J., Trevino, L. K., & Ryan, L. (1993). The dimensionality and correlation of flow in human-computer interaction. Computer in Human Behavior, 9, 411-426.

Visualization of Machine-Aided Measurements of People Counts in Different Infrastructures Christoph Perhab, Austria

Abstract This paper discusses the issue of visualization and interaction of machine-aided measurement of people counts in different infrastructures. With a machine-aided measurement of people counts in infrastructures, a great amount of data is generated. Due to this fact the need for a simple and meaningful representation of the data emerges. This work deals with the topic of data exploration, especially with the aspects of visualization and interaction. The work starts with a definition of machine-aided measurement of people counts and describes how the data is gained. The following chapters cover the core areas of this work - visualization and interaction - by giving an overview on the theoretical backgrounds and different techniques. The practical part covers the development of a prototypical application. It describes the actual implementation and closes with the description of the usability-tests. At the end, the results are summed up and a conclusion points out the main results of this work.

1 Introduction In big infrastructures such as shopping malls, airports or convention centers the number of people moving around is increasing continuously. With a systematic and professional measurement of these people important information can be gained and used for commercial purposes. The results of a measurement of people counts form the background for a number of decisions in different business units. With detailed information about the number of visitors in infrastructures, the flow of people can be controlled more effectively. This can lead to reduced costs and a higher benefit. Moreover, the attractiveness of a certain location can be determined by the methods of people counting. Especially for operators of shop-

40

Christoph Perhab

ping malls this is the basis for determining the rental fees for different areas within the infrastructure. Also the effects of marketing activities can be evaluated with the methods of people counting. For that reason, the measurement of people counts is not a kind of luxury, but it is an absolute need for infrastructure operators. But a simple measurement is not enough, because the data itself is not yet meaningful. Only with an adequate analysis, processing and representation of the data relevant information can be figured out.

2 Machine-aided measurements of people counts Large infrastructures have a huge number of entries and exits. At these points the number of people passing by can be evaluated and recorded. The following chapter gives an overview on the reasons for people counting, describes some counting techniques and introduces the hardware used for a machine-aided measurement of people counts. 2.1 Reasons for People Counting There are many different reasons for measurement of people counts in different types of infrastructures. For shopping malls, people counting is essential to figure out the capacity utilization of the whole infrastructure or of certain areas within the infrastructure in particular. Based on this data, the rental fees are calculated for example. Besides the benefits for marketing and business economical purposes, the results of people counting can help in planning future civil works. By predicting the capacity utilization, civil works can be planned early enough to avoid infrastructural bottlenecks in future. Besides the benefits for infrastructure operators, the methods of people counting can also be useful in the area of tourism – for example to figure out which points of interest are being visited most. Based on that knowledge special offers or sightseeing tours can be developed. 2.2 Measurement Technologies For the machine-aided measurement of people counts, different technologies can be used. Basically, the following three categories can be distinguished:

Machine Aided Measurements of People Counts

41

Image-based measurement with cameras Electronic measurement with different types of sensors Mechanical measurement-systems 2.2.1

Image-based measurement with cameras

Image based measurement of people counts is accomplished by the use of cameras. Within closed infrastructures, the installation of cameras is quite simple. Time-lapse recordings have proved to be very effective, because they need less memory than normal videos. As simple the installation of a camera-system is, the more difficult the analysis is. Computers using image-recognition algorithms perform the analysis. As these algorithms are very complex, the computers used have to be high-performance machines. Disadvantages of image-based measurement of people counts are the need for a high amount of memory and the possible recording of idle times. Moreover, wrong results may arise when analyzing crowds. 0 2.2.2

Electronic Counting System

The measurement of people counts can also be done by optical, magnetic or pressure-sensitive sensors. These sensors require – like cameras – electricity. But in unlike cameras they can operate with batteries for a long time as well. The main advantages of electronic counting systems are the possibility of longterm measurements while needing little memory space and the immediate availability of the data, as there is no need for additional processing like imagerecognition methods when using cameras. Moreover, newer systems can transfer the collected data to central servers automatically. The disadvantages of electronic counting systems are mainly counting errors when people move in a crowd. 0 2.2.3

Mechanical Counting System

Mechanical counting systems like turnstiles are used in many infrastructures for people counting as well as for access control. Mechanical counting systems can also be built in into doors. But the reliability of such systems is very low. Unattended turnstiles for example are likely to be misused by playing children, which will lead to wrong counting results. 0

42

Christoph Perhab

2.3 Hardware In the following chapter the hardware used for machine-aided measurement of people counts will be discussed. These will be: •

Infrared-Sensors

•

Light barriers

•

Cameras

•

Laser scanners

2.3.1

Infrared sensors

Infrared sensors count objects by sending out an infrared beam. The object reflects that beam back to the infrared device, which causes an impulse that can be counted. Besides people, every object reflecting the beam causes an impulse. To avoid wrong results – e.g. by counting trolleys – the height of the detection area can be adjusted. Depending on the width of a certain door, a number of sensors are being installed above the door. With the signals of all sensors the number and direction of moving objects (persons) can be determined. 2.3.2

Light Barriers

Light barriers consist of two parts: a transmitter and a receiver. The transmitter sends out a continuous signal to the receiver. When the signal is interrupted – e.g. by a person passing the light barrier – an impulse is generated. This impulse can be counted. A big disadvantage of this system is the high imprecision. When a crowd of people moves through the light barrier at the same time, they are counted as only one single person. Also the direction of movement cannot be determined. 2.3.3

Cameras

Most times real-time systems and image-processing algorithms are used for the measurement of people counts with cameras. This system is very flexible and can cover a huge observation area. A downside of this technology is the need for high-performance hardware, as image-processing algorithms are very complex and time-consuming. Moreover, there can arise problems when analyzing images with diffuse lightning.

Machine Aided Measurements of People Counts

2.3.4

43

Laser Scanners

Laser scanners transmit a laser beam, which is reflected by any object hit by the beam. By calculating the time difference between transmitting and receiving the beam, the distance to an object can be calculated. This procedure is performed multiple times per second. This leads to a two-dimensional image of the scanner’s environment. By comparing two or more of theses images the objects within the scanners focus can be counted. The installation of a laser scanner is simple. As the wavelength of laser light is different from visible light, a laser scanner can operate at any lightning condition or even in complete darkness.

3 Visualization When analyzing data, humans look for structures, attributes, patterns, trends, anomalies and relationships. Visualization supports this approach by presenting the data in different views and display formats and provides diverse methods of interaction. Visualization can give an overview over a huge amount of data. It can also provide a recapitulate view of the data and help on searching parameters for more detailed analysis. 3.1 Visual Information seeking mantra The visual information seeking mantra was formed by Ben Shneiderman and says: Overview first, zoom and filter, then details-on-demand. At the beginning the user should be given an overview on all available data. In the next step the user can examine a certain subset of the data and make restrictions on the displayed data by using filters. On demand, detailed information to a singe data set should be displayed. Theses steps will be illustrated in more detail in the following sections. 3.1.1

Overview

The goal is to give an overview on all available data. Therefore an outline view of the data is provided as well as the possibility to display additional details. To accomplish this goal, different strategies exist. One possibility is the use of separated views for the overview and for the details. In the overview, special interface elements are used for zooming and controlling the details view. Another option is the use of fisheye views. This technique focuses selected parts of the overview, whereas the parts outside the focus are scaled down. Sometimes distortion techniques are used with fisheye views.

44

Christoph Perhab

In context of overview and details it is important to provide adequate interface elements for an effective navigation through the data. 3.1.2

Zoom

In most cases, special areas of interest can be identified out of the entire collection of data. The detailed analysis of these areas can be accomplished by the means of zooming. The user should be able to freely choose the focus and zoom factor. Smooth transitions between different zoom factors help keeping the track. There exist different options to control the zoom, for example sliders and selection boxes. An intuitive and fast method is to zoom an area out of the overview by simply clicking into it. 3.1.3

Filter

Filters are used to hide uninteresting or irrelevant data sets. Especially the concept of dynamic queries supports the fast manipulation of filters and views. By using this technique, users can quickly focus areas of interest and hide irrelevant data sets. The interaction is implemented via special interface elements, which are coupled directly with the visualization and the data model. This tight coupling allows a very fast screen update (within milliseconds) when manipulating a filter, even if hundreds of data sets are affected by the filter change. 3.1.4

Details on Demand

The user should have the possibility to display additional details to a single data set or to a subset on demand. A common method to accomplish this goal is to display extra information in a dedicated area of the screen or in an additional pop-up window.

4 Interaction Besides visualization, the interaction plays an important role when searching for information in huge amounts of data. This chapter deals with two interaction techniques used in the prototypical implementation. 4.1 Dynamic Queries With the method of dynamic queries it is possible to rapidly update any visualization (within a few milliseconds), even if there are thousands or millions of data sets to analyze. The user can apply filter settings by using slides, checkboxes or any other interface element. Changes in the filter settings are visible immediately

Machine Aided Measurements of People Counts

45

(already during a slider is being dragged for example). An extra button to commit new filter settings is not needed. 4.2 Brushing and Linking Brushing and linking is used, when an object or data set is being visualized in different views at the same time. For example: if a data set is being marked in a table, its representation in a chart is highlighted automatically. Brushing and linking can also be done by the use of interface elements. When the interface element is used to limit the values of the displayed data, all data sets inside the limitation could be highlighted. 4.3 Special Interface Elements Special interface elements are elements, which are not standard in any programming language. This means, the can not be easily instantiated using a certain API. But when using dynamic queries and visualizing multidimensional data, special interface elements can turn out to be very useful. The following sections describe two special interface elements used for the implementation of the prototype. These are the Doubleslider and Fisheye views 4.3.1

Doubleslider

Double sliders are well suited to control filter settings, because they allow restricting the data by their attribute values without using the keyboard.

Figure 1: Doubleslider 0

Figure 1 shows a Doubleslider used in the Dynamic Home Finder application developed by Williamson and Shneiderman. Basically, a doubleslider consists of two slider thumbs (left and right thumb), which are used so select a range of values. The area between the two thumbs can also be dragged using the mouse.

46

4.3.2

Christoph Perhab

Fisheye view

A general description of fisheye views was given by George W. Furnas. According to this description, fisheye views show a focused area with a very high level of detail. As the distance to this focused area increases, the level of detail becomes lower. Fisheye views often use different distortion techniques. Fisheye views allow the presentation of a big load of information on very little space. By using this technique, the whole data always stays visible. This helps in keeping track while accomplishing different tasks. Fisheye views are used in special menus, with maps or for calendar applications on cell phones and PDAs.

Figure 2: Fisheye view (Macrofocus InfoScope)

Figure 2 shows a fisheye view used in the InfoScope application from Macrofocus 0. The image shows a world map with Europe zoomed in. Nevertheless, the rest of the world map is still visible and provides an good overview on the rest of the data.

5 Prototype Based on the theoretical backgrounds from the previous chapters a prototype for the visualization of machine-aided measurement of people counts was developed. 5.1 Data Structure The systems provide the counting data in different structures – depending on how this was implemented by the manufacturers. When the data to be visualized

Machine Aided Measurements of People Counts

47

derives from different systems, it is practicable to transform it into a standardized structure. Figure 3 shows the data structure used by the prototype. The sensors are attached above doors and alleys and can count people in both directions (in and out). As each sensor has a unique number, its position within the infrastructure can be determined. So the counting result can be assigned to a certain door or area. Moreover, the type of the sensor is stored, is case of results being delivered by different sensor types. To be able to analyze the development of values over time the date and time of each counting result is stored.

Figure 3: Data structure of the counting results

The type of a day is stored to assign events to a day. So the effects of an event on the capacity load can be figured out. The counting results are aggregated in 15minute slots. 5.2 Filter Settings As mentioned before, the data is aggregated in 15-minute slots. Based on this aggregation the results can be concentrated to an hour, a day, a week or a month. Besides the dimension of time, results can be filtered according to the infrastructure – from which door within the infrastructure the result derives from. As the position of each sensor is known, results can be summed up by door, location, level and so on.

48

Christoph Perhab

Analysis of single levels inside the infrastructure can be done by correct selection of sensors and doors. Therefore the location of each sensor is stored in an XML-file. As date and time is stored with each result, the data can also be filtered by these attributes. A date range as well as a time range can be chosen for an analysis. Another filter option is to restrict the analysis to range of values. This allows it to hide locations or doors outside a selected range of values.

5.3 Graphical User Interface

Figure 4: Graphical user interface

Figure 4 shows the graphical user interface (GUI) of the prototype. The GUI is built form diverse elements, which were developed one by one and then merged together to the final GUI. The elements can be classified by functionality. There exist two types of elements: Elements to display the data and Filter elements The elements to display the data are marked with a red frame in Figure 4, the filter elements are marked with a blue frame. The different elements will be described in detail in the following sections.

Machine Aided Measurements of People Counts

5.3.1

49

Infrastructure Overview

With an adequate selection of doors, the different analysis can be constrained to certain areas of the infrastructure. As not every user knows the infrastructure by heart, the selection of doors was designed in a way, that even novice users could select the doors they want. Therefore the infrastructure is presented as a plan, so that users do not need to know a door’s name or number.

Figure 5: Infrastructure overview

Figure 5 shows the element for selecting doors or locations inside the infrastructure. The appearance of the infrastructure is defined in an XML-file, where graphical primitives like lines, ellipses, rectangles and polygons can be used. The doors are marked by green dots with an arrow. This arrow shows the direction for counting results for entry counts. Besides the graphical primitives and the location of doors multiple levels can be defined. 5.3.2

Fisheye Calendar

The fisheye calendar is used to show and select dates. If a day is clicked, the day is selected and the results according to the selected analysis are being displayed. When using the Strg-key multiple (noncoherent) days can be selected. With the use of the Shift-key multiple coherent days can be chosen. A column can be selected by clicking onto the weekday label at the top of the calendar. With these selection methods the results for different days can be compared. Besides date selection, the calendar offers the possibility to display additional information to a certain day. Therefore a fisheye technique is being used. When double-clicking a day, that day gets more space for displaying additional information, as the other days in the calendar become smaller. The fisheye view is

50

Christoph Perhab

visible in Figure 6. Figure 6 (a) shows the normal calendar. Figure 6 (b) shows the calendar with one day expanded. To figure out whether a day has additional information attached or not, the days with extra information are displayed with a special background color.

Figure 6: Fisheye calendar

5.3.3

Time Selection

The element for time selection is a doubleslider and can entirely be controlled with the mouse.

Figure 7: Time selection

Machine Aided Measurements of People Counts

51

Figure 7 shows the element in two different states. In Figure 7 (a) a whole day is selected. This is the standard setting when launching the application. Figure 7 (b) shows the time restricted between 7 a.m. and 6 p.m. The currently selected time is displayed in the slider’s thumbs – even during the slider is being dragged. By dragging the colored area between the two slider thumbs the whole time span selected can be changed. When holding down the Shift-key time selection is done in 15-minute steps. As the application uses dynamic queries, changes to the time selection are visible immediately without delay. 5.3.4

Selection of Analysis

The application provides a fixed number of available analyses. The type of the analysis determines how the raw data is processed before visualization. The selection of analysis is done via two groups of radio buttons (see Figure 4). This makes the selection simple and the user can switch between different analyses very fast. 5.3.5

Chart

The chart graphically displays the analyses results. Figure 8 shows the chart of a capacity load analysis where multiple days are being compared. Each day is painted in a different color. A legend is drawn below the chart. The time is plotted against the x-axis. The scale depends on the time range selected and is adjusted automatically. The values are plotted against the y-axis. The scale of the y-axis is adjusted automatically according to the minimum and maximum values. The title above the chart describes, which analysis and filter settings are currently being displayed.

Figure 8: Chart (capacity load)

52

5.3.6

Christoph Perhab

Range Containment

Below as well as on the right side of the chart interface elements for range containment are positioned (see Figure 4). The element below the chart is used to limit and select a range of dates. By moving around the slider thumbs, start and end dates for the analyses can be chosen. The analysis then contains the data for all days within the selected range. This is the same as selecting multiple days in the fisheye calendar, but here only coherent days can be selected. The entire range of selected days can be moved by dragging the colored area between the two slider thumbs. With this element ranges from one single day up to a whole year can be selected. This means, the user can quickly change from an overview of the entire year to a detailed view of one single day. The element on the right side of the chart is used to select a range of values. All results outside that range will be hidden. This can be used if a user only wants do see the results between a minimum and a maximum value. 5.3.7

Details View

According to the visual information seeking mantra also a details view was implemented. The details view is a table located in the lower right corner of the application and shows the values visualized in the chart. The chart’s x-axis represents the table’s columns and the chart’s y-axis represents the table’s rows. 5.4 Interaction The different interface elements are not autonomous. One element can affect other elements. This means, when a user uses an element to set some filter values, this can have an effect on other elements, even if the user does not directly use it. Figure 9 shows the model of interaction implemented by the prototype. The central element is the chart, because this is the element that displays the data. The user cannot manipulate the chart title and the details view directly. These elements are updated automatically whenever the chart changes (represented by the red arrows). All interaction elements are arranged around the central chart. The arrows between the elements represent, how the elements influence each other. As visible in Figure 9, all elements directly influence the chart. As one can see on the basis of the date range slider and the fisheye calendar, one element can influence another element. As the date is being changed in the cal-

Machine Aided Measurements of People Counts

53

endar, the date range slider automatically jumps to a new position that represents the selected date – and vice versa.

Figure 9: Model of interaction

The interactions represented by the black arrows cause changes in the filter settings. The dashed arrows represent interactions, that do not change filter settings, but which are used for brushing and linking. If the user moves his mouse over an entry in the chart, the details view or the infrastructure overview, the entry is highlighted in the remaining two elements. This method helps the user in keeping track of his analyses and supports the interactive exploration of the data.

6 Usability Tests After the prototype had been implemented, its usability was tested. This chapter describes the results of the usability tests. 6.1 Test Environment To evaluate the usability of the prototype, a thinking aloud test was chosen. In this test, a user is given some tasks. While the user tries to solve the tasks he articulates his thoughts and feelings. The test is recorded on video to be able to analyze the results in detail afterwards. 0

54

Christoph Perhab

The test user was sitting in front of a computer with the prototype software already running. To the left of the test user the test engineer was positioned. He gave the tasks to perform to the user and took notices during the test. To record the test user’s reactions, a camera was positioned vis-à-vis. Moreover, the computer screen was captured using the “Camtasia Studio” software. 6.2 Test Objectives The test objective was to get a quantitative rating of the prototype software with a special focus on the different GUI elements. Moreover, it was evaluated how the users can work with the used visualizations and interaction methods. A major part was to identify ideas for improvement.

6.3 Profile of Test Users The usability tests were performed with four test users, which lead to the following profile: Age

20 – 25 years

Sex

1 female / 3 male

Education

School leaving exam / study

Computer usage

10 – 15 years

Used Operating Systems

4 Windows, 1 Linux

Self maintenance of computer

3 yes / 1 no

Used to special interactions

Yes

Table 1: Profile of test users

This profile was generated by the use of questionnaires before the actual test started. It was used to figure out if skilled users can handle the prototype software better than novice users. 6.4 Practical Tests The practical tests delivered important results concerning the software’s menu and the interface elements.

Machine Aided Measurements of People Counts

55

The menu for selecting different types of analyses on the right side of the application could be found by all of the test users and was used correctly. When selecting a time span, some interface elements were interpreted mistakable. Two test users tried to adjust the time by using the date range slider located below the chart. As the time is plotted against the x-axis the users assumed that the time settings could be changed with the slider located directly below the xaxis. But after some tries all users could find the correct interface element and set the time to the required values. All test persons could use the date range slider below the chart correctly. Nevertheless, the tests have shown that users prefer to select the dates via the calendar rather than using the slider. All testers had problems with the correct usage of the infrastructure overview. All users found out that door selection had to be done with this interface element, but only one user managed to (de-) select the required doors with a click. The other three test persons did not even try to click onto the green door buttons. One task was about saving the current filter settings. It was eye-catching that most of the users tried to save the settings via the combo box below the infrastructure overview. As these approaches did not work, all test users managed to save the settings via the menu “File – Save settings”. All test users had problems with loading the previously saved settings again. As they could save the filter settings via the menu bar, they tried to load the settings in the same way. The pop-up menu to load settings – which is located at the left side of the application – was found by all users, but not until they kept searching for it quite a long time. 6.5 Final Questionnaire After completing all tasks of the practical tests, the test users were given a final questionnaire. The evaluation scheme was a value range from 1 to 5, where 1 is the best and 5 the worst vote. The final questionnaires led to the following results (average vote of all four test users): How do you rate the software’s design?

1,25

How do you rate the software’s response time?

1,5

How do you rate the visualizations?

1,5

How do you rate the interaction?

1,5

Table 2: Results general questions

56

Christoph Perhab

Besides general questions, the final questionnaire also contained questions about the different interface elements. The ratings for each interface element are listed in Table 3. Selection of analyses

1

Chart

1,25

Infrastructure overview

1

Fisheye calendar

1,75

Time selection

2,25

Date selection (slider)

2,25

Value range slider

2

Details view

2,75

Table 3: Rating of interface elements

6.6 Suggestions for Improvement Based on the results presented in the previous sections the following suggestions for improvement can be made. To select a range of coherent days most test users used the calendar instead of the date range slider. Moreover, most users tried to adjust the time with that slider. Thus, the date range slider could be replaced with a time slider. In the infrastructure overview it should be pointed out, that the green door buttons are clickable and affect the actual analysis. Besides the menu option to save filter settings, the users should be able to load the presets in the same manner. Moreover, a feedback when saving the filter settings should be given.

7 Conclusion This work’s objective was to find new visualization- and interaction-methods for machine-aided measurements of people counts. For the prototype, alternative input elements were developed. These elements are used to apply filter settings and implement the principles of dynamic queries. With the use of these interface elements, significant advantages over conventional elements could be found.

Machine Aided Measurements of People Counts

57

The use of double sliders for range selection of time and date, in connection with dynamic queries, enabled an efficient workflow. The visual representation of the infrastructure enabled an intuitive workflow for users new to the infrastructure. The use of a fisheye calendar allows it to display additional information on small place. Moreover it is used as interaction- and display-element. Due to dynamic queries and the use of alternative interface elements, an interactive data exploration as the basis for operative and strategic decisions is made possible.

8 Acknlowlegdement I want to thank DI Helmut Schrom-Feiertag from arsenal research, Vienna, for his support and ideas during development. Further on, I want to thank DI Dr. Alexander K. Nischelwitzer from FH JOANNEUM, Graz, for supervising the development of this works.

References Arnberger Arne, Brandenburg Christiane and Muhar Andreas: Besuchererfassungstechnologien als Beitrag für eine nachhaltige Erholungsgebiets- und Stadtentwicklung. Universität für Bodenkultur, Vienna, 2006. Geze: Geze Ansteuerelemente, http://www.geze.de/uploads/tx_gezedownloads/091729_Ansteuer_DE_0307.pdf (18.09.2007) Dilax: Datenblatt Türsensor IRS-320, http://www.dilax.com/pdf/de/hardware/IRS-320-DB-d.pdf (02.05.2007) Andy Griffith, Automatic Pedestrian Counting Trial, Central London Partnership, http://www.c-london.co.uk, 2005 Usama Fayyad, Georges Grinstein and Andreas Wierse: Information Visualzation in Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery, Morgan Kaufman, San Francisco, 2002, p. 20 ff George A. Miller: The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on Our Capacity for Processing Information, The Psychological Review 63, 1956, p. 81 ff

58

Christoph Perhab

Ben Shneiderman: The Eyes Have It: A Task by Data Type Taxonomy for Information Visualizations. In: VL 96: Proceedings of the 1996 IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages, 336, Washington DC, USA, 1996 Christopher Ahlberg and Ben Shneiderman: Visual information seeking: tight coupling of dynamic querie filters with starfield displays. In: CHI 94: Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems, 313 – 317, ACM Press, New York, USA, 1994 Alan Dix, Janen E. Finlay, Gregory D. Abowd and Russle Beale: HumanComputer Interaction, Pearson Prentice Hall, Harlow, 2004, p. 127 ff. Stuard K. Card, Jock D. Macinaly and Ben Shneiderman: Readings in Information Visualization: Using Vision to Think, Morgan Kaufman, San Franzisco, 2005, p. 233 ff. George W. Furnas: Generalized Fisheye Views. In: Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI 86 Conference Proceedings, p. 16 – 23, ACM Press, New York, USA, 1986 Macrofocus: Macrofocus InfoScope, http://www.macrofocus.com/public/products/infoscope.html (30.04.2007) Manuela Eggmayr: Testing: Thinking Aloud, Co-Discovery and Formal Experiments, FH JOANNEUM, Graz, April 2006

B

Mobile Location Based Applications

Pushing Location Based Games Further – How To Gain End User Suitability Andreas Jakl, Christoph Grün, Jens Krösche and Stephan A. Drab, Austria Abstract In recent years, mobile gaming has been believed to be the next hype after the great success of the short messaging service in Europe. Especially location based games (LBGs) were said to be the next breakthrough for mobile gaming, as those games exploit the location of the players during the game flow. Although those kinds of mobile games are able to offer a new and exciting experience, not many LBGs have yet entered the market. According to this fact, the authors believe that revenues created from this type of mobile applications only make up a minor part of the whole mobile games market, which is assumed to hit 7 billion € or 10 billion USD in 2009. The reason for the small market share of LBGs is that several additional aspects that have to be considered, adding to the large amount of restrictions already present for conventional mobile games. This makes it even more challenging to successfully market LBGs. Conventional mobile games suffer from diverse constraints that cushion their success, comprising high device fragmentation, compatibility issues, difficulties of targeted advertising as well as distribution over the network operators' portals and channels. LBGs have the additional requirements for location-sensing or other context-acquisition technology. This might either be provided as a feature by the mobile device itself and/or by the infrastructure, which has to be set up and operated by a service provider. The end user, on the other hand, is often required to use special hardware in order to play those kinds of games, e. g. GPS-equipped mobile phones. Since wireless handsets that are equipped in this manner, are currently not even close to be widespread, their impact on the entertainment business is negligible compared to the conventional mobile game market. As a result, LBGs have yet failed to reach the expectations of market analysts generating high revenues. Recent research in this area has been mainly focused on the development of prototypes. We think that location based gaming can go much further than its current state. In light of these points, this paper therefore seeks to identify positioning tech-

60

Andreas Jakl et al.

nologies, evaluate LBGs including our approaches SpaceRace and The Journey with respect to the previously identified positioning technologies and highlight those interesting features and design elements that have to be taken into account when designing LBGs for the mass market. Summarized, the goal of the paper is to determine the best practice of how to utilize location context on mobile phones targeted for the mass market. LBGs do indeed have a very high potential, but this has not yet been either fully realized or utilized by today's game creators. By lowering the technical-, design- and social barriers for playing LBGs using the identified design elements, they have the potential to be more successful in the future.

1 Introduction According to a study by Nielsen Entertainment , the top two situations where people in Germany play mobile games are while travelling / commuting (85%) or while waiting (54%). These two possibilities are generally most relevant for LBGs, while the other situations (at home: 41%, at work: 22%, other: 10%) are less likely outdoors - one of the main requirements of current LBGs. Many of the currently available LBGs are using multiplayer functionality in some way. According to the same study , 45% play multiplayer games at least once a month on a worldwide average. As discussed in section 3, this can however be also one of the major factors limiting the social acceptance of LBGs. Based on these statistics, one could be inclined to believe that LBGs are very popular. Unfortunately, this does not seem to be the case, as these games have clearly not reached their full potential yet. Most current surveys do not even include LBGs. This is not surprising, given the current market situation of LBGs as described later on. 1.1 Availability Handango is one of the world's largest mobile game distribution sites featuring over 75,000 mobile applications. It allows developers to add their own games for free. Well-known distribution sites like this significantly decrease the hurdles to make LBGs available to the public. In contrast, it is often difficult for an independent developer to get into game distribution channels maintained by operators – as we experienced when releasing our games The Journey and Spacerace . Therefore, it is likely that LBGs are first available on "open" sites such as Handango, before they are listed on operator channels, which are usually tailored to games appealing to the mass market.

Pushing Location Based Games Further

61

This leads to the question: How many LBGs are available through public channels? In an experiment, we searched for several terms on Handango, which should be included in names, descriptions or keywords of LBGs. These were: location, GPS or multiplayer. The disappointing search results at the time of writing revealed that in the several hundred hits returned in total for all categories for these keywords and on all platforms, the only LBG that was found was one of our games, The Journey. 1.2 Universities As companies have to stay profitable, development of an LBG would be more risky than conventional mobile games and more and more difficult due to the additional factors that have to be considered (see section 3). On the other hand, it is a very interesting topic, seen from a research perspective. Looking at the currently available LBGs, most games have been developed at universities or research facilities. Taking a more general approach, many topics like the direct manipulation of graphic objects, the mouse, windows or text editing have first been researched at universities. Years later, they were picked up by commercial companies to be prepared for the mass market. Other examples are the first game on a computerlike device called Tennis for two, which was developed 1958 by William Higinbotham or the first ever computer game called SpaceWar!, which was developed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1962. The same might be true for LBGs, which can currently be considered to be still in the research phase. 1.3 Social Acceptance After giving a short overview of currently available LBGs and technologies in the following sections, the main part of this paper is related to the social acceptance and end user fitness of LBGs. What has to be done so that these games can reach the public in a bigger scale through the commercial mass market? Do consumers really get the chance to play LBGs?

2 Market Situation According to IGN Entertainment, there are 2 billion mobile phone users worldwide. Forrester Research concludes that in Europe and Northern America nearly 90% of all teenagers own at least one mobile phone. According to Fritsch et al., the overall mobile games revenues in Europe alone literally jumped from 0.3 billion USD in 2000 to 6.17 billion USD in 2006. At least 80% of all mobile

62

Andreas Jakl et al.

gamers play once a week and 35% once a day. All these statements indicate a very successful mobile market. However, we think that the overall potential of the market is not fully developed yet, since there are several factors that hinder a more developed growth of the mobile games market. LBGs – being a subgroup of mobile games – by default have to deal with the same problems, but are especially sensitive to some of them, like the following. The distribution channels of mobile games state the most important problem: mobile games are micro products. To generate valuable revenues and stay profitable as a company, a big quantity of products has to be sold. This leads to a very short turn-around time of mobile games. The very small half-life period of mobile games being on top of the portals (mostly working similar to a FIFO-queue) leaves very short time for the content being in the user's field of perception. The more frequently games are pushed into this queue, the faster others vanish into the depths of the platform archives. There, they are only available through a search function that has to be used explicitly. The distribution of single individual mobile games is practically not significant for companies using such platforms as distribution channel. More important is the frequency of mobile games produced and the number of them pushed into the market on the whole, to stay on top of other competitors. But what does this mean for LBGs? Compared to the currently available mini mobile games, more resources have to be spent on the implementation of LBGs. This makes it simply impossible for organizations that have to stay profitable, to push a large number of LBGs with a high frequency into the market, even for a short period of time. Therefore, profit oriented distribution of games with high implementation costs like LBGs is not possible with current distribution models. The authors of this paper identify this as one of the major reasons why LBGs do not make it to the mass market or the end user respectively.

3 Evaluation Criteria This section gives an overview of the evaluation criteria we have developed for the analysis of LBGs. These will be used as a basis for the successive main parts. Subsequently, we will analyze the state of the art of LBGs. Unlike classification in other literature, our evaluation criteria are specifically focused on the end users. The following categories have been picked to fit this context: 3.1 Destination Platform The destination platform has to be considered very carefully, in order to reach the end user on the mass market. In fact, the mobile games segment, especially when talking about LBGs, is very sensitive to the platform question. This results

Pushing Location Based Games Further

63

from the inhomogeneous device platform environments, i.e.the operating system, the runtime environment of the devices or the hardware device fragmentation respectively. For the operating system alone there is a very strong fragmentation. The only option to gain mass market suitability for a mobile game is to use Java ME, since ABI findings points out that open platforms like Java will be deployed in 85% of all handsets shipped by 2008. Unlike for desktop PCs, where many strong conventions apply, on the Java ME platform the hardware components of mobile devices as well as runtime implementations of the virtual machines often vary from device to device. Therefore, even though originally being the fundamental idea of the Java family, there is no real device independence on Java ME. ABI research also denotes that Java ME remains too fragmented to be mass deployed as a standard middleware among all devices. However, Java ME is the only option to maximize the number of wireless handsets to support, as Symbian OS and Windows Mobile are currently no real alternative in terms of reaching the mass market. According to studies of Gartner and Canalys (as published by Symbian) 528.3 million phones were sold worldwide in the first half of 2007. 47.9 million smartphones sold in this period result in a smartphone market share of about 9%. Symbian OS-based phones have the biggest smartphone market share, in Q2 2007: 72.4% (34.6 million Symbian OS smartphones were shipped in the first half of 2007). While this makes Symbian OS the second-most attractive platform for deploying mobile games, it still means that it only allows reaching up to 6.5% of the total market. 3.2 Game Related Costs Another aspect of mobile games are the game related costs that accumulate when playing the game. We identified several different types of costs, each being a possible obstacle for the end user to play the game: On Handango the price of a standard mobile game application ranges between €5 and €15. Looking at the current audience, most mobile game customers are casual players, which cannot be expected to pay an even higher price for a LBG, which covers the increased implementation costs1. The acquisition cost of possibly necessary (additional) hardware is another barrier for the user. Michael Zhang working at SiRF technologies states in that he believes by 2010 about 40% of all sold handsets will have a GPS receiver integrated. This means that the current spread of GPS enabled handsets is a minor1

We assume higher implementation costs for LBGs over conventional mobile games from our experience as developers of some conventional mobile games and our LBGs Spacerace and The Journey I and II.

64

Andreas Jakl et al.

ity. Therefore, to be able to play a LBG, an external GPS receiver has to be acquired. Currently, prices are falling - however, cheap receivers are still at around €70. The same situation applies for any location sensing technology requiring additional hardware. Mobile games may create costs of operation when using other resources during the game. If a LBG needs to transfer game data to propagate player positions in multiplayer games for example, the application generates data traffic over mobile networks. Some games use SMS, MMS or telephony for communication between players. Depending on the billing model, this usually generates costs for the end user. 3.3 Positioning Technologies Choosing a specific positioning technology for the LBG is a crucial task. Several considerations have to be made, such as the costs implied using it, the uncertainty and availability of the utilized location sensing technology. We assume that most users do not know the limitations of a positioning technology, therefore they will not relate any accuracy and availability problems to the technology itself – instead, it will inflict on the user's perception of the robustness and operational reliability of the game. Therefore, the system must be designed to be somewhat fault tolerating towards the location sensing. Benford et al. have written an article describing their experiences with uncertainty in their game Can You See Me Now?, which states interesting facts in this context. Optimally the game concept should exploit the mentioned positioning related errors, as described by Weiser. 3.4 Application Set-up The deployment of an LBG does not only consist of the installation alone, but also of any configuration of the LBG until it can be played. This may involve configuration of hardware dependent parameters in some cases, e. g. any form of connection setting to access the location information. This task may also discourage users to play the LBG. For some LBGs, the automatism to generate a play field automatically does not work. Imagine a dynamically generated play field spreading throughout several city blocks. Inside this area, points of interest are generated dynamically. Unfortunately, it can happen that the created items are virtually inside a building in this scenario. Assuming that the game uses GPS, which does not work indoor in most cases, the player could never reach an item located there. To avoid this problem, those kinds of games allow or even require predefining an area representing the play field, before being able to play the game. This gives the player the ability to setup the game inside an area where the availability of the position-

Pushing Location Based Games Further

65

ing technology, like GPS, can be ensured. This is a very common approach to this general problem in many LBGs and works well in fields of research projects or demonstrator games implemented at research facilities or universities. But for an end user this means that he also has to setup the game area in the same manner in order to be able to play the game. However, the tool chain for defining those areas is often proprietary, not very user friendly and designed to suit the needs of the game developers, not the end user. Therefore, the process of setting up a game area cannot be accomplished by the common end user; even if it would be supported by the tools of the game developers. 3.5 Network Aspect A networked game depends on a network connection over the cellular network, in order to transfer its game data to another network component. The costs for data traffic services have become cheaper in the recent years, partly also because of the introduction of 3G UMTS networks. As stated by Roto et al., users may have a wide range of different perceptions of billing models for data traffic, which is not strongly depending on the actual costs. We think that arbitrary negative perception of these billing models are due to some kind of the user's suspiciousness towards the network operators. Trying to avoid data traffic costs, these users may not want to play a mobile game using a network connection. This is a substantial drawback for the networked LBGs category, which has to be taken into account regarding the mass market fitness of mobile and location based games. 3.6 Multiplayer Aspect Previously we defined criteria, which have a negative impact on the end user suitability of LBGs. The multiplayer capability of a LBG does not fit exactly into this category. In general, the game experience of a real-time multiplayer game is greater than for single player games. This means a multiplayer capability can be implemented for LBGs to enhance the user experience. Negative consequences of this feature are the implied network costs that come with the presumably required data traffic. Another aspect to consider is the experience of users with real-time multiplayer games on other platforms, such as desktop computers or various consoles. The users may have a high expectation from games played on the mentioned platforms. These often implement various mechanisms to reduce the negative effects of network latency and jitter. As described by Armitage, the greatest problem of real-time multiplayer games is the network latency. This states a problem for networked multiplayer games, because the mobile network's latency is usually much higher than land line internet connections. Additionally, with most net-

66

Andreas Jakl et al.

worked mobile games lacking the latency compensation technique, this may lead to a disappointment of the user's high expectations of the real-time aspect of the location based multiplayer game. While multiplayer games can offer an interesting game experience, this can also limit the mass market reach of the games. Certain games may require multiple players to be online at the same time. This concept only works if the game has reached a critical mass and enough players are playing worldwide around the clock. Otherwise, the motivation of a user might drop radically if he has to abandon his plans to play a game just because he finds out that he is the only person online at the moment. The location aspect adds another issue in some game concepts. If games require multiple persons to play the game at the same time and at the same location, it is ultimately even less likely that a user can successfully play the game. Essentially, it might only work in large cities, and the game needs a lot of publicity to reach enough people so that several persons are playing at the same time in the same city. On the countryside or in smaller cities, it may never be possible to play the game. Some games solve this issue by making it possible that players are not online at the same time. For example, they could record their own movements and upload them to a game server, so that others can download this data and play against the recordings without the other person being active at the same time, but this may not be applicable to every single multiplayer game concept. 3.7 Availability During our research about existing LBGs, we noticed that availability of the games is a big issue. This includes several problems, which can potentially limit the mass market acceptance and impact of LBGs. If a game is available for public download, it is obviously the best choice, as everyone interested in playing the game can start right away. However, some games only work in certain countries or with special network operators, thus severely limiting the reach of the game. Thinking about mass market acceptance, it is even worse if games are only available at special events. Usually, only a handful of people can participate, which essentially locks out most of the world.

4 Conclusion The previous section worked up different general factors that we believe to be representative for an analysis regarding the end user suitability and mass market fitness of LBGs. Subsequently we will analyze the games in terms of these crite-

Pushing Location Based Games Further

67

ria and give a summary of the results. First of all, here is an overview of the analyzed LBGs in context of our evaluation criteria in table 1. The classification categories of the criteria can be found in table 2. Table 3 shows the criteria assignments for end user classification. Table 4 gives an overview of how many LBGs suit certain criteria. Game title

Platform

Positioning

P h

H

T

S

P

MP

A

Inst. ?

Conquest

MMS/SM S

Semacodes

1

1

GPRS

2

n/ a

4

3

–

Botfighters 1

SMS

CellID

1

1

SMS

2

3

4

4

–

Gunslingers 1

SMS/Java ME

CellID

1

1

SMS/GP RS

2

4

4

2

0

Gunslingers 2

SMS/Java ME

CellID

1

1

SMS/GP RS

2

4

4

2

0

Botfighters 2

Java ME

CellID

1

1

GPRS

2

3

4

4

–

Undercover 1

Java ME

CellID

1

2

GPRS

2

3

4

1

0

Undercover 2

Java ME

CellID

1

2

GPRS

2

3

4

1

0

Mogi

Java ME

CellID/GPS

3

2

GPRS

2

3

2

2

–

Tron

Java ME

GPS

1

2

GPRS

1

1

3

1

0

RealReplay

Java ME

GPS

1

2

GPRS

1

1

2

1

0

RayGun

Java ME

GPS

3

2

None

1

n/ a

1

4

–

GeoTicTacToe

Java ME

GPS

1

2

GPRS

2

1

4

3

–

Swordfish

Java ME

A-GPS

3

2

GPRS

1

3

1

2

–

Torpedo Bay

Java ME

A-GPS

3

2

GPRS

2

3

1

2

–

Mobslinger

Java ME

Bluetooth

1

1

n/a

1

1

4

1

0

PAC-LAN

Java ME

RFID

1

2

GPRS

3

1

4

3

–

Symbian

CellID

2

1

None

1

1

1

1

0

68

Andreas Jakl et al.

The Journey 1

OS

The Journey 2

Symbian OS

CellID

2

1

None

1

2

1

1

0

SpaceRace

Apoxi

A-GPS

3

2

GPRS, Tel.

2

n/ a

4

4

–

Can U C me now

Win. Mobile

GPS

2

2

GPRS

4

1

3

3

–

Uncle roy all around you

Win. Mobile

Self-Rep.

2

1

GPRS

4

1

3

3

–

Feeding Yoshi

Win Mobile

WLAN

2

2

n/a

2

1

1

1

0

Songs o. t. North

Java ME

CellID

Concept only, no eval. possible.

4

–

Table 1: Evaluation of LBGs according to the defined criteria. Abbrev.

Criterion

Ph

Phone

H

S

P

MP

A

Hardware -

Application Setup

Game Price

Multiplayer

Availability

Nr.

Description

1

Any phone (Java ME)

2

Any phone (Symbian OS / Windows Mobile)

3

Only special phones (limited to a few models)

1

No additional hardware

2

Additional hardware (GPS receiver, W-LAN, etc.)

1

No setup required

2

Initial setup for each play field

3

Initial setup for each game

4

Operator services are required during the game

1

Free

2

Single purchase required

3

Costs during the game (subscription and/or data costs)

4

Purchase & Costs during the game

1

Single player possible

2

Multiplayer, not at the same time

3

Multiplayer at the same time, location irrelevant

4

Multiplayer at the same time and same location

1

Publically available

Pushing Location Based Games Further

Inst.?

69 2

Only available in certain countries / network operators

3

Only available at special events

4

Not / no longer publically available

Can play Instantly?

Evaluation Criterion according to table 3

Table 2: Overview of the evaluation criteria. Clas s

Platform

Positioning

Phon e

Ext. H/W

Traffic

Set up

Price

Multipl.

Avail.

–

proprietary

others

3

-

-

3, 4

-

-

3, 4

0

-

-

2

2

any cost

2

3,4

3, 4

2

+

others

Cell GPS

1

1

no costs

1

1,2

1, 2

1

ID,

Table 3: Criteria assignments for end user classification. Criterion Platform

JavaME (65%), SMS (17%), Windows Mobile (13%), Symbian (9%)

Pos. Technology

CellID (43%), GPS (39%), Others (18%)

Phone

JavaME (54%), Symbian & Windows Mobile (23%), Proprietary (23%)

Hardware

No additional Hardware (40%), Additional Hardware required (60%)

Data Traffic Costs

GPRS (80%), SMS (15%), No Costs (15%)

Setup required

Init. Setup (55%), None (32%), Operator Services (10%), Game Inst. Setup (3%)

Game Price

Free (47%), Subscription required (47%), Single purchase (6%)

Multiplayer

Multiplayer at the same time and same location (50%), Single player possible (27%), Multiplayer at the same time, location irrelevant (14%), Multiplayer, not at the same time (9%)

Availability

Publically available (34%), Only available in certain countries / network operators (22%), Only available at special events (22%), Not / no longer publically available (22%)

Can play Instantly?

No (57%), Maybe (43%), Yes (0%)

Table 4: Criteria analysis in percent.

70

Andreas Jakl et al.

The most interesting question for an end user is not whether the game he wants to play fits the above mentioned criteria, but if he can play the game right away, instantly so to say. In our terms this means that the game is end user suitable and therefore fit for the mass market. Thus, we defined an overall end user suitability criterion, based on our previous evaluation model. This is based on three different classes: The class of LBGs that are not suitable for the end user at all, is marked with a "–"-sign. The criteria for a game to fall into this category are if the platform is proprietary, the positioning technology is not GPS or Cell ID, the game is bound to run on a proprietary phone device, some form of play field has to be set up on a per-game basis or the game is only available at special events or even not at all. The class marked with a "0"-sign may be suitable for the end user, but has several drawbacks. We define games to fall in this class when they run on Symbian OS or Windows Mobile phone devices, they require some form of external hardware like a GPS receiver or W-LAN capability, generate any form of data traffic costs, an initial setup of a play field is required, the game generates consecutive game costs, the game only supports multiplayer modes where the players have to play simultaneously or the game is only available in certain countries or in association with special network operators. The most interesting class, marked with a "+"-sign, consists of games suiting the following criteria: The game does not run on a proprietary platform i.e. runs on SMS/MMS or Java ME, the positioning technology is Cell ID or GPS, the phone device is Java ME capable, no special or additional hardware is required, no traffic costs accumulate while playing, no application setup has to be performed, the game is available for free or only requires a single purchase, the game comprises a single player or multiplayer mode where the players don't have to play simultaneously and the game is available publicly. According to the definition of the above classification, table 3 contains an overview of the criteria allocation to a specific class. Based on this definition, we evaluated the LBGs based on their features with the lowest score. The final classification level is represented in rightmost column, marked "Inst.?" in table 1. The number of evaluated games out of all evaluated LBGs that can in fact be played instantly ("+") as defined above is zero! The LBGs having potential, but still drawbacks ("0") make up 43% and the games not being end user suitable at all are the rest, with 57%. See table 4 for further details. The above analysis shows that current location based games only have a limited potential ("0") or are not end user suitable at all ("–"). Similar to our intuition and in contrast to numerous statements, which predicted LBGs to be the next hype in mobile gaming, the analysis shows the expected results: There are prom-

Pushing Location Based Games Further

71

ising approaches in current LBG developments – however, none of the LBGs are ready to be deployed into the mass market. This shows that most of the current LBGs are only in the prototype or research phase and a lot more work needs to be done. We predict that it will take at least two more years until companies will start to pick up and utilize the LBG concept. During this time, the general conditions will most likely improve as well, with more GPS receivers being built into mobile phones, data tariffs getting cheaper and more developed concepts of LBGs evolved. When those games are finally deployed, they will gain the potential to have an enormous impact on the mobile gaming market.

References ABIresearch. Wireless handset software takes center stage, affirms abi research. Technical report, Allied Business Intelligence Inc., January 2004. Nicole Fabris. Grenville Armitage, Mark Claypool, and Philip Branch. Networking and Online Games. Understanding and Engineering Multiplayer Internet Games. Wiley & Sons, April 2006. Grenville Armitage and Lawrence Stewart. Limitations of using real-world, public servers to estimate jitter tolerance of first person shooter games. In ACE '04: Proceedings of the 2004 ACM SIGCHI International Conference on Advances in computer entertainment technology, volume 74, pages 257 - 262, New York, NY, USA, 2004. ACM. Steve Benford, Rob Anastasi, Martin Flintham, Adam Drozd, Andy Crabtree, Chris Greenhalgh, Nick Tandavanitj, Matt Adams, and Ju Row-Farr. Coping with uncertainty in a location-based game. IEEE pervasive computing, 2(3):3441, July 2003. Alan Dearle. Software deployment, past, present and future. In FOSE '07: 2007 Future of Software Engineering, pages 269-284, Washington, DC, USA, 2007. IEEE Computer Society. Stephan A. Drab and Gerald Binder. Spacerace - a location based game for mobile phones using assisted gps. In Hans W. Gellersen, Roy Want, and Albrecht Schmidt, editors, Pervasive Computing, Third International Conference, PERVASIVE 2005. Springer-Verlag GmbH, May 2005. Tobias Fritsch, Hartmut Ritter, and Jochen Schiller. Can mobile gaming be improved? In NetGames '06: Proceedings of 5th ACM SIGCOMM workshop on Network and system support for games, page 44, New York, NY, USA, 2006. ACM. J.Martin Graetz. The origin of spacewar. Creative Computing, August 1981.

72

Andreas Jakl et al.

Andreas Jakl. The Journey. http://journey.mopius.com/, 2004. Juniper research. Mobiles... playing the game. http://www.juniperresearch.com/, November 2007. White paper. Christopher Kassulke. Mobile Gaming: 7 Jahre Rückblick - 7 Jahre Vorschau. In Presentation at the "Making Games" Conference in Munic, July 2007. Elina M. I. Koivisto. Mobile games 2010. In CyberGames '06: Proceedings of the 2006 international conference on Game research and development, pages 1 2, Murdoch University, Australia, Australia, 2006. Murdoch University. Richard Marejka. Michael zhang - java me luminary at javaone 2007. Technical report, Sun Developers Network (SDN), April 2007. Brad A. Myers. A brief history of human-computer interaction technology. interactions, 5(2):44 - 54, 1998. Nielsen Entertainment. Evolution of mobile gaming. Online, 2006. Virpi Roto, Roland Geisler, Anne Kaikkonen, Andrei Popescu, and Elina Vartiainen. Data traffic costs and mobile browsing user experience. Technical report, Nokia Research Center and Technology Platforms, 2006. Steria Mummert Consulting. Handy-Spiele treten zum Siegeszug an. Online publication (http://www.steria-mummert.de/presse/pressearchiv/2.-quartal-2006/handyspiele-treten-zum-siegeszug-an), April 2006. Symbian Limited. Symbian fast facts. Online publication (http://www.symbian.com/about/fastfacts/fastfacts.html), October 2007. Mark Weiser. Creating the invisible interface: (invited talk). In UIST '94: Proceedings of the 7th annual ACM symposium on User interface software and technology, page 1, New York, NY, USA, 1994. ACM.

Mobile Game Based Learning: Designing a Mobile Location Based Game Sandra Schadenbauer, Austria Abstract Today’s students grow up with rapidly changing technology. They spend much of their spare time using computer games, mobile phones and other toys and tools of the digital age. These things are part of their lives. Now it’s time to redesign the educational system and to adjust it to today’s technological opportunities. The current system is out of date. It isn’t able to arouse interest in students. With new technology, schools are able to rebuild their educational system and to spark the student’s interest in learning and further education. Passive and disinterested children will be a thing of the past. The progress of technology should cause an improvement of the education. Games and other popular technologies, like mobile phones, are able to support the learning process in schools. A mobile learning game was developed to exemplify the connection between games, mobility and learning. The game is a modern paper chase, which is played with mobile phones and GPS. Such games are called “geocaching”. Players are pressed for time and receive site-directed information and have to solve exercises.

1 Introduction Digital Natives are people, who were born into a digital world. They have grown up with new technology (computers, internet, videogames, digital music player, video cams, mobile phones and other toys and tools of the digital age). Digital Natives are used to the instantaneity of hypertext, downloaded music, phones in their pockets, library on their laptops, beamed messages and instant messaging. They’ve been networked most or all of their lives. They have little patience for lectures, step-by-step logic, and “tell-test” instruction. Pedagogues must find a way to speak this new, digital language. Today’s teachers have to find new methods because today’s learners are different. They need to reconsider methodology and content. One way to adapting material to the language of Digital Natives is to create learning games. This paper describes a mobile location based game, called

74

Sandra Schadenhauer

“Physics Geocaching”. The game is created in a framework of special Moodle activity modules and is played with a mobile phone application, called “MoMo”. During the game, players have to find and solve tasks, which are hidden on the field.

2 Concept

Figure 1 Concept

Figure 1 shows the concept of the learning game’s technical procedure. A user is outside on the field with his mobile phone and a GPS receiver. The GPS coordinates are sent to a server. This server checks up the database and figures out whether the coordinates are in a polygon or not. Polygons are stored in a Moodle database. Moodle learning objects are attached to this polygons. If a user is inside one polygon he will receive the associated learning objects. Furthermore the GPS coordinates are saved in a database. This allows users to take a look on their previous routes or on the current position of other users. Another possibility is to pick a user, who is outside on the field and to send him a message. The learning game is a modern paper case with a main focus on physics. Several teams play the game under time pressure. The players have to solve tasks and have to reach specific areas on the field to get new tasks or aids. There are a lot

Mobile Game Based Learning

75

of possibilities to make tasks and aids available to players, for example GPS areas, Flash Lite1 movies, text, images, movies, websites, audio files, SemaCode2 Tags and so on. Moreover pieces of a key are hidden on the field. The key offers access to further information. The learning game is based on two media. Players, who are outside on the field, use mobile phones with MoMo. The paper case is created with a learning platform, called “Moodle”. The game is a Moodle course, inside this course there are all tasks, aids and so on. The emcee uses Moodle to start the game. Players receive a start signal on the mobile phones.

3 Framework 3.1 Tools 3.1.1

Moodle

“Moodle is a free software e-learning platform, also known as a Course Management System (CMS), or Learning Management Systems (LMS). Moodle is designed to help educators create online courses with opportunities for rich interaction. Its open source license and modular design means that people can develop additional functionality. Development is undertaken by a globally diffused network of commercial and non-commercial users. The stated philosophy of Moodle includes a constructivist and social constructionist approach to education, emphasising that learners (and not just teachers) can contribute to the educational experience in many ways. Moodle's features reflect this in various design aspects, such as making it possible for students to comment on entries in a database (or even to contribute entries themselves), or to work collaboratively in a wiki.”

1

2

“Adobe® Flash® Lite software is the Flash technology specifically developed for mobile phones and consumer electronics devices. Flash Lite dramatically accelerates the delivery of rich content and browsing and customized user interfaces.” “Semacode is a software company based in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. It is also this company's trade name for machine-readable ISO/IEC 16022 Data Matrix symbols which encode internet Uniform Resource Locators (URLs). It is primarily aimed at being used with cellular phones which have built-in cameras. The Data Matrix specification is given by the ISO/IEC 16022 standard. Using Semacode SDK software, a URL can be converted into a type of barcode resembling a crossword puzzle, which is called a "tag". Tags can be quickly captured with a mobile phone's camera and decoded to obtain a Web site address. This address can then be accessed via the phone's web browser.”

76

3.1.2

Sandra Schadenhauer

Mobile Classroom and MoMo

“The project ‘Mobile Classroom’ makes a clear contribution to the future of learning and classroom education. It is one of the first mobile learning applications available in the market that is readily implemented and even practically tested for real-life usage in classroom scenarios. It uses best-practice technologies to allow for the easy and cost effective implementation and adoption of mobile learning scenarios. The ‘momo’ client (short for ‘mobile Moodle’) running on a wide variety of mobile devices not only allows for the consumption of learning contents, like it would also be possible on other devices like notebooks or tablet PCs. Instead, it makes use of the manifold multimedia capabilities modern mobile phones offer and thereby turns them into valuable tools for creating, distributing and sharing knowledge. Not only that it offers completely new and innovative ways for teachers to design didactical settings, it empowers the students to actively investigate topics of interest and share and build upon their findings using features like mobile blogging or video documentation.” 3.1.3

Google Maps and Google Maps API

“Google Maps is a free web mapping service application and technology provided by Google that powers many map-based services including the Google Maps website and embedded maps on third-party websites via the Google Maps API.” Google Maps features a map that can be navigated by dragging the mouse, or using the mouse wheel to zoom in (mouse wheel up) or out (mouse wheel down) to show detailed street information. Users may enter an address, intersection or general area to quickly find it on the map. Google created the Google Maps API to facilitate developers integrating Google Maps into their web sites with their own data points. … By using the Google Maps API you can embed the full Google Maps on an external web site. Start by creating an API Key, it will be bound to the web site and directory you enter when creating the key. Creating your own map interface involves adding the Google JavaScript code to your page, and then using Javascript functions to add points to the map.”

3.1.4

GPS

“The Global Positioning System (GPS) is the only fully functional Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS). Utilizing a constellation of at least 24 medium

Mobile Game Based Learning

77

Earth orbit satellites that transmit precise microwave signals, the system enables a GPS receiver to determine its location, speed/direction, and time. A GPS receiver calculates its position by measuring the distance between itself and three or more GPS satellites. Measuring the time delay between transmission and reception of each GPS microwave signal gives the distance to each satellite, since the signal travels at a known speed. These signals also carry information about the satellites' location … By determining the position of, and distance to, at least three satellites, the receiver can compute its position using trilateration. Receivers typically do not have perfectly accurate clocks and therefore track one or more additional satellites, using their atomic clocks to correct the receiver's own clock error.” 3.2 Moodle Activity “GPS Area” With the Moodle Activity Module “GPS Area” you can draw GPS areas on a Google Map. A GPS area must consist of three points at least. At the same time a SemaCode Tag is created, so that users without GPS can get information according to this area. The map shows all already existing GPS areas (from the same course as well as from other courses). This helps to avoid overlapping of GPS areas. If a user stands inside an intersection of two or more GPS areas, it could be possible that he won’t get the entire information of all areas. The vertexes of the GPS area are defined by clicking on the map. The area is build to a polygon with these vertexes. At the same time a SemaCode Tag is created at the position of the first vertex.

Figure2: Moodle Activity Module "GPS Area"

78

Sandra Schadenhauer

Information is associated to a GPS area by adding resources and activities to the same Moodle section which already contains the GPS area.

Figure 3: Moodle Section with a GPS Area and other activities

3.3 MoMo GPS One of MoMo’s functions is to transfer GPS data from a GPS receiver to the mobile phone over Bluetooth or to receive the GPS data from the mobile phone’s internal GPS receiver. This function has to be included to a PHP-script, which starts the GPS receiving.

Figure 4: MoMo GPS

The GPS coordinates are sent to a server, which checks if the coordinates are in a polygon or not. Therefore all polygons from the user’s courses are picked and an algorithm3 verifies if the position is in the polygon. The user gets a note (“You are in the GPS area ‘…’, do you want to select this area?”) and after his acceptance, the information is shown. 3

Point-In-Polygon Algorithm — Determining Whether A Point Is Inside A Complex Polygon [vergleiche (Finely, 2006)]

Mobile Game Based Learning

79

Figure 5 Inside a polygon

3.4 Moodle Block “Online Users” The Moodle Block “Online Users (GPS)” shows users, who are currently using GPS.

Figure 6 Moodle Block "Online Users (GPS)"

By clicking on the user’s name a map with the current position and the previous route of the user is shown. The position is updated every few seconds. In addition there is the possibility to send a message to the user.

80

Sandra Schadenhauer

Figure7: User's position and route

3.5 Moodle Activity Module “GPS Game” The Moodle Activity Module “GPS Game” allows creating games with GPS areas. Every GPS area in the same course as the GPS game is part of the game. There are several settings to be made: •

name of the game

•

game duration

•

start point on map (you can switch between all GPS areas)

•

choose players

Mobile Game Based Learning

81

Figure8: Moodle Activity Module "GPS Game"

After the game has been started, the positions of all players are shown and continuously updated. On the left is a list of players. By clicking on a player’s name the map is centred on the player’s position, by clicking on the letter symbol a message can be sent to the player and by clicking on the globe the previous route of the player is shown. On the right is a list of GPS areas. By clicking on an area the map is centred on the area. At the game’s start several actions are in progress: •

GPS areas, which are only available for games, are activated

•

Every player gets a message, “Game started!”

•

Game starts and the time left is shown

•

Current positions of players are updated every 30 seconds

82

Sandra Schadenhauer

4 Physics Geocoaching

Figure 9: Logo Physics Geocaching

„Physics Geocaching“ is a modern outdoor paper chase. It was created with the learning platform Moodle with the aid of the Moodle Activity Modules “GPS Area” and “GPS Game”. The game is played on mobile phones by means of MoMo and GPS. “Physics Geocaching” is played by two up to five teams each with two players at least. Tasks and aids, which deal with physics, are hidden on the field. They can be found inside of GPS areas, behind SemaCode Tags or directly on the field. Moreover there are parts of a key on the field. The key is a German phrase, written in capital letters and without blanks. The players are registered as students in the course “Physics Geocaching” and are assigned to teams. The players of the current heat are listed in the instance of the Moodle Activity Module “GPS Game”. The emcee starts the game, contemporaneous the GPS areas are activated and the players get a message (“Game started” and duration). Players move on the field and look for tasks, aids and parts of the key. As soon as they leave the field they get a message.

Mobile Game Based Learning

83

Figure 10: Field of “Physics Geocaching“

4.1 Story “According to legend, it was the devil himself who created Schlossberg. He had promised the people of Graz to make their local mountain, the Schöckl, higher. Of course, in exchange for the first soul climbing up heightened Schöckl. When flying over Graz with a huge rock from Africa in his hands, he caught sight of a procession. It was on Easter Sunday. On which he had no power on humans. And therefore he could not win any soul. In (un-)righteous anger Satan threw the rock onto the town. The rock broke in two parts. Today the smaller one is Austein with its Calvary. The bigger one is Schlossberg.“ Now many years later, the devil returns and calls for obligation, but now he demands not only one soul but every single soul of Graz. Only a small group of young people can prevent this by beating the devil in a challenge. They have to

84

Sandra Schadenhauer

hike the Schlossberg and seek for tasks. If they are able to find all tasks and to solve all of them, the devil will disappear and the souls of Graz will be saved. 4.2 Goal Players have to find all tasks, aids and parts of the key. The must solve the tasks and have to return as fast as possible to the starting point. The tasks can be solved with teamwork and with the detected aids. The answers are posted in the team’s forum. Every team only has access to his own forum. After all tasks have been solved, the parts of the key have been collected and have been put together in the right way, the team has access to another course. In this course the devil admits defeat and the players have the possibility to take a view on all tasks and solutions with explanations. The emcee evaluates the results of every team and identifies the winner. The team which was the first to defeat the devil is the winner. The teams receive small prizes due to their placement. 4.3 Field „The word ‘Schlossberg’ literally means ‘castle mountain’, which describes it exactly. It is a hill topped by a castle, in the centre of the city of Graz, Austria. Among Graz's most famous tourist attractions, the castle, never occupied until its partial demolition by Napoleonic forces under the Peace of Schönbrunn of 1809, was once a place of refuge for Graz's residents. It was turned into a public park on account of Ludwig von Welden in 1839. The Schlossberg contains an ‘Uhrturm’ (clock tower), which functions as a recognisable icon for the city. Near the Uhrturm there is a café with views over the old town. Additionally, on the western side of the Schlossberg, there is a small café and next to the terminus of the funicular railway there is a hilltop restaurant with views of western Graz. An open-air stage for concerts and performances is located in the cellars of the former fortress. Furthermore, you can see two bastions and the bell tower. To reach the top of the hill one can either take the funicular railway (‘Schlossbergbahn’), an elevator built inside the mountain, or one of the older sets of pathways and steps.“ 4.4 Tasks The tasks of “Physics Geocaching” are demonstrated as Flash Lite movies and are hidden in GPS areas or behind SemaCode Tags. The teams post their answers in their own team forum.

Mobile Game Based Learning

85

4.5 Aids The aids of “Physics Geocaching” are shown just like the tasks as Flash Lite movies and are hidden in GPS areas or behind SemaCode Tags. The tasks should be easily solved in teams and with usage of the aids. The aids don’t blurt the solution, but the give general information and hidden hints. With consideration and team work the tasks shouldn’t be a problem. 4.6 Key The key consists of twelve parts and gives access to a second course for prize and further information. The key is “DERTEUFELSTECKTIMDETAIL” (this is a German phrase). The parts are either components of the tasks’ solutions or are hidden on the field. 4.7 Notes Beside aids there are also hints in the game. The hints refer to the hideout of the tasks. The hints are told by the devil. Such hints are for example: “Tasks 2 is close by many steps.” or “Task 5 is near the Donau waltz”. Behind some hints are no leads, but mockeries: “Ha-Ha, you will never beat me!” or “Are you still looking for tasks? You will never solve all of them!”.

5 Usability Test To check the idea and usability of “Physics Geocaching”, the game was tested with participants. The aim of the test was to find answers to the following questions: How are mobile phones used by young people? Which media are consumed by teenagers? How often do young people play games? Which kinds of games are popular? How important is social interaction in games? Do teenagers accept mobile learning games? Do the test subjects like the game and the story? Are the tasks difficult/easy? Do the aids help to solve the tasks? Does the framework support the game progress? Which technical problems can occur? Which potential improvement is possible?

86

Sandra Schadenhauer

The usability test needed special equipment. The participants got a Nokia N71 and a GPS Bluetooth Mouse (BT-315) from Navilock. Furthermore they got notepads and pens. In addition to the material for the test subjects, some other items were necessary. For example task 1 required a scale, a measuring cup and a stone. These components are needed to figure out the density of a stone.

Figure11: Equipment for usability test

Every participant of the usability test got a little present. The winner team received a special present. Previous to the usability test, SemaCode Tags and additional equipment were placed on the Schlossberg. The participants used the instruction manual very rare. The start signal and the task were clear to everyone. The tests subjects liked the story and the teamwork during the game. They could imagine to play learning games on mobile phones over again. The test persons said that the tasks had a nice design. They weren’t very difficult because the aids were helpful and so the tasks could be solved without any problems. The participants weren’t able to find all of the tasks and therefore they weren’t able to collect all parts of the key. One participant said: “Through the contrary weather it wasn’t possible to seek for all tasks and to find them respectively.

Mobile Game Based Learning

87

The handling of the MoMo components hastn’t a problem for the test persons. SemaCode Tags could be easily photographed. The participants didn’t think that GPS were difficult to use, but there were some problems due to the weather and the transmission between GPS receiver and mobile phone.

Figure12: Usability test

6 Conclusion The paper on hand shows an innovative learning method. Learning and learners have changed and so the education has to change too. Learning with games works and students are motivated by games. The part of the teacher and the right game determine the success of game based learning. “Physics Geocaching” based on a framework, which allows creating varied types of learning games. These learning games can use GPS areas, Flash Lite movies, text, images, movies, websites, audio files, SemaCode Tags and many more. With GPS it’s possible to leave the classroom and to learn on site. “Physics Geocaching” is a modern paper case, which is played with mobile phones and GPS. It takes place on the Schlossberg in Graz. Students have to solve tasks, which have a main focus on Physics.

88

Sandra Schadenhauer

References Prensky, M. (2001). Digital Game-Based Learning Chapter 1: The Digital Game-Based Learning Revolution. (2007-04-10) http://www.adobe.com/products/flashlite/ (2007-09-26) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semacode (2007-09-26) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moodle (2007-09-25) Forstinger, Andreas. MoMo Short Description. http://moodle.mobileclassroom.at/moodle18/mod/resource/view.php?id=501 (2007-09-25) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_maps (2007-09-25) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gps (2007-09-25) http://cms.graztourismus.at/cms/beitrag/10030602/1390937 (2007-09-25) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grazer_Schlo%C3%9Fberg (2007-09-25)

Thessaloniki’s City Guide: a Tourist Site for Handheld Devices Niki Theodorou, Greece Abstract Mobile browsing is expected to become very popular during the next decade. Users will connect to the Internet and use a mobile browser as an every day tool, usually as a part of their mobile telephone. Many services that would be relevant for mobile use are location or time dependent such as: tourist information; maps; and train timetables. This paper describes step by step the production of the mobile tourist site of the city of Thessaloniki Greece. In the paper both the marketing strategies and the mobile site development techniques are included.

1 Introduction Tourism is an economic and social activity people have been familiar with for many years now. Tourists are people who travel for leisure either inside their own country or to other countries with the aim to meet new people, places, cultures, etc. As a result of this movement of people to various places, new tourist jobs and businesses are created in tourist countries. Over the years, tourism has become one of the most important sources of income and employment throughout the world (world tourism organization, n.d.). Thessaloniki’s city guide is a tourist website intended to be viewed through handheld devices. This city guide is targeted at all tourists, regardless of age, sex, occupation and educational level, that intent to visit the city of Thessaloniki and possess and can use a mobile device with wireless Internet connection.

2 Background 2.1 Marketing and Tourism In the tourism business marketing plays a very important role. Marketing is about finding out what the customer wants and then producing the product to serve these needs. Marketing has to come out with answers to the following questions: What can be sold? To whom? When? Where? And in what quantities? The process of finding the answers involves marketing research. Marketing

90

Niki Theodorou

research is the collection and analysis of data that can help an organization to reach decisions about its products’ design. The result of the marketing research will be the 4 Ps of the marketing mix: Product, Price, Place and Promotions. The first P (Product) has to do with decisions about the product’s design, quality, features etc. The second P (Price) has to do with decisions about the list price, discounts, commissions etc. The third P (Place) has to do with decisions about the distribution channels, the method of distribution, the coverage, the location etc. Lastly, the forth P (Promotion) has to do with decisions about advertising, sales promotion etc. (Holloway, 2004, p. 59-99). The promotion of a tourist destination, the forth P of the marketing mix, is very important in any successful marketing planning. One way to promote tourist destinations is through destination management systems (DMS). DMS is a collection of data interactively accessible about a destination. DMS typically include information about attractions and facilities and often give customers the ability to make reservations. DMS are usually managed by a destination management organization which can be public or private (Buhalis, 2003, p.279-310). A very important factor for a successful online DMS is a great domain name. Building a great site is just the beginning, what is more important is to direct traffic to the site and that requires a lot of planning and effort. A good domain name can increase traffic to our site. The organization’s name is usually the best choice and should used whenever possible. In case the organization’s name is not well known, a catchy descriptive phrase of the subject of the website will be a good option. Moreover, when doing business in an international environment the most common top level domain name ending in .com, which is used around the world, should be adopted. 85% of Internet users plan their vacations using search engines, which makes a good domain name id more than just important for the completion of the organization’s goals (Sweeney, 2000, p. 14-40). The key in marketing is to understand the buyer’s behavior. The first thing an organization should do is to get to know its customers. When working on a large scale, customers can be grouped and then targeted as a group. There are two ways to group customers into market segments: the simple and the subtle segmentation. In simple segmentation, customer groups are defined through demographic data such as age, gender, occupation, income, location etc. On the other hand, in subtle segmentation customer groups are established according to personality, attitudes, opinions etc. (Cope, 2006, p.155-140) 2.2 Designing a mobile website When designing a mobile web site special consideration should be given to the limited screen size on the mobile device and the network connectivity. The W3C mobile best practices 1.0 gives detailed guidelines for the designers of mobile

Thessaloniki’s City Guide

91

sites. As far as the presentation of the data on the site is concerned, users must get immediate feedback as to whether they are accessing the right content or not. Regarding the input, since mobile devices often have a very limited keypad, lengthy URLs are difficult to type correctly and should be avoided. As far as the Bandwidth and cost are concerned, the browsing experience may not be satisfactory if the pages contain unnecessary information. The extra material contributes to poor usability and may add considerably to the retrieval cost. Lastly, as far as advertising is concerned, pop-ups and large banners may not work well on small devices (W3C, n.d.). The default delivery content is defined as follows: •

User screen width: 120 pixel.

•

Markup language support: XHTML-Basic profile.

•

Character encoding: UTF-8.

•

Image format support: JPEG, GIF89a.

•

Maximum total page weight: 20Kbytes.

•

Colors: web safe.

•

Stylesheet support: external CSS level.

IBM Company (Cotton & Commarford, 2005) also provides guidelines for web content designing for mobile browsers. According to IBM, web page information must have minimal vertical and horizontal scrolling to achieve an easy to use user interface. Moreover, graphical content should be limited. Page graphics, in the form of logos, icons, images, etc. increase page load time and occupy the limited space, thus forcing relevant information like text, hyperlinks, etc. to the outskirts of the display area. Furthermore, text should be limited because of display size limitations and link navigation, numbered where appropriate, should be used whenever possible. The use of forms and data entry fields should be limited. Whenever possible, a series of hyperlinks should be used as an alternative to excessive use of data fields. Lastly, non-essential links should be placed at the bottom of the page. This preserves space and places the most important information in the user’s view upon entry to the page. Dotmobi mobile sites developer guidebook (Cremin, Rabin, Fling & Robinson, 2007) suggests the use of alt tags for images for accessibility reasons. The Alt tags should describe in text the content of the image and are useful to disabled users and to all users if for any reason the image doesn’t load on the page or takes too long to load. The use of tables for layout is not recommended. Instead CSS stylesheets are preferred. Additionally, primary navigation should appear in ordered lists and the use of access keys in the primary navigation (keypad numbers), should be used whenever possible. Access keys should be used consis-

92

Niki Theodorou

tently across the site, for example 9 always goes back to the main menu regardless of the page we are on. Linking phone numbers is very helpful in mobile sites. In this way, when a user follows a link, the mobile phone will automatically dial the phone number. At the end of every page users must be given “a place to go”, usually a home or a back link. No more than 4 steps should be required to reach a destination in the web site. Lastly, when forms are necessary to appear on a mobile web site, the use of radio buttons and select boxes is preferable to text boxes and text areas. As far as the color is concerned we must ensure that the information conveyed with color is also available without color. Additionally, we must ensure that the foreground and the background color combinations provide sufficient contrast (W3C, n.d.). Recommendations made by Nokia mobile development forum suggest the use of a sans-serif family, although chances are that the mobile device will display the info in sans-serif anyway. As far as the font size is concerned, 18px bold is suggested for heading 1, 16px bold for heading 2, 14px bold for heading 3, 12px bold for heading 4 and 12px normal for body text (Nokia, n.d.). Testing is also very important when designing a mobile web site. There exist three ways to test a mobile site. The first one is to use a desktop browser and resize pages to see how the content is displayed. The second way to test a mobile site is to use an emulator for testing the browser’s behavior. Lastly, one can do some on-device testing of the mobile site (Nokia, n.d.). Designing a mobile website, however, may not always be enough. In most cases an organization will need its website to be viewed though desktop computers as well as mobile devices. In these cases three solutions exist for adapting web pages. The first option is to write two totally different pages, one for desktop PCs and one for mobile devices. The second option is to adapt the page using CSS. One can create multiple CSS files one for each device class. Then the media attribute can be used to tell the browser to choose the correct CSS. The third option is to use an automatic generator to create the mobile web page (Stormer, 2006). 2.3 Work Rationale The purpose of the work is to design and develop a mobile web site which will provide all the information a tourist will need during his stay at the city of Thessaloniki. From analysis of the preceding review of literature, it is possible to conclude that in order to create a successful mobile tourist site both the above mentioned marketing strategies and mobile site development techniques must be taken into consideration.

Thessaloniki’s City Guide

93

3 Method 3.1 The problem When tourists are visiting a new destination they want to have access to up to date information about the place while they are exploring it. Maps, books and Internet websites can not satisfy this need because maps and books on one hand can not be constantly updated and websites on the other hand need a computer and an Internet connection in order to be viewed. Mobile tourist sites provide the solution to this problem as they can be constantly updated and can be viewed through handheld devices. Thessaloniki’s city guide mobile website can be organized to contain all the desired information about the city of Thessaloniki, can be easily updated to include the latest available information and can be viewed by tourists when they are on the go. Moreover, tourist businesses would like to be in charge of the content appearing on the pages of a website that concern their activities. Thessaloniki’s city guide website will give tourist businesses the opportunity to update on their own the information about themselves. In that way each tourist business will be responsible for the content of its webpage and will be responsible for providing the latest information about its activities. 3.2 Apparatus The tool used to develop Thessaloniki’s city guide mobile site is XHTML in combination with Joomla content management system. XHTML was used because is recommended by ‘W3C mobile web best practices 1.0’. XHTML is supported by all handheld devices and has the ability to scale content according to screen size. Joomla content management system was used because with its help content information can be easily updated across the site. Moreover, links and navigation are automatically updated when changes are made to the site. Content contributors do not need technical expertise in web development in order to create or update web pages. Additionally, time sensitive information can be assigned expire or release times when created, to ensure that out-dated information is removed immediately. Lastly, content management systems offer better security and users can have access only to content that is permissible to them (Southeastern Louisiana University, n.d).

94

Niki Theodorou

3.3 Design and Procedure 3.3.1

Marketing

According to (Cope, 2006, p.155-140) it is important for a company to get to know its potential customers before producing a product. In Thessaloniki’s city guide we have grouped customers into market segments using the simple segmentation. In simple segmentation, customer groups are defined through demographic data such as age, gender, occupation, income, location etc. According to statistical data released by the Greek national statistic company (2006), most tourists who visit Greece are coming from UK, Germany, Italy and France. As a result the content of the mobile tourist site will be provided in these languages in addition to Greek (See Figure 1). 3.3.2

Interface Design

In mobile site design pages should not contain unnecessary information because that will result in poor usability and will add to the retrieval cost. Mobile web pages should not have maximal total weight more than 20 Kbytes (W3C, n.d). Thessaloniki’s city guide pages maximal total weight is approximately 10 Kbytes. Moreover, considerable scrolling is not recommended. Additionally, users should get immediate feedback as to whether they are accessing the right page or not (W3C, n.d.). In Thessaloniki’s mobile site except for the home page, in the rest of the pages users get as a header the name of the page they are currently viewing, so that they can get immediate feedback as to whether they are accessing the right content or not (See figure 2).

Figure 1. Thessaloniki’s city guide. Home page.

Figure 2. Menu

Thessaloniki’s City Guide

95

IBM suggests that graphical content should be limited because it increases load time and occupies the limited space. However, when graphical content is used, alt tags, which describe the purpose of the image, should always be provided for accessibility reasons (Cremin, Rabin, Fling & Robinson, 2007). In Thessaloniki’s city guide photos are used only in the sightseeings pages because they provide essential information (See Figure 3) and Thessaloniki’s logo is only displayed in the first welcome page and the menu page (See Figure 4). On the rest of the pages, for space reasons the logo is not included.

Figure 3. Thessaloniki’s city guide. Sightseeing’s page

96

Niki Theodorou

Figure 4. Thessalonikis City Guide Homepage

The use of tables for layout in mobile sites is not recommended. Instead external CSS stylesheets are preferred (Cremin, Rabin, Fling & Robinson, 2007). In Thessaloniki’s city guide layout is controlled by external CSS stylesheets only. As far as color choices are concerned, only web safe colors should be used. Moreover, the information conveyed with color should also be available without color. Additionally, foreground and background color combinations should have sufficient contrast (W3C, n.d.). In Thessaloniki’s city guide shades of white and blue color from the web safe palette are used. The choice of colors is affected by the colors of Thessaloniki’s city flag which are blue, white and gold. Besides, the white background and the black or blue foreground have sufficient contrast. Regarding the information provided about specific venues in Thessaloniki’s city guide web site, users are given the option to search according to location (West Thessaloniki, Center, East Thessaloniki) Moreover, although the information given for a specific venue is controlled by the corresponding tourist companies, it is recommended that the content is limited to what is absolutely necessary. This fact helps users to get quickly the information they are after and not get lost in blocks of paragraphs.

Thessaloniki’s City Guide

3.3.3

97

Navigation

According to IBM, link navigation, numbered where appropriate, should be used whenever possible. Series of hyperlinks should be used as an alternative to excessive data fields. However, no more than 4 steps should be required to reach a destination in the web site. In addition, access keys should be used in primary navigation and they should be consistent throughout the entire site. Users should always be given ‘a place to go’, usually a home or a back button. Lastly, link phone numbers are very helpful in mobile sites. When a user follows a link, the mobile phone will automatically dial the phone number (Cremin, Rabin, Fling & Robinson, 2007).

Figure 5. Thessaloniki’s city guide. Menu page.,

In Thessaloniki’s city guide no data fields are used, only series of hyperlinks which are always numbered (See Figure 5). In no case more than 4 steps are required in order to reach a destination within the web site Accesskeys are used for primary navigation and they are consistent throughout the entire site: in order to go back to the menu page accesskey ‘9’ is used regardless of the page we are currently on. Moreover, on every page of Thessaloniki’s city guide web site there exists a return option (back, menu) that navigates the users either to the previous page or the Menu page of the site. Lastly, dial links are used with all phone numbers. Moreover, Thessaloniki’s city guide also provides a ‘How to navigate’ page with information on how to use this site from a handheld device. 3.3.4

Typography and Text

According to Nokia for mobile sites the sans-serif family should always be used. The recommended text sizes for mobile sites are: 18px bold is suggested for heading 1, 16px bold for heading 2, 14px bold for heading 3, 12px bold for

98

Niki Theodorou

heading 4 and 12px normal for body text. Thessaloniki’s city guide uses sansserif fonts. Hyperlinks are displayed in 12px bold while text is displayed in 12px normal.

4 Testing Testing is also very important when designing a mobile web site. There exist three ways to test a mobile site. The first one is to use a desktop browser and resize pages to see how the content is displayed. The second way to test a mobile site is to use an emulator for testing the browser’s behavior. Lastly, one can do some on-device testing of the mobile site (Nokia, n.d.). Thessaloniki’s city guide was tested with all major desktop browsers (IE, Mozilla, Opera, Netscape), with Openwave V7, Nokia, dotmobi N70 and Opera mini emulators and with real devices. The site was well displayed on all of the above. However, some problems occurred as far as the phones of older generations were concerned. The CMS pages were not fully compliant with phones that did not have proper browsers and as a result certain content was not properly displayed. To solve this problem, owners of phones of older generations are encouraged to download proper browsers, like for example the opera mini browser, to their mobile phones.

References Beech, J. & Chadwick S. (Eds.). (2006). The business of tourist management. Essex: Prentice Hall. Buhalis, D. (2003). E-tourism. Information technology for strategic tourist management. Essex: Prentice Hall. Cotton, J. & Commarford, P. (2005). Designing web content for mobile browsers. Retrieved June 2007 from: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/library/wi-web/index.html . IBM. Greek national statistic company (2006). Arrivals of tourists from abroad, year 2005. Retrieved June 2007 from: http://www.statistics.gr/gr_tables/S604_STO_4_DT_AN_05_Y.pdf . Holloway, J.C. (2004). Marketing for tourism. Essex: Prentice Hall. Nokia (n.d.). Nokia web browser designer guide. Retrieved June 2007 from: http://www.forum.nokia.com/main/resources/technologies/browsing/articles/intr oduction_to_the_nokia_web_browser.html

Thessaloniki’s City Guide

99

Ronan Cremin, Jo Rabin, Brian Fling & D. Keith Robinson (2007). DotMobi: mobile web developer guide. Retrieved June 15, 2007, from http://pc.dev.mobi/files/dotMobi%20Mobile%20Web%20Developers%20Guide. pdf. Southeastern Louisiana University (n.d.). Why Use a Content Management System for The New Southeastern Web? Retrieved June 2007 from: http://www.selu.edu/webredesign/cms/index.html . Stormer, H. (2006). Exploring Solutions for a MobileWeb. Proceedings of the 8th IEEE International Conference on E-Commerce Technology and the 3rd IEEE International Conference on Enterprise Computing, E-Commerce, and EServices (CEC/EEE’06), p. 75-75 IEEE. Retrieved June 2007 Sweeney, S. (2000). Internet marketing for your tourism business. Proven techniques for promoting tourist-based businesses over the Internet. CA: Maximum Press. World tourism organization (n.d.). Tourism – an Economic and Social Phenomenon. Retrieved June 15, 2007, from http://www.unwto.org/aboutwto/why/en/why.php?op=1. W3C (n.d). Mobile web best practices 1.0. Retrieved June 2007 from: http://www.w3.org/TR/mobile-bp/

C

The Mobile Content Paradigm

The Mobile Paradigm for Content Development Chris Bennewith and Richard Vickers, UK Abstract This paper looks at the lack of engaging content currently being produced by content developers for mobile devices and some of the reasons behind this phenomenon. It questions the relevance of professional content developers when the most entertaining and useful content to be found on mobiles presently is produced and shared by the users themselves and not commercial organisations. It will examine the fundamental problems underlying this lack of professionally developed content and reflect on lessons from past developments in media that may help to hypothesise about the future development of mobile content and consequently a paradigm for content development. The paper links together research from the areas of HCI, the social sciences, general media discourse and the quantitative analysis of data based on the usage of mobile phones. Through the researching and writing of this paper the enormity of this subject became apparent and has been impossible to deal with in any detail within the confines of this paper. Consequently many of the areas discussed are open to far more substantial analysis and discussion and are by no means fully resolved investigations.

1 Current Paradigm for Mobile Content Development and Delivery The current mobile paradigm for content creation and delivery, or as Adobe’s Mobile and Devices expert, Bill Perry describes it, the ‘mobile ecosystem’, exists as follows: •

Device manufacturers or OEMs (Original Equipment Manufacturers) such as Nokia and LG

•

Operators such as Vodafone, O2 and Orange

•

Content Aggregators who buy content from developers and sell it to operators

•

Content creators/developers

102

Chris Bennewith and Richard Vickers

2 The Problem “Physically shrinking everything including the input and output devices does not create a usable mobile computer. Instead, we need radical changes in our interaction techniques, comparable to the sea change in the 1980s from command line to graphical user interfaces. As with that development, the breakthrough we need in interaction techniques will most likely come not from relatively minor adjustments to existing interface hardware and software, but from a less predictable mixture of inspiration and experimentation” (Ibrahim 2006, p. 72) The current paradigm that exists (as previously detailed) for content development and delivery on mobiles is not dissimilar to that of other media types such as Radio, TV, the Internet and even literature. So why then is there a distinct lack of products being produced commercially for mobiles which have been truly successful? The difficulty with mobiles is the diversity of their use (sometimes for bizarre purposes), but also that by their very existence mobiles mitigate against all of the principles of traditional Human Computer Interface Design for the creation of effective content, as discussed by Love (2005). These being: 2.1 Context of Use Knowing the situation in which your software will be used. The very principle of the mobile means that the locations in which it’s used will vary dramatically from a conversation in a quiet space while you are sat down doing nothing else, to a rushed exchange in a busy street as you try to avoid oncoming pedestrians 2.2 Consistency and Learnability Due to the vast array of mobile handsets available it is very difficult to get a consistency of interface. Imagine what would happen to your ability to navigate your phone if you changed the brand or make of your mobile. 2.3 Flexibility Mobiles have such vast and derivative uses that it is very difficult to predict what individuals will be using them for (which will be discussed later). 2.4 System Feedback and Support Due to the restrictive size of the screens on mobile devices it is very difficult for interfaces to display all the information you require on the screen at one time. Consequently you end up with many sub menus and sub sets of menus meaning

The Mobile Paradigm for Content Development

103

it is easier for users to get lost when trying to navigate the device and find specific information. The support you receive is very much dependant on your geographic location and the strength of your phone signal! These problems are compounded by a phenomenon that exists with mobiles, and isn’t really observed with any other media types, that is the strange and unusual use of mobile devices, which is defined by the users themselves and not developers. These unconventional, user defined, uses of mobiles are well documented by Katz (2006). His research catalogues, amongst others, uses of mobiles by students as: Safety devices – students would pretend to be talking on their mobile while walking home, giving the impression that they are in contact with someone who could offer help Avoidance devices – students would pretend to talk on their mobiles when they saw someone approaching they didn’t necessarily want to interact with. This phenomenon is observed on a global scale. Katz also records mobiles being used in Japan as fashion accessories, where mobiles have become status symbols and even denote membership to certain social groups. Individuals enhance their mobiles by adorning them with jewels and accessories. In East Asia mobiles are used as spiritual connections to the afterlife. People leave them by gravestones and in coffins of loved ones in a hope that they will enable communication with the dead. Mobiles are seen being used in religious worship – Filipinos are able to receive a digital rosary and text their “Amen” at the appropriate points! “Firstly the system designer should set out to understand, from the outset, what users want to use the mobile device for – what tasks they want to perform when using the system”(Love 2005, p. 3) How could a designer possibly predict some of these uses and consequently produce content to compliment them? It seems clear that the development of content on mobile phones will come from how people use them and not the availability of new technologies. Designers need to concentrate less on reapplying ‘old’ media onto a ‘new’ platform or being concerned with the next new technology, and rather concentrate on the sociological and psychological aspects of how users are interfacing with their mobiles.

3 Clues for the future With this in mind the next part of this paper examines the sociological factors from past media developments that have defined successful content development. In his book, “Interface Culture”, Steve Johnson notes several useful commonalities that can be observed, in the historical development of media types,

104

Chris Bennewith and Richard Vickers

between the media and the audience consuming or using it. Chronologically his book only discusses these commonalities as far as the Internet. This section of the paper takes some of Johnson’s ideas and extrapolates them into the realm of mobile devices in order to try and gain an insight into the possible future for a mobile ‘interface’ with humans and consequent content development. The 3 main trends he observes which are of importance in relation to this paper are: •

Media as an interface for understanding technological/cultural shifts, media has always been used by society as a lens for understanding technological and cultural shifts. It provides a method by which to try and understand significant cultural shifts and upheavals bought about by technological revolutions.

•

Creating connections – media has been used as an interface to connect people, ideas and information.

•

The development of so-called ‘parasitic media’ – the analysis of which may inform us as to the sorts of media we will need to accommodate on the mobile in the future.

The next section of this paper will now unpack some of these themes in more depth and associate them to the mobile paradigm to try and draw out some clues as to the potential future requirements or uses of mobile interfaces and content.

4 Creating Connections “Where Dickens’s narrative links stitched together the torn fabric of industrial society, today’s hypertext links attempt the same with information” (Johnson 1997, p. 116) It is important for media as an interface to create connections and link disparate elements in an attempt to consolidate them. In the past we can see Dickens connecting different social strata in a highly class structured Victorian Britain through his narratives and the Internet connecting all of the invisible data floating around our stratosphere into some coherent searchable form. By their very purpose mobiles are probably the most connective form of any media to date, allowing users to connect to anybody, anywhere at any time (network allowing of course!) offering an immediate social connection regardless of geographical location. In addition to the many hours of phone conversations which take place “18.5 billion text messages are sent every month – and that number has grown by 250% each year for the last two years" (Text Message Statistics 2007).

The Mobile Paradigm for Content Development

105

This statistic is even more amazing when you consider SMS was never conceived for mobile to mobile short messaging, but rather as a means to alert individual mobile users of events such as deposited voice mail. In this respect it could be viewed as a form of ‘parasitic media’ (described later). Mobiles allow people to connect to people. As Katz (2006, p. 42) observes; humans are “hard wired to seek social contact.” He adds that “Left to their own devices, people will be inclined to find others with whom they can communicate, that is, people will seek perpetual contact”. Koskinen (1997, p3) also states that, “people use mobile multimedia as a part of their daily lives to organize their interaction with other people.” I witnessed an interesting site on my journey to the conference where I presented this paper. Upon disembarking the plane the first action performed by the majority of passengers was switching their mobiles back on. Not to re-engage with content on their phone, but to check what contact with friends and family they had missed during their flight, and to ensure they wouldn’t miss any future communications. In addition to these social connections mobiles allow users to connect to information sources regardless of their geographical location. There is also now a paradigm shift whereby the general public are productively adding to this body of information; simply through their geographic location and the fact they have a camera or videophone. Journalism has become instant and democratized with many examples recently of mobiles being used to capture events worthy of global news stories – the bombings in the London underground (where the very first footage of the event was mobile footage) and the aftermath of the Asian Tsunami. The mobile allows media coverage even when the conventional ‘media’ are not present. Probably the some of the most sensational footage from the Iraq conflict has been captured and distributed on a mobile phone: “The phone camera footage of Saddam Hussein's execution may prove to be the most controversial media disclosure from Iraq since snapshots of US guards abusing prisoners inside Abu Ghraib were published in 2004.”(Jackson et al. 2007).

5 Making Sense of Technological and Cultural Shift “Where the Victorian novel shaped our understanding of the new towns wrapped around the steel mill and the cotton gin, and fifties television served as an imaginative guide to the new suburban enclaves created by the automobile, the interface makes the teeming, invisible world of zeros and ones sensible to us”(Johnson 1997, p. 17)

106

Chris Bennewith and Richard Vickers

Media acts as an interpreter between society and the upheavals brought about by technological and cultural shifts. The Victorian Novel attempted to make sense of the industrial revolution, TV. programs in the 50’s attempted to rationalize suburbanization and the fragmentation of traditionally insular communities and finally the Internet rationalizes all of the digital information we have available to us, making the invisible world, visible. Over time media has become more and more the driving factor for cultural and technological change as well as the facilitator for understanding it. The novel was completely separate from the upheaval of the industrial revolution, which in itself was the technological and cultural change, literature simply tried to rationalise it. Television offered a cultural and technological shift however it still merely observed the results through television programs. The Internet and mobiles are inextricable linked with the latest cultural and technological shifts whilst simultaneously being responsible for rationalizing and understanding them. Mobiles, whilst simultaneously aiding a more fragmented and globalised society, are also trying to facilitate an understanding of it through some of the ways already discussed in ‘Creating Connections’.

6 Parasitic Media “These new organisms don’t tell stories. They riff, annotate, dismantle, dissect, sample. Everything they do refracts back onto some other ‘straight’ media, on which they rely for their livelihood the principle at work here is this: at transition points, some messages may evolve faster than their medium. And in doing so they anticipate another medium, one that is still in embryo.” (Johnson 1997, p. 35) The ‘parasitic media’ Johnson is referring to can be observed emerging through media throughout history and predicting media trends – the next big thing – long before it actually happens. They are born out of a media that fails to accommodate them, restrains them, is not ready for their existence. They cannot fully come into being until a new media becomes available with the right attributes to allow them to flourish. The origins of the extremely successful phenomenon of ‘social networking’ and sites such as YouTube and Myspace can be seen in their infancy as ‘parasitic media’ on TV, unfulfilled and desperate for the development of a new medium into which they could break out and become realised. Television started as a narrative medium, telling stories, effectively an extension of the novel and radio. TV programs developed over time however into less narrative and more com-

The Mobile Paradigm for Content Development

107

mentary based formats, no longer were they just telling stories. They started commenting on other television shows or events that had occurred over the week. This social and cultural commentary spread until individual viewers wanted to have their own say. In America people started up their own independent TV programs on cable channels so they could put their point of view across. This made for some interesting viewing, but it was a format that failed to reach it’s potential. As television is essentially a passive medium to be consumed and not engaged with (currently), there was no ability for everybody to have ‘their own say’. The web gave this format an environment in which it could flourish, Youtube and Myspace were born out of shows like the ‘Big Brother’. The irony is we now see TV. trying to emulate the success of social networking and user generated content, though with far less success. Programs like ‘Your News’ which is to be launched on BBC News 24 and includes content from some of the 10,00 emails the BBC News website receives from the public each day with story suggestions, comments and pictures. It is however interesting the lack of crossover currently between mobiles and the plethora of social networking sites currently available. Apart from your mobile status on Facebook and Twitter there is comparatively little use of social networking sites by mobiles, and vice versa. This could be due to the fact that as Stutzman (2007) observes “It is expensive and annoying to try to browse a social network by text message.” He goes on to state that “teens clearly use their phones as directories” as opposed to requiring an online repository of contacts and photos. It’s only now with hindsight that we can analyse these “parasitic media” and their developments into mainstream successful media. But maybe with foresight we could try and observe their development now, in places like the Internet and hypothesise about current ‘parasitic media’ which will develop into the killer app on the mobile.

7 Reversal Effects “Part of McLuhan’s point in Understanding Media was that new technological forms – the television, the radio, the book – transform not only the balance of power between our senses but also our experience of other media. “Radio changed the form of the news story as much as it altered the film image in the talkies,” McLuhan argued. “TV causes drastic changes in radio programming, and in the form of the film or documentary novel” (Johnson 1997, p. 178) Lastly this paper will briefly reflect on how any future developments in mobile content could affect older media types. The new possibilities afforded us by new

108

Chris Bennewith and Richard Vickers

and developing media, for interaction with, or dissemination of information, have the ability to change the format of traditional media. McLuhan (1964) refers to the influence of TV. on radio. However we can also cite more recent examples like the influence of user generated content on TV. programming (as mentioned in the section of this paper on ‘parasitic media’) and we can already clearly see how using SMS is having an effect on the way we write and communicate - "Resources for the expression of informality in writing have hugely increased - something not seen in English since the Middle Ages" (Philipkoski 2005) It will be interesting to see what shockwaves the new types of media; yet to be developed on mobiles, will send rippling through older, more traditional media.

8 Conclusion “In Bijker’s opinion, any new technology is understood in many ways, particularly in it’s early stages where “interpretive flexibility” is at it’s highest. However, as time goes by social forces try to impose more rigid perspectives on technological development, pushing towards more stable interpretation until in the final instance, only one of a few perspectives remain. Bijker calls this process “closure”. In the context of mobile multimedia, it is clear that no closure has yet been achieved; rather, that this technology is still in search of interpretation” (Koskinen 2007, P. 6) Mobiles are yet to define what they are. They don’t have a singular, defined purpose as other media types do. The definition of their purpose and the content they provide will come from the users themselves and not developers, more so than any other media. In my opinion however this lack of a defined paradigm is positive. The fact that the responsibility for the development and direction of content currently lies with the individuals using mobile phones means that the content being produced is far more creative. As we can observe from older media, as soon as a paradigm is defined for them creativity becomes stifled. Advertising agencies and larger companies step in and apply economic and political restraints. The Internet is a good contemporary example. It moved from it’s very creative and undefined inception to a highly commercialized vehicle for advertising and selling. It had become a relatively barren wasteland for innovative, creative and interactive content until users were re-engaged with it through social networking and user generated content. Why should we be in such a hurry to constrain the creativity of the mobile through the definition of yet another paradigm ?!

The Mobile Paradigm for Content Development

109

Lessons can be learnt from the past and observations made on the present, but users will continue to find derivative uses for mobiles which developers will not be able to predict. The future? All developers can do is - watch, learn and respond quickly!

References Mobile & Devices Developer Center 2007. Retrieved November 5, 2007, from http://www.adobe.com/devnet/devices/ Jackson, P, Macleod O, Mobile phone captures Iraq's cruelty 2007 Retrieved November 13, 2007, from http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/6225337.stm Philipkoski, K, Text Message Statistics 2005 Retrieved November 16, 2007, from http://www.cellsigns.com/industry.shtml IM And SMS Not The Death of Language 2005 Retrieved November 16, 2007, from http://www.wired.com/culture/lifestyle/news/2005/02/66671 Stutzman, F, Thoughts on Mobile Social Networks 2007 Retrieved November 16, 2007, from http://chimprawk.blogspot.com/2007/01/thoughts-on-mobilesocial-networks.html Johnson, J 1997, Interface Culture – How New Technology Transforms The Way We Create & Communicate, Basic Books, New York Ibrahim, I 2006, Handbook of Research on Mobile Multimedia, Idea Group Reference, London Love, S 2005, Understanding Mobile Human – Computer Interaction, Elsevier, Burlington Katz, J 2006, Magic in the Air – Mobile Communication and the Transformation of Social Life, Transaction Publishers, New Jersey McLuhan, M 1964, Understanding Media, Routledge, London Koskinen, I 2007, Mobile Multimedia in Action Transaction Publishers, New Jersey

The Complexities of Developing Accessible Web Content for Mobile Devices Richard Hancock, UK Abstract This paper is concerned with the development of accessible mobile content and the complexities that arise during this process. The paper gives an overview of the popularity and advantages of mobile devices before tackling the issues surrounding content development, particularly within an educational context. The paper concludes with an overview of an application that was developed for higher education students within a UK college that had a mobile counterpart, allowing the artefact to transcend the typical desktop environment.

1 Perceptions of Mobile Phones The rise of the mobile phone and its popularity amongst the populations has been well documented and is comparative to the explosive use of the World Wide Web during the mid 1990’s. The perception of a mobile phone is still predominantly rooted in that of a voice communications device, but advances in technology have begun to change that view. With the development of smart phones and personal data assistants (PDA’s) the gap separating computing and the phone has diminished significantly. In their book Mobile Interaction Design, Jones and Marsden (2006), indicate that as the processing power of mobile devices has increased, so too has the variety of uses that the device can be put to. This has lead to the creation of multi-functional devices that not only allow voice communication, but also mobile applications, video and music playback and mobile gaming. Business has already put the mobile technology to use; from equipping workers with PDA’s and Blackberry’s to developing a mobile variation of their Web presence. However, the educational sector has seen a much slower uptake of the technology and despite its apparent advantages there appear to be many barriers to its successful implementation. This paper will examine some of these barriers.

112

Richard Hancock

2 The mobile advantage When dealing with mobile devices, particularly mobile phones, PDA’s, and smart phones, there are a number of positive factors that can be attributed to them. Firstly, buying a mobile phone in full is cheaper than buying a personal computer or laptop. Costs are further reduced when one is bought with some sort of service contract. Some smart phones now have processing power equal to that of the Pentium 3 CPU available at the turn of the millennium, allowing for the development of richer applications. Some mobile and smart phones today have more storage capacity than personal computers of six years ago, and they also have better communications technology, such as Bluetooth, WiFi and USB. Coupled with high resolution cameras and touch screen interfaces the modern handheld has the potential to fulfil a wide variety of activities anytime, anywhere. The popularity of these devices cannot be ignored. With over three times as many mobile phones as personal computers the penetration of mobile devices has reached and breached 100% in many countries. In the developing world’s it is far cheaper to implement wireless technology than to implement wired technology. The ITU (2004) indicates that 70% of telephone users in Africa have mobile rather than land-line connectivity, and that the African growth rate is some 65%. This popularity and penetration is driving continued development, and with huge sums of money being poured into development it’s safe to say that handheld devices will continue to evolve over time.

3 Device Issues It could be theorised that mobile device limitations, such as screen size and input technology, has interrupted and hindered mobile content development, but it is not just the physical characteristics of a device that cause complexity. In general web development mark-up languages have begun to converge and stabilise, with XHTML being the dominant option. There are also a handful of dominant PC browsers such as Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safari and Opera. Contrary to this, mobile mark-up is still quite varied with WML, CHTML, iMode, XHTML and XHTML-MP being popular options so far. There are many different mobile browsers such as OpenWave, Opera, NetFront, Mobile Internet Explorer to name but a few, and out of the dozens of mobile browsers available there are multiple versions of the same browser leading to browser fragmentation. Device input and display technology is also varied. Smart phones and PDA’s generally have a larger screen compared to mobile phones and many mobile

Accessible Web Content for Mobile Devices

113

phones still have a monochrome interface. There is also a range of input technology; from a common keypad, to a full QWERTY keyboard, to a combination of a keypad and special function buttons with specific purposes. With so much variety currently available in the mobile device market one might wonder how to cater for such diversity?

4 Developing Content for Education Developing mobile content for education is certainly a challenge. Educators are typically seen as content experts as opposed to content developers. Developing content for the web requires a degree of proficiency, and developing content for a mobile device takes this proficiency one step further. It is likely in many cases that an educator does not possess the skill set to develop mobile content sufficiently. Of course staff training can be used to address this, but it is also recognised that tutors have very little time to get to grips with a technology as more are introduced. With any project it is very important to involve the user at each stage of development and to ascertain user requirements. This can be very difficult in a mobile context for education as at present the majority of students do not see the potential for a mobile device as an aid to their learning. Student motivation to use the technology, simply for the sake of project development for example, can be very challenging. With factors such as small screens, limited input technology, development costs, cost of data transfer and slower networks, both tutor and student could be very tempted to abandon the idea of a mobile project until a later date when technology is more mature and prices are cheaper. If development of a mobile learning project does take place then inevitably it must be tested; not only for functional accuracy and integrity but also for its effectiveness and usage pattern. This stage of development will generate data that can be fed back into the user requirements stage so that the project can be refined over time and enhanced. This will be a lengthy process and gives rise to the possibility that technology will outpace the development of an educational application, especially ones where the main developer is a tutor whose primary function is to teach, and not to make web based resources.

5 Content Design When comparing a standard website rendered through a common web browser to a mobile website rendered through a small screen one immediate question a

114

Richard Hancock

developer will ask is ‘How am I going to display all my content?’ They will also have to decide what navigation strategy to adopt to allow access to the content, how to optimise content with respect to smaller file sizes, how to cater for user input, and how to verify that mark-up is accurate and error free. The reality of developing content for mobile devices is that it is not dissimilar to developing content for normal PC based web browsers. The general rule of web development, that the lowest common denominator device must be catered for, is still applicable. Many of the features websites have today, such as wiki’s, blogs and forums can all be made available through a mobile device. However one must carefully consider how to implement such content; whether such content is useful to a student; how will the student access the content and navigate through it? There are a number of guides available for developers to use in order to produce accessible mobile content across a wide variety of platforms. Such guides include the Mobile Web Best Practices developed by the World Wide Web Consortium, the Global Authoring Practices for the Web (GAP) developed by Luca Passani, Best Practices in XHTML Design by OpenWave and Making Small Devices Look Great by Opera. However, it has been documented that certain guidelines have been misinterpreted by developers and that in some cases developers find the terminology difficult to understand. This situation can increase exasperation in tutors who are not experienced web developers and can ultimately lead to poor quality applications, or the abandonment of mobile related projects completely. A tutor who is not experienced at web development or web based mark-up languages may use an authorer such as Adobe Dreamweaver, or Microsoft Web Expression to quickly create an application for mobile delivery. This can be the basis for a good start, but great care should be taken when developing this way. A mobile parser is far less forgiving than one found in a PC web browser and if the mark-up of the mobile pages is not perfect then significant errors can occur on devices, such as crashes, halting, and systems running out of memory. To address this it is imperative that the document type declaration (DTD) is accurate and present in each page so that the mobile device knows to treat the page it is displaying as a mobile page, and not a standard web page.

6 A case study example The Computer Architecture Online and Mobile application was developed to assist higher education students in a UK college to achieve better results in a given set of modules relating to computer hardware. The artefact used the

Accessible Web Content for Mobile Devices

115

JoomlaTM content management system as the main virtual learning environment, and then a special template was applied to allow the content to be reformatted for a mobile browser.

Figure 1 above shows a screen shot from the mobile application illustrating a menu system at the top of the screen, followed by a list of hypertext links to navigate to relevant sections

Figure 2 shown above shows a page of content, illustrating the concept of keeping content specific and in small, bite size chunks. The illustrations highlight the importance of a single column content structure that reduces vertical scrolling to a minimum and eliminates horizontal scrolling completely.

116

Richard Hancock

7 Conclusions This paper has highlighted some of the problems facing all mobile content developers, such as device limitations, data costs and input technologies. There are many more issues to consider in a mobile application. Many issues are out of the control of developers, and lie in the hands of the manufacturers. Educational developers face problems such as user involvement, the design and testing of applications, the continual advances in technology that can quickly make an application seem out of date and what new pedagogical issues arise due to mobile devices used in education. The perception that developing an application and content for a mobile device is completely different from developing for a normal PC based web browser is quite inaccurate. The Web itself contains the necessary interoperable technology to integrate an application on both PC and mobile based platforms, provided that some ground rules are adhered to. With the continual climb in mobile usage and the advantages it brings to society there is no doubt that it will, in the near future, gain more of a foothold in education. At this time the necessity of developing mobile content for educational reasons will become a priority for many institutes.

References Jones, M & Marsden G. (2006). Mobile Interaction Design. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., Mobile Web Best Practices 1.0. World Wide Web Consortium (2006). Retrieved Tuesday, August 2nd 2007 from, http://www.w3.org/TR/mobile-bp/ Passani, L. (2006). Global Authoring Practices for the Mobile Web 1.0.2 (2007). Retrieved Tuesday, August 2nd 2007 from http://www.passani.it/gap/ Making Small Devices Look Great. Opera Software. Retrieved Monday, August 20th 2007 from, http://my.opera.com/community/dev/device/ Best practices in XHTML Design. Openwave Developer network. Retrieved Monday, August 20th 2007 from, http://developer.openwave.com/dvl/support/documentation/guides_and_referenc es/best_practices_in_xhtml_design/index.htm African Telecommunication Indicators., International Telecommunication Union (2004), 7th Edition.

D

Current Mega Trends in e-Content Creation

Teen Appeal – Touching the Moving Point Christina Handford, UK Abstract An article to discuss the difficulties of designing educational multimedia for the teen target audience (13 – 16 year olds). The report will assess techniques used in existing online artefacts and reveal major trends in the attempt to appeal to this notoriously hard to reach user group.

1 Who are the teen generation It is a world renowned and resolute fact that the teen target audience is a difficult one to reach. Though it maybe bad practise to make generalised assumptions about a particular group of people, it is a necessary step in order to move forward in determining the needs of the 13 – 16 target audience. The present group of users which this report is concerned with falls into the fondly labelled category ‘Millennials’1. As described by numerous theorists (e.g. Oblinger, D.G. 2003), these are individuals born in or after 1982, and are the children of the ‘Baby Boomers’. Millennials are known to display different patterns and behaviours from their peers and siblings just a few years older. Millennials have little or no experience of what life is like without digital technology and are growing up to become the most knowledgeable group of multimedia users today (Canary, K. 2007). One of the most obvious and accurate characteristics about this group of ‘new’ learners is that they have been heavily influenced by technology, so much so that Prensky, M. (2001) describes them as ‘digital natives in a world of digital immigrants’2. Prensky emphasises that there is a vast difference between these groups, particularly in language, perception and skills. Providing e-content for these revolutionised learners presents a wealth of unprecedented challenges for de-

1

Although there is no precise definition of age, some theorists suggest that this includes individuals born between 1982 and 2002.

2

Digital immigrants meaning those not born in the ‘digital age’ (Prensky, M., 2001)

118

Christina Handford

signers, developers, instructors and institutions. In the following sections of this report unique qualities of this digital native user will be explored and solutions for the consequential challenges will be discussed.

2 Traits and Trends 2.1 Teens are fast-paced multitaskers To teenagers, speed and time is of the essence. Through varying forms of new communicative technology they are able to respond quickly and so expect rapid, succinct feedback in return. In addition, research proves that teens rarely give their full attention to the computer screen, it is quite normal for a teenager to be online whilst watching the television, using the mobile and/or listening to music. Due to this innate multitasking, it is a common trait of a digital native to be able to construct information very quickly through a combination of images, text and sound. Oblinger, D. G. (2003) points out that not only can teens do more than one thing at a time but that can swiftly change attention from one task to another, they will also elect not to pay attention to things that do not interest them very quickly. Although many stereotype the younger generation to be proficient web users, Jakob, N. and Loranger, H. (2005) argues that classing teens as entirely web savvy is a common misconception. They conducted a study into a of group first time users, containing adults and teenagers and monitored their level of success at achieving a predefined online task. Surprisingly the teenagers only scored a success rate 55% in comparison to the 66% success rate of their adult counterparts. Jakob and Loranger justify the teen’s poor performance through three important factors: •

inadequate reading ability

•

less sophisticated research strategies

•

lower patience level

They emphasise that successful, teen targeted applications limit the need for instructions and boast a form of interaction design that is consistent with the users’ mental model. Just like adults, teenagers become frustrated by complex navigation systems and unfamiliar mine sweeping3 actions.

3

An expression for a response to insufficient differentiation between active interface elements,

Teen Appeal – Touching the Moving Point

119

Oblinger, D.G. and Oblinger, J.L. (2005) supports the fact that although teens are more visually literate, their text literacy maybe less developed than that of previous generations. Research reveals that no matter what form, digital natives will avoid reading large amounts of text. Their low patience levels and need for speed, leads them to appreciate content that is concise and easy to scan. It is also noted that teens often sit further away from the computer screen in ‘lean back mode’ making larger amounts of small text particularly hard to read. One explanation for this is that teens would not like to tarnish there imperturbable, relaxed image by sitting bolt up right, close to the screen. 2.2 Social Creatures Teens strive for group acceptance and feel comfortable when part of a cohort and inherently look out for ways to express themselves and to be engaged. Social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook provide efficient routes for daily communication between digital natives helping to promote and reinforce relationships between peers. These networking applications have become imperative to their social systems (McLester, S. 2007). Teens will move seamlessly between virtual and physical interactions and Oblinger, D. (2005) records that this is particularly evident when students are working collaboratively. Frequently teens will send IMs (instant messages) even though they are just metres away from one another. Teens often view IMs as more convenient than talking, they consider it to be less formal and possess an element of anonymity. Teenagers usually feel more comfortable expressing themselves through a digital medium rather than face to face conversation (Collier, A. 2006). Such community based applications can help to support teenagers who are often uncomfortable in social situations as they provide them with a means of safely exchanging their thoughts without the fear of being judged or mocked. (Jakob, N. and Loranger, H., 2005) 2.3 Sensitivity Digital natives are very likely to use the internet to reveal feelings and express their own views. Often individuals of this generation are willing to openly reveal, what digital immigrants would class as private information, such as personal emotions, relationship status etc. As discussed by Jakob, N. and Loranger, H. (2005), teens are particularly sensitive about their age. Being associated with anything childlike is very likely to offend this generation, and they especially do not like being called ‘kids’.

120

Christina Handford

Similarly, teens dislike content that is superficial or evangelistic; they instead appear to be particularly compelled by content which relates to their personal and cultural experiences. Steir, G. (2007) expands on this issue of sensitivity even further by explaining that this generation is particularly drawn to community relationships and activism. They appear to have more tribal instincts than past generations and have an inherent desire to make a difference to the world. Given a choice teenagers appear to prefer to work on projects or concepts that matter to them and society as a whole, such as environmental concern or community issues and it is suggested that today’s Millennials embrace high moral values in a way that was not seen in assessments of previous generations. Steir suggests that the "think globally - act locally" practice is becoming engrained into the young minds of this generation and we will see a continuing trend of teens being involved as volunteers or in new programs for community involvement – all managed online. 2.4 Sheltered A distinctive characteristic of the new generation of learners is the level of protection and sheltering that the vast majority have received during their upbringing. As explained by Howe, N. and Strauss, W. (2000) this is the legion of safety helmets, closed gates and NetNanny’s who, from birth, have existed in a world full of rules and parental anxiety. Jakob, N. and Loranger, H. (2005) discovered that teens are often apprehensive when dealing with certain elements of technology. Most of their studied users veered away down-loading new plug-ins or clicking on unknown elements of a page. Much of this anxiety is believed to originate from parents and teachers who warn of viruses and other security threats. The result of such concerns causes teens to confuse legitimate and illicit downloads and for this reason, often avoid them all together. 2.5 Conventional and High Achievers Unlike past generations, today’s teens are taking more pride in their academic achievements. They are particularly success orientated and feel more comfortable with structure rather than ambiguous assignments or tasks; as a result they are keen to know what must be done to reach their goal. However, when considering electronic content it is important to remember that teens have not yet developed their highest level of critical thinking. According to Jakob, N. and Loranger, H. (2005) teens still have limited research experience and have difficulty making sense of more complex, text heavy information. They are also far more likely to give up a task than adults if the research process is too complicated.

Teen Appeal – Touching the Moving Point

121

Jakob and Loranger also note that there is a clear difference between young teens and older teens particularly in research processes or information seeking tasks. Younger teens (13 – 14 year olds) rely more on teachers for guidance, they also have difficulty deciphering what information is reliable and worthy. For this age group, not being able to solve a problem weighs heftily on self-esteem and may cause the learner to lose confidence. This makes it imperative to pitch online activities at the right level in order to maintain motivation and stimulus. Older teens (15 years and upwards) are more comfortable with formulating their own responses to a challenge and are better at judging content reliability. They also tend to have more task-orientated requirements from a website and are beginning to understand that answers don’t have to be either right or wrong. 2.6 View of Technology Digital natives are generally able to adapt to new technologies very quickly. They are already adopting new systems for communicating (instant messaging), sharing (blogs), coordinating (wikis), programming (modding) and the like (Prensky, M. 2005). In a recent study: The Circuits of Cool and Digital Playground conducted by MTV, Nickelodeon and Microsoft, it was highlighted that many young people class technology itself is virtually irrelevant. Only 20% of the 14-24 year olds that were asked actually claimed to love technology. Instead it is suggested that for teenagers, technology is almost invisible and entirely organic to their lives. This generation is said to focus completely on what a particular application can do rather the how the technology works to facilitate it, teens don’t email or instant message just for the sake of it, they do it to communicate and reinforce relationships (Microsoft 2007). Since digital natives spend so much time online one would expect them to have a strong partiality towards entirely web based projects or courses, however Oblinger, D.G. and Oblinger, J.L. (2005) suggest that the reverse may actually be true. They claim that digital immigrants may actually feel more satisfied with online projects and courses as they generally have a lesser desire to feel connected and a reduced focus towards the social enjoyment of learning. The Circuits of Cool and Digital Playground study (Microsoft 2007) provides evidence that the internet is far from the central focus of all digital natives’ lives. When the researched group of 14 – 24 year olds were asked to list their favourite pastime the results revealed that television still reins over the PC. Percentages of the pastime survey can be seen below:

122

Christina Handford

70% Listed listening to music as one of their favourite pastimes 65% Listed watching TV 65% Listed hanging out with friends 60% Listed watching DVD’s 60% Listed relaxing 59% Listed going to the movies 56% Listed spending time online 55% Listed spending time with their boyfriend/girlfriend 53% Listed eating 49% Listed hanging out at home

2.7 Experimental Learners Most digital natives don’t like being told what to do or what to learn. This generation is particularly orientated towards learning by doing, making new discoveries and exploring learning environments for themselves (Oblinger, D 2005). Jakob, N. and Loranger, H. (2005) emphasise that teenagers are not suitable recipients of information; they instead prefer to feel like they have a substantial influence and direction on there own learning. Teenagers are known to crave interactivity and have a desire to receive information very quickly. Learners therefore will tend not pay attention to non-interactive and un-engaging classes. Although experiential learning may make information easier to retain it is often difficult to encourage students to spend any reflection time on their own learning. It is this process of thought and contemplation that especially needs to be encouraged. Thompson, C. (2007) explains that games are an excellent vehicle for thinking deeply about complex systems. It is widely suggested that most games, simulations in particular, encourage learners to develop the ability to think counterfactually, a key skill for when they finally enter the workforce. The so called serious games which are becoming evermore popular with this generation provide students with a safe environment in which to test theories and investigate challenging concepts, and in parallel provide excellent opportunities to develop cognitive dexterity in essential areas such as literacy and numeracy. 2.8 Creative A key trend for the teen generation is the process of archiving their own actions and interests through sound, images and video. Chandler, J (2007) refers to them

Teen Appeal – Touching the Moving Point

123

as a ‘surprisingly nostalgic tribe’. Using social networking sites such as MySpace, teens create pages to form powerful marketing tools, used to reflect feelings, personalities, likes and dislikes. Chandler suggests that such creativity may often be more to do with how they wish to been seen rather than how they see themselves. Recent developments in technology offer the opportunity to bring together virtual and physical experiences facilitating the notion of risk, exploration and reflection. The creativity and digital resourcefulness of the teen generation allows them to compose and communicate within a variety of new settings. Mediascapes are particularly in ‘vogue’ with this generation where-by the process of building information in the form of text images, video and sound allows the user to author environments in response to their own sense of place. Successful examples include: www.mscapers.com, socialtapestries.net and www.createascape.org.uk (Loveless, A. 2007).

3 Usability and Interface Design One of the most common misconceptions with regard to digital content and teenagers is that designers assume that they are looking for highly graphical and ostentatious interfaces. Although this maybe true for younger users (i.e. age 12 and under), teens often become frustrated by excessively busy and overly designed sites. It appears that the digital native prefers to use sites that balance design with simplicity. In a usability study conducted by the Neilson Norman group, thirty-eight teenage computer users were analysed and twenty-three websites were assessed in order to determine how websites can better cater for teenagers with a particular focus screen visuals and interactivity. Their key findings are summarised in below: •

Teens enjoy online interactivity through elements such as online voting systems, sharing pictures and stories, quizzes, and games.

•

Teenagers are looking to make their mark on the internet and enjoy expressing themselves in different ways.

•

In research tasks, teens find it very difficult to work though and contextualise large amounts of information. They are prone to giving up quickly and resort to asking teachers or adults for the answers.

•

Teens have much less patience than adult users. They want answers quickly and become frustrated with complex interactions.

124

Christina Handford

•

Factors which positively impact teen user satisfaction are: Attractive design with age appropriate graphics and information that is easy to find.

•

Teens are turned off by sites that offend their sense of maturity.

•

Most of the sites which they are attracted to are those which target a broad age group, not just teenagers.

•

Although they are willing to scroll pages teens are highly active clickers and will quickly leave if they cannot find what they need at first glance.

•

Teens often find mine sweeping particularly annoying and like adults they do not like to hunt for navigational elements.

4 What this means for education With increased awareness of the needs of the digital native we must ask: how do educators and instructional designers empower and inspire students in an environment that increasingly excludes them? This question is particularly difficult to answer due to the fact that digital natives/teens are such a dynamic, varied and trend conscious generation. However from the executed research we can conclude a number of steps to move forward in the successful provision of new technology content and recourses: •

It is clear that digital natives are looking to see more integration of technology into general school life. One of the greatest complaints heard from students, with regard to technology, is that their access to computer equipment and the internet is extremely limited within the school environment. In review of this point technology should not be kept as a separate entity, confined to a time limited slot in computer laboratory, it instead needs to be seamlessly entrenched into the educational system and daily lesson planning.

•

Educators and e-content developers should not assume that all teens are entirely tech-savvy. Most teens are not interested in the technology itself but are more concerned with the fact that it facilitates improved communication routes, enhanced information retrieval etc.

•

Electronic applications used by the digital generation must be carefully selected in order to increase motivation and appeal. A special effort must be made so as not to insult their sense of maturity and dexterity, but at the same time make considerations for their patience level, research abilities and literacy standards.

Teen Appeal – Touching the Moving Point

•

125

E-content should be used in a way that holds a sense of value and interest to the learner based on topics which the students can see applicable to their daily or future life. Frequently, a digital native’s perspective is that their instructors do not make learning worth paying attention to especially compared to the range of other interactive experiences of which they have access.

As the digital native generation develops, the inherent importance and integration of multimedia combined with teen friendly, interactive content becomes ever more evident. Social network systems and digital communication will only be of more profound importance to the future teenager and instead of forbidding the use within the classroom environment, educators must embrace the medium as a prerequisite to 21century learning theories.

References Canary, K. iMedia connection: Give your campaign a millennial makeover. Retrieved 10/23/2007, 2007, from http://www.imediaconnection.com/content/16636.asp Chandler, J. The virtual generation - in depth - theage.com.au. Retrieved 10/30/2007, 2007, from http://www.theage.com.au/news/in-depth/the-virtualgeneration/2007/08/13/1186857409896.html Collier, A. (2006, 03/01/2006). Texting's appeal to teens. Message posted to http://www.netfamilynews.org/2006/01/textings-appeal-to-teens.html Howe, N. and Strauss, W. (2000). Millenials rising: The next great generation. New York: Vinatage Books. Jakob, N. and Loranger, H. (2005). Teenagers on the web - usability guidelines for creating compelling websites for teensNeilson Norman. Loveless, A. M. (2007). Creativity, technology and learning – a review of recent literature No. 4 Futurelab. Retrieved 15/10/2007 McLester, S. 2. Techlearning > > technology literacy and the MySpace generation march 15, 2007. Retrieved 10/24/2007, 2007, from http://www.techlearning.com/showArticle.php?articleID=196604312 Oblinger, D. G. (2003). Boomers, gen-xers and millennials: Understanding the new students EDUCAUSE. Oblinger, D. G., & Oblinger, J. L. (2005). Educating the net generation. (www.educause.edu/educatingthenetgen ed.)EDUCAUSE.

126

Christina Handford

Prensky, M. Innovate - what can you learn from a cell phone? almost anything! Retrieved 10/14/2007, 2007, from http://www.innovateonline.info/index.php?view=article&id=83&action=article Prensky, M. (2001). Digital natives, digital immigrants, 2001 on the horizon No. Vol. 9 No. 5) NCB University Press. Retrieved 24 October 2007 Prensky, M. (2006). Listen to the natives.63(4), 8-13. Stier, G. Five adolescent trends to watch in 2007 - dare 2 share youth ministries, international. Retrieved 11/1/2007, 2007, from http://www.dare2share.org/articles/five-adolescent-trends-to-watch-in-2007 Thompson, C. Why a famous counterfactual historian loves making history with games. Retrieved 10/27/2007, 2007, from http://www.wired.com/gaming/virtualworlds/commentary/games/2007/05/gamefr ontiers_0521

Happiness and the Family 2.0 Paradigm Rodica Mocan and Stefana Racorean, Romania Abstract Does new media technology have the potential to make us happier? This paper explores the influence of new information communication technologies on family life satisfaction while analyzing some of the factors that determine changes in the way we live our lives in the information age. Family 2.0 is the new paradigm of family life and the emergence of Web 2.0 type of applications is at the very core of its existence.

1 Introduction The unprecedented development of science and technologies in the past decades has had a significant impact on every aspect of society. The progression of media developments in the past 100 years has included telegraph, print, radio, film, television, telephone, computers, satellite, mobiles, e-mail, Internet, and other forms of communication. While in the first half of last century the rate of development permitted a reasonable rate of adoption, the last three decades faced us with rapid changes that challenge the way we work, acquire and process information, interact with each other, socialize or spend our leisure time (Schnell, 2005). Practically, in the developed world, every aspect of our lives is being influenced one way or another by new technologies. We find ourselves under various pressures, sometimes trying to resist these changes, sometimes struggling to keep up with the pace of change. One of the most obvious impacts of new information communication technologies is the shift in the home – work relationship (English-Lueck, p.2). While at work, technological advancements challenge us constantly to find new ways to perform better, faster, more productively. We tend to spend more of what used to be private time in work related activities. Commuting time is used to end the day’s tasks either by taking notes, making phone calls and planning the next steps or to prepare the new day on the way to work. Company mobile phones and laptops, connections to the company’s network and database enables the employee to access everything they need to perform their job while being out of the office, including from home.

128

Rodica Mocan and Stefana Racorean

What seemed like a very good idea in the beginning, namely the possibility of performing the job from a range of other places, is becoming more and more a challenge to juggle between domestic tasks and work related activities. I am not addressing here the possibility of working from home as a job, a distinct choice one might take at a certain moment, but about the shift in home – work relationship determined by the development of new technologies and the effects this might have on the family life. We are also witnessing a redefinition of the concept of work, from merely producing goods or services, usually in a space totally separated from home, towards the need to include such concepts as personal development, career preparation, work related communication. Thanks to technology, these actions often take place in the space that used to be dedicated exclusively to the interaction between the members of the family. Every new technology is marketed as providing some benefits that are meant to make life easier, communication more accessible, work more productive. In the end, life is supposed to be easier and we should be happier. New entertainment is available in more convenient ways, mobile devices are bringing us our favorite TV shows, sports, clips, movies or music wherever we are: in the car, bus or in the train. Time can be spent in leisure or learning even on the airplane with elearning available next to gaming, news and movie channels on the long flights. But are we happier? What is the main impact technology adoption has on family life? Is there a way to measure the level of satisfaction technologies are bringing in our lives?

2 Background Literature 2.1 Happiness in the Family In order to address issues that have to do with happiness in the family we must decide on a definition of the family. Citing Sussman, Jaffe (1998, p.179) is describing the three interlocking nuclear families specific to American culture: the family of procreation, the family of orientation and the family of affinal relations, underlining the fact that mutual assistance and common activity are the things that better depict the kin-related family system. More simply put, being a family is “doing things together” or for each other. Yerby (apud. Jaffe, 2006, p.176) provides another definition of the family: “a family is a collection of individuals who create a history and a set of memories from which family experience is continually reconstructed. In a sense, it is the shared memories of the family that help to make behavior in the family predictable and stable.”

Happiness and the Family 2.0 Paradigm

129

Racorean and Axente (2006) present their findings on the concept of happiness in the family, like factors that influence happiness, gender differences in perceived happiness and sources of happiness. They refer to the hedonic perspective and the eudaimonic perspective as being the two most important paradigms of well being routed in philosophy. In the hedonic perspective, well being, defined as the optimal functioning and experience at the psychological level, is perceived generally as mere physical pleasure, while the eudaimonic perspective places the accent on the actualization of human potentials. The hedonic drive places the accent on not experiencing difficulties and not exerting effort, being relaxed and free of worries while the second perspective is addressing the effort one is exerting to achieve a higher level of self actualization and accomplishment. Another theory of psychological growth that was first derived in 1985 by Deci and Ryan is the Self-determination theory (2000). This theory states that there are three basic psychological needs considered to be crucial for psychological growth, integrity, well-being and experiences of vitality and self-congruence: autonomy, competence and relatedness. Now, if we think about what the use of media technologies can offer an individual, in terms of psychological effects, we can find all three components of Deci and Ryan’s theory. Autonomy is probably the biggest gain of using modern technologies, because it allows a person to perform with the help of a software tasks he could not perform by himself or tasks otherwise performed by more than one person having different expertise. It also gives you a sense of control and a boost of one’s self-esteem by acquiring new abilities and being competent. Not least, it can be a means of keeping in touch with people that are in different settings, thus feeding relatedness (see Mocan and Racorean’s, 2006 study of using media technologies in communication within families separated through migration). In a similar way, technology can have an indirect effect on a person’s happiness by allowing him/her to perform activities that are perceived as sources of happiness. A study conducted by Crossley & Langdrige (2005) revealed gender differences in 32 perceived sources of happiness. By using technologies you can maintain social relationships, even “meet” new people in internet networks, you can increase your self-confidence, earning money by internet-based commerce, perform some of your hobbies or develop new ones – the internet and technology becoming a hobby for many, especially young people. All these are among the perceived sources of happiness found by Crossley & Langdrige (2005), and being able to perform them enhances one’s happiness.

130

Rodica Mocan and Stefana Racorean

2.2 Technology as an Extension of the Human Body As early as 1964, in “Understanding Media: The Extension of Man”, Marshall McLuhan has described technology as an extension of the human body. “An extension occurs when an individual or society makes or uses something in a way that extends the range of the human body and mind in a way that is new… a microscope, or telescope is a way of seeing that is an extension of the eye.” (apud. Kappelman, p.3) He also considers that next to each extension, technology is bringing some sort of amputation. The art of adopting technology is to maximize the extension effect while minimizing the amputation it brings. A good example in this direction is the benefic effects of the use of the automobile. Considering it an extension of feet, by using automobiles we can travel across distances with minimum effort, reaching across distances never hoped for before. We can use the remaining time and energy for other activities, thus become more productive. The adoption of the automobile at a global level had a gigantic influence on the development of world economy. However, it brought with it amputations that were not considered in the beginning but are now major issues like: obesity due to inactivity, pollution due to the growing number of automobiles used in the world, exhaustion of resources due to increased demand for fuel. In a similar manner, the extensions that new media technologies are providing to people by enabling communication anywhere, at anytime, with anyone, involve also amputations, such as loss of privacy, trade of cultural values, stress on personal life, information overcrowd, globalization, standardization. Later in his life, McLuhan developed the term the tetrad, a scientific basis for the study of the effect of technology, by using four basic questions: What does [the technology] extend? What does it make obsolete? What is retrieved? What does the technology turn into if it is over-extended? A rather classical view point, McLuhan’s tetrad theory is a good starting point in the investigation of the effects of technology on family life satisfaction. 2.3 Technology and the Family The family is one of the segments of the society where buying decisions are taken everyday. Due to the trust relationships between its members, it is also the space where significant influence is exerted and members surrender their convictions in favor of other members. Home is the space where we retire at the end of the day in order to regain strength, relax, spend time with other members, find solitude or enjoy different forms of entertainment. All these elements make Family as one of the main targets for technology producers and marketers.

Happiness and the Family 2.0 Paradigm

131

Technologies used in the house have evolved at high speed over the past three decades, with probably the biggest leap being the personal computer and home Internet access. No modern home can be without communication infrastructure, smart applications for the automation of house activities or entertainment (TV, home cinema, gaming). An interesting study conducted by Rompaey, Veerle and Keith (2001) indicates that media appliances are not the only ones that induce compartmentalization of space in the family, that besides the television set, the computer is an important factor in shaping family space and that privacy is no more always attainable in the family context, sometimes members turning towards media devices such as headphones or the Internet to achieve privacy. The introduction in the family space of technological devices, sometimes provided by work as extensions of office tools, can have significant impacts on family life. More time is spent in work related activities (catching up with email, phonecalls, office work, reports, e-learning) rather than quality family time with family members. Spending time together as a couple or a family is replaced with physically being in the same space, and in the same time being away, doing somethinh else. Physical presence cannot replace real communication, only reducing it. Technology can even offer the possibility to perform “joint activities” while being separated from each other.

3 Impacts of the Use of Technology in the Home If we relate to the hedonistic approach of happiness in the family, technology adoption in the family is expressed in acquisition of entertainment technologies, such as TV sets, personal computers and Internet [preferably] broadband connection, gaming consoles, home theatre technologies and other technologies meant to make life easier. Included here would be kitchen appliances, smart home applications and other applications such as e-commerce or e-banking. The first ones are meant to provide pleasure and relaxation while the second category are meant to save time and make unpleasant chores that are necessary for everyday life more bearable and convenient. The main problems the family is facing regarding this approach is the competition in the family for the acquisition of these technologies, the upgrade, the individual access of members of the family to these devices, the house space where they are placed as well and the time they are accessible. Gone are the days when the TV was occupying the central space in the living room, more often finding it in the individual bedrooms of the members of the family. Rare are the families that own just one TV set, most starting from at least two, or one for each member.

132

Rodica Mocan and Stefana Racorean

The computer used to have a central space in the house, with Internet access. More and more often the Internet connection is expected to be private (wireless) and accessible from private spaces, on private computers owned by each [more or less] adult member of the family. The self – actualization motivation for the use of technology in the family is also a significant driving force for the adoption of technologies. The potential for personal development through access to information and new means of education – be them formal or informal – cannot be denied. It is probably the main argument that parent use when investing in technology for their children, aware of the great potential for development even starting early childhood. Entertainment is usually the second, less desired, use of technology by children. Families use technology and the Internet to acquire expertise and advise that usually came through family and friends ties. As Olsen reports (2006), young mothers no longer depend on their mothers and friends for parenting advice and tips, creating new social networks from where they draw information and support. Rachel Cook, a mother of a two years old from Australia, created “Nannies on the net”, a social network designed for young mothers in need for parenting advice. Another similar website called Maya’s Mom was the first such service to be acquired for a reportedly $7m by Babycenter. Networks such as these ones transcend national barriers, this way we become witnesses to the “globalization of parenting and child rearing”. Networks such as this one often transcend national barriers, this way we become witness to the “globalization of parenting and child rearing”. The implications of technology adoption in family dynamics are multiple. As men are generally more tech savvy, their influence on technology adoption can strengthen the stereotype of their traditional role. Parent – child roles are challenged, as children are more technology driven then their parents, and their desire for the next new gadget can put quite a pressure on the parents. Technology adoption can lead to significant stress on family finances, especially with aggressive marketing campaigns that can make a device obsolete before it is paid in full. Arguments regarding technology adoption revolve – even if in less obvious forms – around the hedonistic versus personal development dimensions.

4 The Family 2.0 Paradigm Deriving from the Web 2.0 concept, I consider the Family 2.0 paradigm to be the new paradigm in family life in the 21st century. Family 2.0 applications vary from websites that can help build online the family tree genealogy [Amiglia.com, MyHeritage.com], help you keep track to your

Happiness and the Family 2.0 Paradigm

133

baby’s sleep [Trixi Tracker], family finances [networthiq.com] or family sharing of memorabilia [myfamily.com, ringo.com, etc]. They are just new ways in which technological applications enter family space, providing services meant to facilitate communication, and social interaction or strengthen family ties. In the new paradigm, social networks expand from the classical ones comprising of friends and family that reside in proximal areas, to a network of relations with people whom we might have never met in person but with whom we share common interests and values. Web 2.0 social networks transcend local/nationl culture or customs and embrace common global values. The very essence of how we meet our life partner has changed, Internet dating becoming a professional service widely accepted, provided to an increasing market. Traditional skills, such as child rearing, cooking, homemaking, are passed through specialized websites and bloggs rather than through traditional relationships. While increasing access to valuable information these applications bypass regional and national barriers contributing to the process of globalization and of loss of valuable cultural values. The increase of affordable access to computer based communication applications has a significant impact on migration and the way families separated geographically cope with their situation. Mocan and Racorean (2006) are addressing this phenomenon and are attempting to identify some of the factors that have an influence on family dynamics and family satisfaction when increased computer mediated communication bridges the physical distance. One thing is apparent: following economical migration of members of nuclear families, geographical areas that had little or no access to communication technologies and infrastructure witnessed an increase in the rate of development due to external pressures from the migrants who were eager to stay in touch with their families. Computer mediated communication cannot replace communication needed and necessary for a healthy development of the family. However, in unusual circumstances, such as those imposed by globalization and family relocation, CMC can be the second best thing. The development of VoIP applications such as Skype and the affordable business models enable communication with family members at high standards that include video and long sessions. Migration, as an economic phenomenon, is a more bearable solution with less stress on the family and increased mobility, an intrinsic demand of globalization.

134

Rodica Mocan and Stefana Racorean

5 What does the Future in the Information Age Look Like for the Family? So far it has been agreed that the family as an institution is challenged by the technological advancements just as any other social structure. The impacts are both positive and negative, with the potential of changes becoming overwhelming and inducing perverse, undesired effects, due to the rapid pace of change and the difficulty of controling technology adoption. The family needs to reassess its role in the society and renegotiate the role of its members with regard to the external pressures and changes. Within the global context, we are witnessing a reassessment of family values and also a reaffirmation of core values in general, without being able to predict the long term effects. There is also reported resistance from the part of families who want to preserve the traditional family model and who take measures to limit and control the negative impact of the use of technology in the family, with more emphasis on quality time spent together in non technology related activities. Are families happier today with all new media technologies available? We have barely identified and underlined some of the issues that have an impact on happiness in the family related to the use of technology. This study can only be the basis for the design of an exended research in this area.

References Crossley, A.; Langdridge, D. (2005), „Perceived Sources of Happiness: A Network Analysis”, Journal of Happiness Studies, 6: 107-135. English-Lueck, J. A., (1998). “Technology and Social Change: The Effects on Family and Community”, COSSA Congressional Seminar, www.asc.upenn.edu/courses/comm334/Docs/familyimpact.pdf, Jaffe, J. M., Aidman, A. (1998). “Families, Geographical Separation, and the Internet: A Theoretical Prospectus”, U.S. Department of Education, Educational Resources Information Center, pp.177-187. ceep.crc.uiuc.edu/eecearchive/books/fte/internet/aidman.pdf, August 2007 Kraut, R., Mukhopadhyay T., Szczypula J., Kiesler S., Scherlis (1999). “Information and Communication: Alternative Uses of the Internet in Households”, in Information Systems Research, Vol.10, no.4, December, pp.287-303. www.cs.cmu.edu/.../articles/kraut99-Information%20and%20CommunicationAlternateUsesInternet.pdf, August 2007

Happiness and the Family 2.0 Paradigm

135

Legget, C., Clark, T. (2007). “Yahoo! And OMD Research Shows Resurgence of Traditional Values among Today’s Tech-Savvy Families”, Press Release. http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd, August 30, 2007. Mocan, R., Racorean, S. (2006), New media technologies and communication in families separated through migration, Second International Conference of Family Psychotherapy and Systemic Practice, Timisoara. Olsen, Stephanie. (2006). “Here Come the Family 2.0’ sites, in ZDNet News, Jun. 2, http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9595_22-6079271.html, august 2007 Racorean, S., Axente, A. (2006). “Approaches of happiness: Implications for couple and family therapy”, Second International Conference of Family Psychotherapy and Systemic Practice, Timisoara. Rompaey V. V., Roe K. (2001). “Families’ Conception of Space and the Information and Communication Technologies in the Home”, U.S. Department of Education, Educational Resources Information Center, pp. 3-30. http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/custom/portlets/recordDetails/detailmini .jsp?_nfpb=true&_&ERICExtSearch_SearchValue_0=ED453556&ERICExtSea rch_SearchType_0=eric_accno&accno=ED453556 , August 2007 Ryan, R.; Deci, E. (2001), “On Happiness and Human Potentials: A Review of Research on Hedonic and Eudaimonic Well-Being”, Annual Revue of Psychology, 52: 141-166. Schnell Jim. (2005), “The Impact of New Communication Technologies and Channels on the Historically Basic Channels of Communication”, http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/custom/portlets/recordDetails/detailmini .jsp?_nfpb=true&_&ERICExtSearch_SearchValue_0=ED490655&ERICExtSea rch_SearchType_0=eric_accno&accno=ED490655 , august 2007. Todd Kappelman, (updated 2002, July). Marshall McLuhan: ”The Medium is the Message”, http://www.leaderu.com/orgs/probe/docs/mcluhan.html, October 2007. Weatherall, A., Ramsay, A. (2006), ‘New Communication Technologies and Family Life”, Blue Skies Fund. www.nzfamilies.org.nz/download/blueskiesweatherall.pdf, 30 Aug. 2007

Aesthetics as an Attribute to Usability: a Critique of (Some) Previous Works Raphael Kominis, UK Abstract A distinct new trend in usability research is the identification of Beauty as an attribute of interaction. The relationship betweenaesthetics, usability and user engagement is being researched by leadingresearchers including Norman, Tractinsky and Sutcliffe. In this paper wesurvey the experimental work carried out and develop a critique of the methods that have so far been applied. The paper argues that a toonarrow focus on engineering aspects of aesthetics has impacted the scope and success of experiments to date.

1 Introduction There is a growing number of people, interested in the relationship between Aesthetics and Usability; Don Norman, Noam Tractinsky and Alistair Sutcliffe are some of the leading researchers on the domain. To this date all the research on the subject points to the direction of the existence of a relationship between the two; that in usability aesthetics do play a role. In this paper we will do a review and critique of some of the research that has been done on the field. Our critique is mostly aimed at how aesthetics are handled as variable in the experiments done by the researchers in question.

2 Literature Review In order to better understand how we judge design, Norman identifies three different emotional levels by which we judge design: behavioural, visceral and reflective. Behavioural design is the part were Human Computer Interaction (HCI) comes into play; it deals with the how usable the artefact is, the way it reacts to the users handling etc. This is the part where we can formulate rules for designers to follow. It is the aspect of design in which the HCI community has centred its research. Visceral design has to do with visual aspects. It deals with beauty and aesthetics. There are no firm rules but many timeless guidelines. While no scientific methods exist, the guidelines, like golden ratios, colour harmony etc, are widely used around us. Some of them are almost mystic.

138

Raphael Kominis

Reflective design has to do with users’ mentalities, culture, and individuality. Designers here have to take decisions based on their intuition. Wroblewski further identifies three factors that a Web designer needs to take into account when designing a Web page: presentation, organization, and interaction. Those three factors are overlapping and closely related. Organization is seen by the user through the presentation and interaction is regulated through the organization and understood through presentation. Depending on the setting and the purpose, the design of the product needs to change. Formal vs. Informal, Personal vs. Impersonal etc. A good example is the works of Kathy Dawkins an artist who, by taking text written in graffiti, wrote them in an official form. The official language is in the form of a local council plaque. As you can see in Figure 1 the outcome is really disturbing. Graffiti found on the street would probably not be that disturbing. The message is the same but the context changes the appropriateness and sometimes ultimately the message itself. In this example the visual message and the written message are different.

Figure 1: Kathy Dawkins, Interference (Plaque), authorized language

For Khaslavsky and Shedroff, “To many an engineer’s dismay, the appearance of aproduct can sometimes make or break the product’s market reaction”.

3 Critique of Previous Works 3.1 Tractinskys ATM experiment Tranctinsky in his experiments changes the place on the same graphics on the screen of an ATM. The idea seems to be that by changing the placement of the

Aesthetics as an Attribute to Usability

139

elements on the screen the aesthetics would be changed. The experiment was based on ranking the outcomes by asking users their rank the ATM’s they were presented with. The flaw we are seeing in this experiment is that changing the position of the same graphics around the screen, does not really change anything of the aesthetics as much as he is changing ergonomic aspects. The users, while ranking the pictures they are presented with, might be ranking for more “nice to look at” what would be the easiest to use. And indeed the experiment was ranking both on an aesthetics scale and a usability scale. But on the same account we are thinking that the results could be flawed from the point of view that when users are asked to rate aesthetics, the answer is carrying elements of ergonomics that would affect usability.

Figure 2: Screens from Tractinskys experiment

4 Interaction, Usability and Aesthetics: What Influences Users’ Preferences? In this experiment Sutcliffe et al, are evaluating two websites that have the same content but different “interactive metaphors” as stated in the abstract. In Figure 3 the second screen grab is what they call expressive aesthetics, was found to have serious usability defects in contrast with the first screen grab. Our criticism here is that the stylistic difference and the difference in usability, render the results weak. The stylistic difference, or presentation difference, makes it difficult for comparing things that are not of the same kind. One of them will be preferred aesthetically but the aesthetic difference in different stylistic expressions is something we believe could prove meaningless. What is more beautiful a pre-

140

Raphael Kominis

Raphaelite painting or a cubist Picasso? A Rembrandt or a Kandinsky? When the style, is so different comparison might be meaningless.

Figure 3: Screen grabs with their original captions from the web pages used by Sutcliffe et al forhis experiments

The usability problems that the expressive site has in contrast to the menu based site could probably push people to say that they do not like the site aesthetically, because they are aggravated and thus confuse results even more. We argue that in order to see how users react to aesthetical differences we need to test sites that stylistically, usability and ergonomically wise are the same but are aesthetically different, one beauty versus one ugliness.

5 Assessing the Reliability of Heuristic Evaluation for Website Attractiveness and Usability Sutcliffe in his paper, Assessing reliability of he Heuristic evaluation for a Website Attractiveness, uses the websites of three airline companies. In the abstract it

Aesthetics as an Attribute to Usability

141

states: “The heuristics are tested by evaluating three airline websites to demonstrate how different attractiveness and traditional usability trade-offs contribute to overall effectiveness”. If you ever flown with a cheap airline you know that as a user you might develop strong feelings about this mode of transportation. Such feelings amongst users can interfere with the results of the experiment. This procedure furthermore relies on a deconstructive logic while aesthetics seem to be based on a synthetic logic; the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. So decomposing the aesthetics would not give us a good understanding of its value. Furthermore we have some reservations upon the heuristics used in this experiment. One of the heuristics as stated in the paper is: “Symmetry and style: visual layout should be symmetrical, e.g. bilateral, radial organisation that can be folded over to show the symmetrical match. Use of curved shapes conveys an attractive visual style when contrasted with rectangles”. We believe that this heuristic to be unfounded, in the design world there have been theories and advocates for symmetry as well as non symmetry and more in favor of proportions. For example in photography symmetry results in a more static image while the rule of thirds usually gives for a more dynamic image. We do not state that symmetrical web pages are non-aesthetic (which would be unfounded); but we state that nonsymmetrical web pages can also be nice looking too.“Depth of field: use of layers in an image stimulates interest and can be attractive by promoting a peaceful effect. Use of background image with low saturated colour provides depth for foreground components”. The use of a background image if interfering with text in the foreground can render the outcome not only unreadable but also looking quite messy. “Choice of media to attract attention: video, speech and audio all have an arousing effect and increase attention. Music can attract by setting the appropriate mood for a website.” We agree that the choice of media is very important, but usually music is quite discouraged when used in web pages. We know that the heuristics used here are coming from studies done by Kristof et al, and Mullet et al but they seem a arbitrary and unreliable. With unreliable heuristics the evaluation of the websites is unreliable too. We strongly think that the heuristics need to be revised entirely.

6 Investigating Attractiveness in Web User Interfaces In his paper Sutcliffe uses three websites that have the same content. The websites of three departments of Stanford University, are tested, “Stanford Design division, Stanford HCI Group and Hasso Plattner Institute of Design (DSchool)” Figure 5.

142

Raphael Kominis

Figure 5: Screen grabs from the sites used in the experiment

One of the questions of the survey is: “Subjects were asked to briefly revisit all three websites, and then compare them in two scenarios. In both scenarios they were asked to imagine being a student who will be going to study at Stanford University and to rank the three departments in order of preference. In one scenario the subjects were asked to imagine being a Bachelor student who is going to Stanford University for a one-month summer internship, whereas in the other the subject was asked to imagine being a Masters student who is going to Stanford for a PhD research studentship. The order of the scenarios was randomised between subjects.” Asking users to choose a school depending on what they thought of the schools website might be strongly influenced by the users preferences. Especially when they have to choose between a Design school and an HCI school. Even if “When asked to express the basis for their decision in relation to the qualities of the website, 87% of the subjects who showed the framing effect indicated that the look and feel of the website was the most important determinant for the summer internship, whereas for the PhD researchstudentship the content of the website was decisive.” We are sure that there are influences of preferences. Our criticism here is again the same with the previous paper, the sites are very different stylistically. Rating the aesthetics of an artefact is quite difficult without adding complete stylistic differences. Usability differences on the other hand, even if DSchool seems to be the one that has most usability problems, all them have different usability issues, and this might push users to choose depending on aesthetics alone just because if both sites are impaired usability wise they might as well use the better looking example. For the second experiment the assumptions are that the different schools would score differently in the aesthetics scale. Again our critique is that every school is presenting their courses differently. Also there is probably some thought gone towards the appropriateness of the presentation method of the school represented. So depending on the School, the context changes, and thus the variables are different.

Aesthetics as an Attribute to Usability

143

7 A Critique: Assessing Interaction Styles in Web User Interfaces In this paper A. Sutcliffe did an evaluation of two websites one was mainly Flash driven using the control room of a space ship as a metaphor, the second a more classic design, columns pictures and text Figure 6. In this experiment in order to bring further confirmation to his results, Sutcliffe at the end asks users which site they would use to teach young children about the solar system.

(a)

(b)

Figure 6 : “(a) Metaphor-style interface showing the planets and cockpit metaphors, and (b) Menubased user interface”

Sutcliffe et al. make a clear distinction between the “layout, presentation, and graphics/font aspects of aesthetics” and the interactivity part of the sites. But design and aesthetics are not just the font colour or just the colour scheme etc. they are an ensemble. It is like comparing two concerts and finding them similar because they used the same instruments. Our view on aesthetics is that it is a synthetic mechanism thus not something that can be decomposed into sections. Some theorize that design being to complex and multilevel resists quantitative testing approaches. At the end of the experiment Sutcliffe et al. ask their subjects to tell them which of the two sites they preferred and would use again in the future they all except for one subject voted for the flash version of the site while when asked for which of the two sites they would use to teach secondary school children the answers where split evenly in the middle. For the first question the users gave as a reason that the flash site is more interesting. About the usage of teaching questions the reasons given was simplicity and ease of use for the menu-based, engagement and interaction for the metaphor-based. Here we see how much context is of importance when judging a website.

144

Raphael Kominis

The paper demonstrates that users like to be engaged and like the interactivity when visiting a webpage. The way the experiment was made in our opinion does not give results about the link between aesthetics and usability. The aesthetics of the two sites are different; the usability of the two sites is also very different thus comparing them would not reveal any significant data. Appropriateness and context count for a lot of the visual message. If users think it is appropriate then they can be inclined in some cases to favour, between two identical in content sites, the one that is more interactive and engaging and be prepared to overlook usability problems.

8 Discussion The list of papers on the subject we have reviewed here is by no means exhaustive. Despite our criticism we acknowledge the enormous importance of this body of work. Our critiques are aimed more at what we think is an erroneous approach of design and aesthetics. Aesthetics as a subject has its roots in philosophy rather than science. To this day the only statement that we have found to be true of aesthetics is that there are no absolute rules in aesthetics just guidelines. Our most important criticism is that the above research is approaching the subject of aesthetics with a deconstructive logic rather than a synthetic. We feel strongly that aesthetics is based on the understanding that the result is bigger than the sum of its parts. Thus we would propose a study that would try only to change the aesthetics of a system and not the ergonomic or usability aspects of it. Striping of its design an already existent webpage could a solution.

References Norman, D.A.: ‘Emotional Design: Why We Love (or Hate) Everyday Things’ (Basic Books, 2004) Wroblewski, L.: ‘Site-seeing: A Visual Approach to Web Usability’ (2002) Crow, D.: ‘Visible Signs, an introduction to semiotics’ (AVA Publishing SA, 2003. 2003) Julie Khaslavsky, N.S.: ‘Understanding the Seductive Experience’ Communications of the ACM, 1999, 42, (5), pp. 45-49 Noam Tractinsky, T.L.: ‘Assessing dimensions of perceived visual aesthetics of web sites’, International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 2003, (60), pp. 269-298

Aesthetics as an Attribute to Usability

145

N. Tractinsky*, A.S.K., D. Ikar: ‘What is beautiful is usable’, Elsevier, 2000, (13), pp. 125 - 145 Antonella De Angeli, A.S., Jan Hartmann: ‘Interaction, Usability and Aesthetics: What Influences Users’ Preferences?’, in Editor (Ed.)^(Eds.): ‘Book Interaction, Usability and Aesthetics: What Influences Users’ Preferences?’ (ACM Press New York, NY, USA, 2006, edn.), pp. 271 - 280 Sutcliffe, A.: ‘Assessing the Reliability of Heuristic Evaluation for Website Attractiveness and Usability’, in Editor (Ed.)^(Eds.): ‘Book Assessing the Reliability of Heuristic Evaluation for Website Attractiveness and Usability’ (2002, edn.), pp. Alistair Sutcliffe (University of Manchester), J.K.I.D.a.R., Suzanne Bødker (University of Aarhus), Bill Gaver (Goldsmiths College University of London): ‘Can we measure quality in design and do we need to?’, in Editor (Ed.)^(Eds.): ‘Book Can we measure quality in design and do we need to?’ (ACM Pres, 2006, edn.), pp. 119-121 Kristof, R.S., A.: ‘Interactivity by design: creating and communicating with new media’ (Adobe Press, Mountain View CA, 1995. 1995) Mullet, K.S., D.: ‘Designing visual interfaces: communication oriented techniques.’ (unSoft Press, Englewood Cliffs NJ,, 1995. 1995) Jan Hartmann, A.S.A.D.A.: ‘Investigating Attractiveness in Web User Interfaces’, in Editor (Eds.): ‘Book Investigating Attractiveness in Web User Interfaces’ (2007, edn.), pp. 287-396 SUTCLIFFE Alistair, D.A.A.: ‘Assessing Interaction Styles in Web User Interfaces ’, in Editor (Ed.)^(Eds.): ‘Book Assessing Interaction Styles in Web User Interfaces ’ (Springer, Berlin, ALLEMAGNE (2005) (Monographie), 2005, edn.), pp.

E

Teaching Models

Is it Possible to Conciliate “e-Learning”, “Learning By Doing” and “Cross Cultural” Approaches when Learning New Technologies? Carina Roels and Alain Gourdain, France Abstract ITIN is an IT Institution of Higher Learning, preparing students for different national Masters. ITIN is a professional institution equivalent to technological Universities or European polytechnic schools. Among the main missions of ITIN [Virtanen I., 2002] [Wolfe D. 2002] one is to prepare excellent technical engineers, but also project managers capable of working efficiently within teams. In addition, it also means preparing up-andcoming engineers or even future business creators1.For this reason, ITIN uses an inductive pedagogy, a “learning by doing”, “project-based” approach. Observing the economic globalization [Friedman Th., 2007] [Stiglitz J., 2003] as well as Information Systems globalization [Raivola R., 2001], we clearly see that it is vital to prepare our students for international and intercultural team work. For this reason, ITIN has developed a pedagogy based on virtual mobility also called e-learning. In this article we will describe two series of distant teaching experiences, both project-based and with an intercultural context. We will describe the context, expose the problems related to 4 context sensitive parameters (distant learning, learning by doing, cross cultural, new technologies) and propose solutions for the exposed problems. We will show two examples of distant teaching: •

Asynchronous distant teaching concerning “New technology Project Management”. This course is one of the EMIM modules. The participants are students of the EMIM2 partner Universities (GB, Austria, Estonia, Romania, Turkey, France). Exchanges are made using Moodle.

1

ref. [Gourdin A. , 2003], [Gourdin A., 2003], [Gourdin A., Wolezyk R., 2004]

2

http://www.valnet-emim.eu/main/emim/

148

Carina Roels and Alain Gourdain

•

Synchronous distant teaching for the creation of innovating European companies. In this seminar several international teams elaborate a Business Plan for a new company. We will deal with a 4-year FranceFinland and France–Ukraine experience. All communications were made by videoconference (lessons, oral presentations, evaluation panels) and electronic media (e-mail, CMS).

1 Pedagogical Directions of the ITIN One of the roles of an Institute of Higher Learning is to help students develop their knowledge. In the case of a professional establishment, the role is twofold: working towards the acquisition of knowledge but also the building of students’ expertise and skills. If we look back at the period spanning the beginning of the 20th century and the present day, we can see that over a short period of time, a series of pedagogical epistemological paradigms emerged at the same rate as models relating to man and knowledge were developed. It is essential for us to decide on which these paradigms [Kuhn T., 1962] we should base our pedagogical approach. But first of all, let us look at how these paradigms have developed up to the present day. [Kyrö P., Carrier C., 2005] explains that during the modern transition, there was an emergence of a behaviorist approach based on the both the Positivist philosophy [Comte A. 1853] and an interpretation of the Darwinian Theory where Man is a sort of evolved animal and the learning process is the activation of his cognitive reflexes. The modern era further developed the cognitive approach [Piaget J. 1988] which is in essence rationalist [Boudon R., 1995]. Indeed, man’s choices are seen as rational and can be reduced to reason. During the two eras mentioned above, the predominant paradigm was ontological: it was believed that knowledge is something that exists in oneself and can be taught and transmitted to others. The seventies saw the beginning of the post-modern era [Lyotar JF, 1984]. The main preoccupation was complexity [Morin E., 2005], uncertainty and controllability. Significantly, this is when cybernetics were developed. The constructivist approach was also introduced [Lemoigne J.L., 2003] which perceives knowledge as being man-made. This knowledge can be developed and nourished by personal experience and the learner himself or herself.

Cross Cultural Approaches for Learning New Technologies

149

For pedagogues who subscribe to the constructivist paradigm, it is the actual “acting out” that allows experimentation and as a result, acquisition of knowledge. [Jonassen D, Howland J., Moore J., 2002][Berger P., Luckmann J.L., 2003]. The complementary idea claiming that man learns as a result of social interaction leads to the socio-constructive approach [Jonnaert Ph., 2002]. Furthermore, at a societal level, individualization of behavior3 and the information revolution4. developed. Tools such as mobile IT, ubiquity, etc. accelerated this process, while at the same time allowing “loose link” social networks to be created [Ferrary M., 2004][ Bauman Z., 2007]. These factors quickly led to the transformation of a society of individual information consumers into one of information producers (Web 2.0, etc.) [Friedman Th., 2007 ][Girod de L’Ain M., 2007]). By incorporating these mutations, the connectivist approach [Siemens G., 2006] can be seen as extending the socio-constructivist approach by a model of knowledge perceived as a living network. At the same time, the behavioural revolution [Kyrö P., Carrier C., 2005] leads to new approaches to work. The individual player has to cope with complexity, uncertainty and an incomplete view of contexts. Even so, he/she needs to be reactive and make the right decisions that take the overall context into account. This then, is the entrepreneurial approach that [Kyrö P., Carrier C., 2005] considers to be an extension of the socio-constructivist approach. So going back to the choice of paradigm, we consider that these two post socioconstructivist approaches, namely the connectivist and entrepreneurial paradigms, are the best framework references for the two pedagogical experiments that we will describe below.

2 Study of experimentation 1: Asynchronous Training 2.1 The training module 2.1.1

Pedagogical objective

Organizing, structuring and monitoring projects from a distance are the objectives of the “Project Management Module” taught as part of the EMIM programme. This brings individuals with very different skill bases together to work on joint projects.

3 4

Seen by certain people [Giddens, A., 1991] as the result of a multi-millenium programme and of its 10 forces according to [Friedman Th., 2007]

150

Carina Roels and Alain Gourdain

2.1.2

What knowledge and what skill?

Project management brings “human” or “soft” skills into play (team management, motivating team members, communication with different types of contacts, negotiation, assessment of team members, etc.) as well as so-called “technical” skills (defining the scope of the project, identifying motivational factors and constraints, drawing up specifications as well as the quality assurance program, risk analysis, planning, drawing up the forecasting budget, follow-up of implemented projects, and schedule updating, etc.). We feel it is essential that a project manager is fully aware of the different responsibilities that he has to take on. Furthermore, in today’s business world, many projects take on a cross-cultural dimension and even a “remote” international dimension. We therefore consider it essential that a project manager knows how to organize a project involving a cross-border team, even if all the participants cannot actually meet up in one geographical location. 2.1.3

Which public?

A first experience was carried out from February to July 2007, taking place over 18 weeks and involving 12 students of various nationalities (English (GB), Romanians (RO), French (FR))5 with different training/academic backgrounds (IT, Multimedia and Design, etc.). The 12 individuals concerned were grouped into 3 project teams: •

Team 1: {1 GB, 2 RO, 1 FR },

•

Team 2: { 2 GB, 1 RO, 1 FR },

•

Team 3: { 2 RO, 1 GB, 1 FR }

Time constraints varied from one group to another:

5

•

GB: students in full-time 3rd Level education

•

RO: students in continuing education (evening classes and weekends)

•

FR: students on a “sandwich course” or “apprenticeship”, i.e., alternating 2 months at university and 2 months in a company.

A second experience started off at the beginning of October 2007 and will finish in February 2008. It involves English, Romanian, Estonian, Finnish and Turkish students.

Cross Cultural Approaches for Learning New Technologies

2.1.4

151

Interaction modes, synchronism, behavioral prerequisites

The “Project Management” module in the EMIM project is run in complete remote mode, with the students following their courses in their respective universities. All the exchanges were carried out electronically using an e-Learning platform [Moodle], which comprises: •

Forums, wikis and chat

•

CMS-type functionalities (providing courseware, recommended reading, deposit of deliverables).

The exchanges were, for the most part, carried out in asynchronous mode: •

Participation in forums

•

Posting deliverables with a deadline to respect (1 per week)

•

Reminders and/or further information provided by the tutor

•

Feedback from the tutor

Due to the time difference and geographical distance, the following qualities were required from students: •

A strong sense of autonomy

•

True motivation

•

Consistency and perseverance

Indeed, apart from weekly instructions and reminders, no other external factors obliged them to log onto the e-Learning platform or produce the work required. The courseware was made available at least 2 weeks before each session.

Figure 1: Teaching Modell

152

Carina Roels and Alain Gourdain

2.1.5

Schedule

The « Project Management Module » comprised 18 sub-modules of 7 days each. Each sub-module covered one specific subject and the assignments had to be done either on an individual basis or working as part of a team. Table 1 Example of Teaching Module W W W W W W W W W W W W W W W W W 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

W 1 8

Acquisition of technical knowledge

Acquisition of know-how through the implementation of a project

Knowledge /skills

Participation in discussions

Project components

Incremental exercises (documents to be submitted).

« Project Management » documents

Deliverables

Individual

Project team

Players

Individual grade6

Individual grade8 (team work)

Team grade (joint documents concerning case study7)

Team grade (project deliverables9)

Type of assessment

« Product/Service Documents »

Team

The first part of the module (week 1 – week 8) focused on discovering the tasks and techniques relating to project management. The first 2 weeks allowed students to discover the both human and technical sides of project management. Documents were provided together with recommended reading and a forum was set up for each of these aspects. For the following 6 weeks, the participants were put into international teams. There was a different theme per week (for example: risk analysis and determining the life-span of a project). Participants were expected to read the recommended documents, attend a forum and, if possible, carry out some research with

6 7 8

9

Individual grade for technical knowledge given by the coach Team grade for the case study was given by the coach. Grade for teamwork participation (know-how) given by the coach. For the second session, currently underway, we are testing a cross-evaluation method by the students. Team grade for the project deliverables was given by the coach.

Cross Cultural Approaches for Learning New Technologies

153

a view to working as a team on a case study. Each team had a wiki which meant that they would produce common or shared documents. The documents were handed in at the end of the week and were then read, graded and sent back to the participants. The second part (week 9 – week 17) covered the setting up of a project. Students were quickly briefed on the outline of the project. Working a team, they had to produce a work package10 every week, so that the project could be implemented in the right conditions. Participants were asked to: •

identify the external players of the project (client, experts, etc.) and to start interviewing them (supported by a forum) with the aim of finetuning the request, restrictions, etc.

•

draw up specifications and the quality assurance programme

•

draw up a preliminary schedule (with allocation of resources) and a planning budget

•

simulate a presentation to the steering committee using a PowerPoint presentation (with comments)

•

update the timeline using documents provided (explanation of events occurring, activity reports on the project resources)

•

etc.

2.1.6

Assessment

Assessment of participants was made using three criteria11: •

Quality of the individual e-work (participation, homework, quiz)

•

Quality of the teamwork (quality of documents provided)

•

Result of a individual final examination (quiz + case study)

2.2 Conclusions During the first part of the module, the forums met with great success. All the participants had something to contribute and were willing to share their opinions and experiences.

10

11

The work package was to be produced using a certain number of document templates [Marchat H, 2004: Kit de gestion de projet] Assessment of participants was made by the coach

154

Carina Roels and Alain Gourdain

The discussion among participants is, without a doubt a real asset when it comes to on-line training. Participants are able to structure their own knowledge and move their knowledge beyond the purely theoretical stage. Clearly, this interactive way of constructing knowledge is in essence socio-constructivist [Jonnaert Ph., 2002]. Joint production of documents proved to be more difficult. Even though the reminders of the deadline for submission of documents were sent at least once a month, the wikis remained strangely empty right to the end. What actually happened was that each team member submitted the results of his or her assignments only. The result was a compilation of sections but lack of coherence and no real overall structure.  Producing a shared deliverable is more difficult and takes longer when the group participants are geographically distant from each other. Coordinating team work is no easy task. Only one out the three teams managed to get properly organised from the start. The two other teams had significant difficulty communicating and as result, difficulty getting organised. Let us take a look at some examples of some communication problems and their impact: One of the students had the bright idea of announcing to the other team members that the end of module assessment would not count for the diploma. This statement was totally unfounded and even though we immediately reacted once we had heard about the incident, the damage was already done. The team members got the message: “I’m not going to make a huge effort”. This also affected part of their motivation which was reflected in the results: assignments were not done and, in many case, handed in late. At different stages of the program, some people decided to drop the module. In fact, it was only after several reminders about their lack of participation that they announced their decision to leave. The teams involved were unaware of their team-mates’ decisions and very often were faced with extra tasks to make up for the lack of investment of one their own. This experiment clearly demonstrated that communication problems are amplified due to geographical distance and lack of direct visual contact. 2.3 Suggestions Right at the start of the 2nd session of this module (currently underway), we introduced tools that we hope will help the participants to detect problems themselves and come up with solutions.

Cross Cultural Approaches for Learning New Technologies

155

Examples: Introducing yourself: The module starts with a “Getting to know each other” forum so that participants can give a little more information about themselves. Specific questions make it possible to identify the way each of the participants work. Managing intercultural perceptions: at the beginning of the module, each participant is asked to give his or her (preconceived) idea of his foreign colleagues vis-à-vis certain behavioral aspects (respecting deadlines, team-work, experience sharing, perseverance, motivating colleagues, etc). During the group assignments, a project leader will be appointed for a given period. At the end of this time, he or she will be asked to assess his colleagues in the light of the team work achieved. He or she will also be asked to anticipate solutions address any difficulties doing the work in the best conditions. At the end of the module, aided by the different comments from each of the teams, he or she will be asked to review his or her opinion concerning his or her foreign colleagues in order to confirm or refute these. As the forums had already proved their worth, it was decided to use this means of constructing knowledge throughout the module: every week a forum allowed participants to exchange ideas concerning the subject covered. A special wiki was set up to facilitate cooperation for the production of deliverables. In situation where time differences are less pronounced, it would be advisable to organise team meetings where participants could meet up and discuss. In the same way, a real presentation of the project would be welcome at the end of the module. This could, for example, be done by video-conference. 2.4 Conclusions for the Project Management module The EMIM program “Project Management” module aims at teaching how to manage projects remotely working with multi-disciplinary teams. The approach follows the socio-constructivist approach in that it allows learners to exchange ideas and progress while remotely implementing a team project. This way of working also means that participants become fully aware of how difficult it is to manage projects in an international context, which is multi-disciplinary and in asynchronous mode.

156

Carina Roels and Alain Gourdain

3 Study of experimentation # 2 synchronous training 3.1 The training module 3.1.1

Pedagogical objective

The “entrepreneurship” module is part of our Master programs. It aims at helping students develop an entrepreneurial approach and certain basic skills required for starting up a business or international activity. 3.1.2

What is the knowledge and what are the skills?

Today’s Hi-tech entrepreneur needs a broad and diversified knowledge base covering the technological, economic, management, marketing, etc. However, the entrepreneur is first and foremost like the conductor of an orchestra. He/she does not necessarily need to possess all the know–how himself/herself but does need to know how to get things done. In other words, he/she must be able to outsource or delegate tasks to experts when starting up a company or business activity. We feel that the entrepreneur should above all possess and develop the ability to: •

pinpoint emerging needs, use his/her creativity [Debono E., 1988],

•

adapt to complex situations, make decisions in an uncertain environment and take action in emergency situations [Perrenoud Ph. 1996]

•

lead teams, mobilise networks.

One of the basic capacities of an entrepreneur is knowing how and where to detect untapped opportunities: thereby identifying unaddressed needs, (a technology or a service, for example) and building the value chain corresponding to the need in question. Research carried out into the decision-making process shows that the creative process, rapid decision-making, coping with complexity and uncertainties, simultaneously bring into play: •

logical thought, in other words, our rational side,

•

intuition, emotions, in other words, our irrational side,

and that far from being a purely rational process, decision-making calls upon other factors and one of these is our emotions [Taleb N. 2005] [Zaltman G., 2003] [Elster J., 1999] [Damasio A., 2006]. We also believe that today’s Hi Tech entrepreneur needs to know how to work fast while at the same time mobilising players with different skills and world-

Cross Cultural Approaches for Learning New Technologies

157

wide networks. Furthermore, he/she should be set to work in a global and intercultural context [Prakash S., Ganeshan S., 2007], very often the source of specific difficulties [Fayolle A., Ulijn J., 2004]. 3.1.3

Which public?

We shall mainly devote this section to the description of a synchronous training experiment involving 20 Finnish students and 20 French students in an identical age group: 22 to 24 years. The 40 people were put into 5 project teams, each with 4 Finnish students and 4 French students. The time constraints varied from one context to another: •

Finland: full-time third-level education

•

France: students on a “sandwich course” or apprenticeship, i.e., alternating 2 months at university and 2 months in a company.

158

Carina Roels and Alain Gourdain

3.1.4

Interaction modes, synchronism, behavioral prerequisites.

Figure2: Interaction Mode

This training was carried out in complete remote mode with each student based at his or her own university. Contact and exchanges were carried out electronically: •

Group Visio conferences with exchanges of visuals and sound as well as documents

•

Moodle tool used for its CMS function (Content management system)

•

Electronic mail

The exchanges were weekly synchronous: •

teachers: course sequences, presentation of expectations for the following deliverables,

•

team: oral presentation of deliverables, final presentation and defence,

•

jury: feedback and assessment by coaches and juries.

Asynchronous and autonomously planned: preparation by the teams of deliverables and their oral presentation. As the students were based at universities in two different geographical locations, participation in the module essentially required: •

the ability to work as a group for the organizing of tasks and exchanges

•

the ability to understand and accept quickly and calmly the expectations and approaches of distant members of bi-national teams.

•

the ability to perceive differences in technological, cultural, financial contexts, etc.

Cross Cultural Approaches for Learning New Technologies

3.1.5

159

Schedule:

W

W

W

1

2

3

W 4

W

W

W

5

6

7

W 8

W 9

W 1 0

W 1 1

W 1 2

W 1 3

W 1 4 Knowledge/skills

Acquisition of technical knowledge (market research, business organisation, Business plan …) Acquisition of know-how by the preparation of studies working as a group. Brainstorming and short-listing ideas for innovative products and services Incremental exercises (work packages to be posted on the group site)

F O P

Deliverables

12

Weekly presentation and defence of the work package for the week Individual

Players

Binational project team Individual grades (deliverables and presentations) Team grades (deliverables and 15 Individual grade (participation in group work)

13 14

presentations)

S F

Type of assessment

16

Table 2: Sample Schedule

The seminar comprised 14 meetings over 14 weeks for the all of the teams involved. Each Visio conference lasted a full day. The first day (W1) mainly focused on choosing 5 ideas for creating a company and setting up 5 Franco-Finnish teams, one for each idea. The last day (W14) was for presenting and defending project files in front of a panel comprising company start-up17 professionals in order to convince them to invest in their project. The other days were used mainly for the oral presentation of deliverables18, following a course and preparation of the deliverable for the following week. In each school a teacher, acting as coach, participated in the synchronous sessions w1 to w14.

12 13 14 15 16 17 18

Final Oral defence before a Jury Individual grades concerning deliverables and their presentation given by a jury Team notes given by a jury Individual grade concerning participation in team given by coaches Final presentation and defence in front of a binational jury Investors, Managers of “incubators”, bankers, … These are the typical documents contained in a company creation file : market research, Business Plan, etc.…

160

Carina Roels and Alain Gourdain

The w2 and w13 were all broken down in the same way: •

Presentation and defence by each team19 of the deliverable produced during the week

•

Courses20 covering the skills required for the next deliverable (given by a Finnish or French teacher on an alternate basis).

•

Definition of the next deliverable (coaches from both schools working on an alternate basis)

•

Team work on the deliverable (per team) in the presence of the coach21

3.1.6

Assessment

Student assessment is both individual and collective: •

Individual grades assessing the relevance of the presentations : these are given by a jury,

•

Team grades assessing the quality of the deliverables given by a jury,

•

Individual grade assessing the participation in group work is given by the coaches.

3.2 Conclusions In fact this pedagogical process that we have just described has been up and running for 4 years. We have run it in binational mode with Finnish, Ukrainian or Canadian partners. The conclusions are as follows: •

the overall objective is to develop entrepreneurial awareness through practical situations/simulations

•

setting up international teams, which are, in addition, intercultural.

There were several variables: the area of study and knowledge22, the cultural makeup of the teams, planning that varied from one experiment to the other. We can say that each of these experiences was unique because the variables mentioned above carried a lot of weight. Difficulties resulting from incomplete mastery of the working language were minor, but communication difficulties for 19 20

21 22

.

The role of an “itinerant” presenter among members of the team The courseware was posted in advance on Moodle, an e-learning platform [Collective, 2007]. Who could also be an expert (legal, financial, …) The Ukrainian and French students are studying engineering and therefore have a « technical » culture. The Finnish and Canadian students are following business courses.

Cross Cultural Approaches for Learning New Technologies

161

students coming from different business/technological backgrounds/courses were much greater. But it was these fundamental cultural distances as seen by [Hofstede G., 2001] [D’Iribarne Ph., et al., 1998 ] that gave rise to tensions that were rare but nonetheless emotionally charged. Let us look at some examples (very rare but nonetheless interesting) taken from different sessions. Example 1: a team made up 4 French students and 4 Finnish students found it very difficult to work efficiently together, right up to the day of the presentations. On this occasion, female team member presented slides that were different to the ones prepared the day before. The French students got mixed up in their presentation and this was a great source of amusement for the young woman, At the end of the session, a critical analysis of the situation showed that these difficulties were essentially due to: A significant gap in the perception of men and women (gender roles)23 and a highly-diverging approach to the decision-making process within the teams24 Example 2: A group of French students and an international group in Finland that included one German. The allocation of tasks and the work of the FrancoFinnish group seemed to be going reasonably well but the German student considered that the work submitted by the French needed to be re-written. Not only did he do it himself, he did it without consulting any of his team-mates!. There was an extreme reaction on the part of the French students who were shocked by this action. The coaches had to intervene to moderate the very virulent exchanges that took place over the net and during the visio-conferences. Example 3: One of the Finnish teams was composed of 7 Chinese and one Russian student. The working and decision-making methods of the Chinese conflicted with that of the female Russian student. The very extrovert communication of the young Russian contrasted sharply to the more reserved style of our young Chinese friend. For the full duration of the seminar, it was the young Russian woman who tried to monopolise the role of spokeswoman when faced with the French students. At the end of all these experiences, all the students without exception judged this training experience as one the most enriching, despite difficulties due to distance and difficulties interacting without full knowledge of how the other team members functioned.

23 24

With reflexes close to those analysed in [Bourdieu P., 2002] The consensus logic in Finland as opposed to the logic of honour in France ? [D' Iribarne Ph., 2003]

162

Carina Roels and Alain Gourdain

However, after a few years, the majority of students involved did not keep up this long-distance relation, although some actually met up and one group even went to the partner country to study. We feel that this experimentation into virtual mobility has the advantage of being relatively inexpensive. Furthermore, students do not feel intimidated, but at the same time they discover difficulties that intercultural cooperation entails. Students are also given the opportunity to use state of the art resources used by companies at a time where sustainable development is a key issue. In a world that has become borderless in terms of economy, it would be interesting to give the teams that wish to actually set up their own business (10% of cases) the opportunity to meet up and attempt to turn this dream into reality. This year we plan to organise 5 new entrepreneurial seminars remotely. Adopting a connectivist approach, students will have to rely much more on human networks (experts, coaches, friends …) and virtual networks that in turn allow learner networks to be set up (Web 2.0, Wiki, Blogs, Feeds, …) [Richardson W. 2006] 3.3 Introductory conclusions for the entrepreneurial seminar Our seminar therefore aims at mobilising essential multiple skills for a Hi tech entrepreneur. Within the framework of socioconstructive and entrepreneurial approaches, it puts international teams into situations that brings creativity and rapid decision-making into play. At same time, the players have to cope with intercultural distances which add to the uncertainty of markets, competitors, technico-economic choices, difficulties understanding each other and cooperating.

4 Conclusions of the remote practical training experiences We think that these two successive training modules complement each other while focusing on very different objectives. For us the objective of the “Project Management” module is to learn how to “put disorder into order”, to anticipate risks, thereby reducing the uncertainty that they bring [Le Bissonnais J., 2003]. In very simple terms, it is above all the development of the ability to act in a rational manner. The initial phase of the entrepreneurial training is to “create disorder” [Tabatoni P., 2005] and to make decisions in a totally unfamiliar and uncertain environment. It is above all the development of capacities that are also intuition and “tacit” knowledge.

Cross Cultural Approaches for Learning New Technologies

163

The context is the one of actors cooperating and dealing with important constraints: distance between actors (geographic, time) and cultural distance (national, professional,).The practices have been described before [in chapters 3 and 4]. We remark a very important amplification of the perception of cultural differences that slow down team work, generate conflicts between team members and give rise to significant difficulty keeping up team motivation. The exposed difficulties are rather hard to solve without actors getting physically together. Some solutions can seem quite trivial (tutoring frequency, re synchronization,) but have the disadvantage of putting the responsibility on the teacher’s shoulders. The solutions we have described consist of developing students’ social motivation, their capability of detecting blocking intercultural differences and searching appropriate positive solutions. In innovating distant projects with intercultural differences, the main difficulty is not due to the used techniques but rather to the lack of real contact between the actors, to the incomprehension of implicit cultural behavior, to dysfunctions and tension within teams. We have presented examples of dysfunctions and some ideas for solutions. To conclude, we would like to point out that this account of our experiences shows that the teaching profession and the role of the teacher have fundamentally changed. [Klein J., Grabowski B. , 2004]. And this is only the beginning of an exciting adventure…

References Bauman Z., 2007, Liquid Times: Living in an Age of Uncertainty, Polity Press. Berger P., Luckmann Th.,1966, The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge. Bissey Ch., Moreau J.L., 2003, TIC et NET, La FOAD en questions ,Nouvelles voies pour la formation, éducation et formation, Editions Presses Universitaires de France. Boudon R., 1995, Le Juste et le Vrai : études sur l'objectivité des valeurs et de la connaissance, Paris, Fayard. Bourdieu P., 2002, Masculine domination, Stanford University Press Damasio A., 2006, Descartes' Error, Vintage. Dubey G., 2001, Le lien social à l’ère du virtuel, Editions Presses Universitaires de France, Paris. Debono E., 1988, Debono's Thinking Course, Facts on File.

164

Carina Roels and Alain Gourdain

D' Iribarne Ph., 2003, The Logic of Honor : National Traditions and Corporate Management, Ed. Welcome Rain. Elster J., 1999, Alchemies of the Mind: Rationality and the Emotions, Cambridge University Press. Fayolle A., Ulijn J., 2004, Towards Cooperation Between European Start-Ups : The Position of the French , Dutch, and German Entrepreneurial and Innovative Engineer, Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Culture, Edward Elgar Publishing. Ferrary M., Pesqueux Y., 2004, L’organisation en réseaux, mythes et réalités, PUF Friedman Th., 2007, The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century, Editeur : Picador USA Giddens, A., 1991, Modernity and Self-Identity. Self and Society in the Late Modern Age. Ed. Cambridge Polity. Jonnaert Ph., 2002, Compétences et socioconstructivisme, De Boeck, Bruxelles. Jonassen D.,Howland J., Moore J., 2002, Learning to Solve Problems With Technology: A Constructivist Perspective ,Prentice Hall. Hofstede G., 2001, Cultures consequences, Sage publications. Kuhn T., 1962, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, University Of Chicago Press; 3 edition. Klein J., Grabowski B. , 2004, Instructor Competencies: Standards for Learning Environments of the 21st Century. ,Washington DC: Information Age, Kyrö P., Carrier C., 2005, The dynamics of Learning entrepreneurship in a crosscultural context, Edited by University of Tampere, Finland. Le Bissonnais J., 2003, Management des risques dans la conduite de projets, AFNOR Lemoigne J.L., 2003, Le constructivisme, L’Harmattan. Lyotar JF, 1984, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, University of Minnesota Press. Marchat H., 2004, Kit de conduite de projet, Editions de l’organisation Morin E., 2005, Introduction à la pensée complexe, édition du Seuil Collective, Philosophy of Moodle, 2007, constructionism, constructivism, social constructivism, … http://docs.moodle.org/en/Philosophy, GNU Public License. Collective, 2007, http://docs.moodle.org/en, GNU Public License. Perrenoud Ph., 1999, Enseigner : Agir dans l'urgence, décider dans l'incertitude, EME Editions Sociales Françaises (ESF).

Cross Cultural Approaches for Learning New Technologies

165

Piaget J., 1988, De la pédagogie, Éditions Odile Jacob, Paris. Prakash S., Ganeshan S. , 2007, Joint Venture Mahindra & Mahindra Pvt. Ltd. and Renault S.A., Ed. Négocia, Paris. Raivola R. , Kekkonen K., Tulkki P., Lyytinen A., 2001, Producing competencies for learning economy, Sitra report series 9, Helsinki. Richardson W., 2006, Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts and other Powerful Web tools for Classrooms, Corwin press, Thousand Oaks Siemens G., 2006, Knowing Knowledge, complexive inc. Soccavo L., 2007, Gutenberg 2.0 le future du livre, Editions M21. Stiglitz J., 2003, Globalization and Its Discontents, W. W. Norton & Company Tabatoni P., 2005, Innovation, désordre, progrès, Economica, Taleb N.N., 2005, Le Hasard sauvage : Des marchés boursiers à notre vie : le rôle caché de la chance, Editor : Belles Lettres. Virtanen I., 2002, Yliopistojen kolmas tehtävä, Edita, Helsinki. Wolfe D., 2002, The role of higher education in regional innovation and cluster development, University of Toronto. Zaltman G., 2003, How Customers Think: Essential Insights into the Mind of the Market, Harvard Business School Press.

Events as Organisational Stories: an Event-Based Approach for Learning Media Production Tomi Numento and Pekka Uotila, Finland Abstract Google 'storytelling', and you get 22.1 million hits (17.10.2007). By comparison, 'shareholder value' gets you 2.1 million (17.10.2007). Storytelling is hot, since a good story and storytelling skills can differentiate you from your competitors. The question is how to create such a story, how to advance from an informing level to an inspiring, engaging, touching and captivating story for your audience. Projects and project management are becoming more and more self evident features of contemporary working life. Projects as temporary organizations are well suited for the needs of a rapidly changing working life. The project can be seen as a future working environment for a well trained and relatively independent, goal oriented professional. On the other hand the project and its managing methods could be considered just like a traditional bureaucratic control method with its tendency to make activities into countable units (Hodgson 2004). In media production as well as in the production of a cultural or sports event the role of the project management is crucial (Bawdin & al 2006, 255). However the concept of the project is not an unproblematic technique by which to manage the diversity of cultural or sports events and their media productions. A project can be understood as a metaphor, which is used to make complicated and fuzzy processes look controllable and simple. Project reality is not necessary like that. To understand the diversity and ambiguity of the human effort needed to achieve something together with other people, there is a need for alternative approaches.

1 Storytelling Storytelling is the ancient art of conveying events in words, images, and sounds, often by improvisation or embellishment. Stories have probably been shared in every culture and in every land as a means of entertainment, education, preservation of culture and to instill knowledge and values/morals. Crucial elements of storytelling include a plot and characters, as well as the narrative point of view. Stories are frequently used to teach, explain, and/or entertain. Less frequently, but occasionally with major consequences, they have been used to mislead. There can be much truth in a story of fiction, and much falsehood in a story that uses facts (Lord, 2000).

168

Tomi Numento and Pekka Uotila

Begiebing et al (2004) summarise personal and professional experiences by means of making successful modern films, novels, biographies, articles, museum displays, and poems. Even in these forms, storytellers try to create a sense of engagement or dialog with the audience. Begiebing claims, that the effective writer provides just enough clues to get the reader's imagination, intellect, and emotional responses involved in figuring out what is going on in the story. The stories that last through the ages "leave plenty up to the reader." The appearance of technology has changed the tools available to storytellers. Traditionally, oral stories were passed from generation to generation, and survived solely through memory. With written and digital media, this has become less important. Conversely, in modern times, the vast entertainment industry is built upon a foundation of sophisticated multimedia storytelling. According to Brown et al (2004), the storytelling skills and the use of storytelling in organisations and interorganisational communication and leadership (Denning 2007) can even be a key to success in the early 21st century.

2 Event-Based Learning The western cultures have medialised in recent years. Media is present anytime, anywhere and almost on any technical device. The changing professional environment in the field of media education is especially challenging in rural areas. Technological and organisational changes (Ståhle, 2007) are as rapid and radical as in urban regions but the regional development is negative in terms of the economics and the decreasing population. In this situation, there is a danger of falling into the position of a follower and media content consumer instead of a developer. It is crucial for an educational institution to find a position where the latest media solutions can actively be used for educational purposes in all different fields of study, especially in non-media disciplines. New technologies and the changing organisational and media environment require new learning methods and approaches for media education. Different fields of media production are getting more and more important in the events’ survival struggle and in the role of changing event management. These lines of changes: changes in organisational culture, changes in the media production and centralisation make it necessary to find new approaches to train new professionals for the field of media and entertainment. In Mikkeli University of Applied Sciences the developed approach is called Event Based Learning (EBL) (Numento & Uotila 2006). In EBL the process of project management is understood as twofold: as a technical management tool for the event as a whole and also as a personal concept of organizing and outlining the personal benefits on participating in the process and the growth process

Events as Organisational Stories

169

during the process. Event Based Learning (Figure 1) is trying to respond to some of the many different demands which are facing educational institutions, organisations and rural areas, and in this case Finland. The universities of applied sciences should be able to offer high-level training and be active in regional development as well as in research and development. With limited and reducing resources these demands can only be met by combining different activities and interests in one entity. Event Based Learning is a combination of three main processes, which take place in a local context.

Figure 1: Event-Based Learning (Numento & Uotila 2006)

The local context consists of the technical environment and facilitators. The technological environment is in our case very important. We have been establishing a technical platform for different kinds of TV-based productions, learning and technical experiments. The platform is not static machinery but a dynamic combination of technologies and ideas, which can be combined and developed further. The main idea is to use such solutions, which are also available in rural areas. This means, for example, web streaming and using the existing fibre networks in media production. These technologies are new and a very good resource for technical research and development. The telecommunications facilita-

170

Tomi Numento and Pekka Uotila

tors are partners in most of the productions. This gives them a great opportunity to test and develop new products and services and at the same time increase cash flow. In the pedagogical process of EBL (Figure 3) there are students and lecturers as well as clients’ representatives involved. Their pedagogical activities and goals are led by curricula and the overall goals of the educational system. Mikkeli University of Applied Sciences offers a wide range of study programmes and one of our goals is to find new ways for true multidisciplinary studies and projects. In our case the participants come mainly from media, ICT, cultural studies, industrial design, business and marketing. One of the definitive strengths of EBL is the allocation and focus of studies towards the non-media students and disciplines also, who require certain media skills in their profession. The pedagogical process is supported by specialists in different fields. Lecturers and students are involved with research and development at different levels and have different goals including regional development. In the pedagogical process we are dealing with the future workforce and working-life contacts are crucial for a university of applied sciences. The common project is the cutting point of these processes in the local context. The point of departure is the willingness to apply ICT in the development of the events. At this point different networks that usually don’t meet, different ways of working and people with various professional backgrounds come together (and meet). The key to success is the comprehensive understanding of the event as an organiser and as a customer. The organisational tool to manage this diversity is project management; the goals are approached by generating problems and solving them. The planning and learning takes place in a human communication network. EBL is an approach that could be described as a combination of problem-based learning, learning by developing and project based learning, which takes place in a multidisciplinary context with new technological applications. The core activities are project management, problem creating and solving as well as communication in a multidisciplinary network, which is seen as a unique, emerging organisation. In Event Based Learning features of problem-based learning, learning by developing and project based learning are combined. These methods have been studied and implemented extensively in the context of Finnish higher-level educational institutions as well as in many international studies. The benefits of these approaches are e.g. working in a real working life context (Vesterinen 2001), independent responsibility and appreciation given by the working life partners. In EBL certain elements have been fixed beforehand (media technologies, type of events) and they work as a platform or a context for generating new kinds of

Events as Organisational Stories

171

problems in event organising. This kind of active pre-selection does not hinder or constrain the process in any way. On the contrary, they give the process a solid platform from which it is possible to fully concentrate and focus on the development of an event and on controlling the process of EBL. These new kinds of problems are created by adding to the planning process elements of media utilisation and by asking people from different kinds of professional backgrounds to work together. The internal co-operation seems to be a very important asset in high tech project organisation in working life (Kolehmainen 2002). The main features of EBL for the participants are (Numento & Uotila 2006); Real working life context (sports or a cultural event is the subject of development and the working life participants are active developers working inside the EBL framework). •

Multidisciplinary process (information technology, telecommunications, media, cultural studies, industrial design, business, marketing and catering).

•

Focus to non-media students.

•

Utilisation of new media technologies (streaming, fibre networks and media production).

•

Organising as a process of communication (project management, intensive communication and storytelling).

For effective learning and overall development, there should be for all participants, different kinds of flexible possibilities to have their voices heard. Documentation and written reports are important, because the organisation is emerging from talk but it can be made durable and evolve only by tangible objects like written plans, stories, publications and “making of” -documentaries. This approach combines many different interests and it is fulfilled in a multiprofessional media project. This kind of combination makes it necessary to create the learning and planning concepts that are easy to understand and commit people with various backgrounds. This is why we have chosen to use storytelling as a tool in conceptualizing, planning and evaluating the media productions of an event.

3 Projects and storytelling All organisations, like project organisations, consist of a human communication network. In our case the actors in a network have been students from different fields, teachers and event organisers. The network is ever changing, expanding

172

Tomi Numento and Pekka Uotila

and never completed. This emerging organisation is in nature multidisciplinary, temporary, goal oriented and intensive in communication. Because this organisation has both a spatial and a temporal nature, it can be conceptualised as a story (Cooren 1999). Stories are similar to the well* known model of the project cycle (Figure 2). In a story a mission or task is given to a hero (manipulation), the hero commits himself to the mission (commitment); several skills, helpers and equipment are needed and provided (competence) for the actual performance. After the performance, the hero will be given sanction, which could be a reward or another kind of feedback. We believe that the narrative model and storytelling might be a useful tool for educational purposes like building personal orientation, creating new ideas and feedback.

Scheme of a story1

Phases of a project2

Manipulation

Initiation

Commitment

Planning

Competence

Implementation

Performance

Event

Sanction

Shut down

Technical

Individual

The temporary organisation in EBL is always aiming at change. The project is an organisation, which is a series of actions, completed by certain persons or equipment in certain sequences. During the planning process, the initial situation and goals as well as the means to achieve these goals are commonly negotiated. In the implementation phase, the participants build networks of actions which build the entire organisation and the event. For each individual participant the entity is a unique experience - a story. For each participant the event has a different meaning and for each participant the event might represent a different phase of a story - for a student the event might be the beginning of a professional career, for the event organiser a new customer relationship and for the lecturer the result of a research project.

…organising… Figure 2: The socio-semiotic scheme of a story by Cooren (1999) and the phases of a project by Bawding et al (2006).

Events as Organisational Stories

173

The development of an event as an entity is a network of embedded individual stories. Project management is a way to manage this diversity of stories. These personal experiences and the management of projects and events in an emerging, temporal organisation are at the core of the EBL approach. The study process of EBL reflects in many ways this theme. In the beginning, a voluntary student is introduced to the new themes and models of thinking (manipulation). After that an event and the development needs of an event are revealed (commitment). New skills and developments are made and the success is tested throughout the process by teachers, professionals and the client (competence). Should the evaluation fail, a new loop of development and studying is implemented. The skills and the development are tested in the production of an event (performance). After the performance a two-way feedback and evaluation are made and new ideas are processed and implemented into the new learning cycle (sanction).

Figure 3: The study process of EBL.

4 Stories in initiation We do not claim that the phases of a project should be replaced by those of the storytelling. Projects certainly are always somehow unique and no project ever follows exactly the steps that have been written down on a project plan. Neither are stories only empty forms to be filled in. Nevertheless, to use storytelling and its structuring and organising power as an alternative metaphor instead of project

174

Tomi Numento and Pekka Uotila

management has some implications that might be useful in educational media projects. Storytelling is a powerful way to tell about things that are not evidently here and now. Another feature of a story is that a story is personal. A story is typically told from one point of view. We have used storytelling as a tool to introduce students 1 to projects . In one case in spring 2007 we were planning with our partner a new kind of jazz concert in a local cultural house. It was going to be an experiment mixing media, some theatre elements and a traditional big band live performance. 2

We asked some of the participating students to write a story about the flow of events after the first planning meetings of the project. The story hadn’t been longer than 200 words, it had to tell about a fictional person, who is however, a member of the project team. The story had to end (or start) with the same words: “…at 20.00 the doors of the club were opened.” The analysis of the texts showed that it was easy to find expressions in the stories that we were able to identify as phases in the scheme of a story. The expressions dealt with planning, getting a task or mission (manipulation), committing oneself to a mission (commitment), learning new skills, networking (competence), doing the tasks during the concert (performance) and expressing feelings and gratefulness (sanction). Those expressions we interpreted furthermore as descriptions of different phases of a project (Figure 3). The students who didn’t have much experience and only a little theoretical knowledge about project management, wrote credible stories about the flow of events in a project. So we got very personal, well-formed and creative insights into the project we were planning. The students seemed to have intrinsic tacit knowledge about the overall organisation of a project.

5 Stories in feedback and evaluation During the same case we asked the students to write a similar story after the production, with a slightly different instruction: “…at 24.00 the doors of the club were closed.” Now the students wrote a story after they have had the experience of planning, implementing and performing the production. These stories had the emphasis on the performance and sanction. They evaluated the production and expressed gratefulness, relief and sympathy with the other team members. The 1

2

This approach is adapted from Eskola & Suoranta, who have used this kind of storytelling as a research method. We received stories from 11 students but we analysed only those stories which were written at the beginning and at the end of the project. All together we had 9 writers and 18 stories.

Events as Organisational Stories

175

goals and mission in these stories did not bother the students that much anymore. Most of the expressions in the stories were in general about the situation, the network and the relationships between the storyteller and other team members (144 out of the 343 coded segments, approximately 40% of all segments). In table x is illustrated the frequency of the rest of the expressions in both of the stories (those gathered before and those after the project). It is not a big surprise that the students after the performance were much more interested in the performance and the sanction. A. Stories written at the beginning Manipulation 33 34 % Commitment 10 10 % Competence 40 42 % Performance 2 2% Sanction 11 11 % TOTAL 96 100 %

B. Stories written at the end of the project Manipulation 15 15 % Commitment 4 4% Competence 22 21 % Performance 23 22 % Sanction 39 38 % TOTAL 103 100 %

Table 1. Number of coded segments in the stories at the beginning of the project and after the performance.

As expected the students were in their first stories dealing with such things as “goal”, “plan” and “competencies” and afterwards with things like “performance” and “success”. However it is interesting to realise that these goals and plans were, in most of the stories, about the personal goals and personal performance of the storyteller. The stories showed us how the personal goal or mission of a storyteller might be very different from the “official” mission of the project management – and still everything seemed to run relatively smoothly. This case illustrated the temporary and individual nature of a project: in a retrospective evaluation the things that are close will be emphasised (results and performance) and the things that are important but far away will be taken less into account. Asking the students to tell stories in different phases of a media production and using them as a source for evaluation might help us to create a more personal and accurate picture of the very diverse process and ever changing organisation of a project.

6 Storytelling and mobile technology Telling stories need not only be writing fictional stories before or after an event. The use of mobile devices can make the “making-of” –process of the production more fun and create information that is somehow more spontaneous. We have

176

Tomi Numento and Pekka Uotila

experimented gathering information on a media production by using a mobile phone application. The idea is that the students are asked to express their impressions, feelings, complaints or successes during the production of an event. By this approach we could possibly get more detailed information about what actually happens during a media production, we can also get other kinds of elements for the whole story of a project like pictures, video- and audio clips. This kind of approach should help us to observe the beginnings of the small submissions and individual projects that occur during a large media project. The spontaneous and less considered pictures, videos and lines of texts can show small but perhaps important features of the audience, the services or the production. The small excerpts and pictures can work as the beginning of a story that might otherwise not be heard in the evaluation meetings.

7 EBL in practice One of the primary cases so far has been a complex video-production for a Finnish national level rally competition taking place in Mikkeli City and rural area. Through the EBL process the rally event was combined with courses in information technology, telecommunications, event production, business, marketing, industrial design and catering. This professional experience of multicamera production and decentralised distribution was offered as part of their studies to 40 students in the Mikkeli University of Applied Sciences and to 10 media students in the Mikkeli Vocational School. Students taking part in the production had different approaches: a compulsory course, project studies, practical training or diploma work. Students were also from different stages of study: vocational studies, first year and senior students worked on the production side by side with professionals and clients from different organisations as well as with customers and rally event spectators. For the several thousand rally spectators the production was a very new concept to experience at the rally event. The result was a long story, over seven hours of a manuscripted live rally related media stream including live rally footage from three special stages, interviews, real time results and a rally studio. Two new technologies were used in the distribution of the media. Firstly, a large-scale commercial Wimax wireless broadband network was used to stream media over public Internet from and to one of the special stages, 20 kilometres from the Mikkeli City centre. Secondly, a commercial fibre network, in which the video, audio and command signals were multiplexed and transferred in real time, was used to transport live coverage, 15 kilometres from the Mikkeli City centre. The media was viewed on a large video wall and on an internal TV-network in the service park situated in Mikkeli City centre and on several smaller TV-screens, which were situated at one of the

Events as Organisational Stories

177

special stages about 20 kilometres from the service park. The main working life partner was the local rally organiser and its partners (15 active persons dealing with the media production). In total they spent approximately 4500 hours on the media production. The project team was in touch with several of the partners’ subcontractors as well.

8 Conclusion To plan and implement an event or to make media production is about stories. An event or a media production is based on a manuscript. But this is not the only story like feature in a media production. The productions are organised like projects and a project is like a narrative story. An industry which is basically about telling stories should use its ability to tell a story more widely. Telling a story should be used more as a concept for developing new ways of producing and learning the media production. The students might have an intrinsic understanding of how events are going to flow under certain circumstances. They might even be able to tell this flow of events as a credible story. This tacit knowledge and ability to tell a story should be used to make the project management more understandable. To use storytelling as a tool in learning, planning, modelling and evaluating with the use of conventional project management techniques gives us a more diverse and critical understanding of what is going on in (educational) media productions. For this purpose we need a better understanding and better tools to collect, analyse and interpret the stories about the projects and use these stories as a source for new innovations. The planning and development of an internationally executable version of Event Based Learning, which combines ideas of web communities with stories and events is also in a planning phase.

References Begiebing, R., J. Brown, B. Franco, D. Grubin, R. Rosen & N. Trethewey, 2004. Interchange: Genres of history. Journal of American History 91 (Sept. 2004), pp. 572-593. Brown, J., Denning, S., Groh, K., Prusak, L. 2004. Storytelling in Organisations: Why Storytelling is Transforming 21st Century Organisations and Management Cooren, F., 1999. The Organising Property of Communication. Bowdin, G., Allen. J., O´Toole, W., Harris, R., McDonnell, I., 2006. Events management.

178

Tomi Numento and Pekka Uotila

Denning, S. 2007. The secret language of leadership. Jossey Bass. Eskola, J. & Suoranta, J. 2001. Johdatus laadulliseen tutkimukseen. Hodgson, D. E. 2004. Project Work: The Legacy of Bureaucratic Control in the Post-Bureaucratic Organization 11(1): 81 - 100. Kolehmainen P., 2002. Features of Internal Co-operation in High-tech Project Organisations. In: Perspectives on the Age of the Information Society. Edited by Eero Pantzar. Lord, A., 2000. The singer of tales, Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Ministry of Trade and Industry of Finland (2007): Development strategy for entrepreneurship in the creative industries sector for 2015. MTI Publications 10/2007. Numento T. & Uotila P. 2006. Event Based Learning. MApEC - Multimedia applications in education conference: proceedings 2006. — Graz : FH JOANNEUM, 2006. Ståhle, P. & Grönroos, M. 2000. Dynamic Intellectual Capital — Knowledge Management in Theory and Practice. WSOY: Porvoo, Helsinki, Juva. Ståhle P., 2007. Five Steps for Finland´s Future. A high level Round Table initiated by The New Club of Paris, held in Helsinki November 14th, 2006 with and for Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen. Technology Review 202/2007. Tekes: Helsinki. Vesterinen, P. 2001. Projektiopiskelu- ja oppiminen ammattikorkeakoulussa. Project -based studying and learning in the polytechnic.

The Learning Effectiveness of Cross-Discipline Collaboration Within a Media Production BA Project Mik Parsons, UK Abstract Does cross-course collaboration between BA Scriptwriting, BA Television, and BA Interactive Media Students, improve the learning experience when working on a group-based interactive story-telling project, and what are the implications for assessment of the work? This 2007 case study involved 148 Bournemouth University students in 18 production groups. This paper considers the learning potential released by teaching to groups across different disciplines within media production. A single six week unit was delivered to eighteen groups of students, each group comprising a mix from BA Television Production, BA Interactive Media Production and BA Scriptwriting for Film and Television, all at level C. Each group of approximately nine students was required to create a DVD programme with an associated website. The paper considers the logistics of organising and delivering the programme and the ways in which staff and students related to the cross-discipline nature of the unit. It also considers the approaches taken to assess the students and their project work. The investigation involved a mixture of questionnaires and interviews conducted after completion of the unit.

1 Introduction “Collaboration may be defined as the collective discovery and acquisition of a body of knowledge. In a more restrictive definition, a collaborative project is one that reflects the cumulative contributions of a selected group of class members rather than a product of any one individual”. (Garland et al, [1999]) Pedagogic context: Established methods of teaching and learning have been largely based on traditional techniques of lectures, seminars and tutorials delivered to groups of students or individuals. Learning is usually measured through the assessment of an individually produced assignment. Within media production courses there has always been a special place for project work which is completed by a group of students working together. Group production work takes place in all three of the BA media production courses at

180

Mik Parsons

the Media School (MS) within Bournemouth University. The clearest example is BA Television Production (BATV) where production follows industry practice and requires a hierarchical team covering responsibilities from producer/director/writer to camera/sound/lighting, and then on to postproduction, design and editing. Specialist roles are divided between student teams normally comprising between four and six students. Within BA Scriptwriting for Film and TV (BASW), most of the student work is done individually, i.e. writing scripts, but again students undertake at least one TV production project in order to experience the realization of a script and here again they work in collaborative groups. The trio of production courses at the Media School is completed with the addition of BA Interactive Media Production (BAIMP). On this course students work on a combination of individuallybased and group-based projects. The broad nature of the course requires a range of skills from graphics to programming and from writing to video production, and the course team encourages collaborations with students on other courses as well as from within the cohort. Assessing group work requires special consideration since there are many factors which affect the quality of the final project and applying a single grade/mark to the artefact is never a satisfactory or fair solution. In order to include an element of individual weighting, one simple approach is to divide the project into two assessable components, the project itself and an essay in which each student reflects on the process and their contribution. The weighting of the marks can be adjusted to take more or less account of the individual contribution. 60% on the project, 40% on the essay is commonly used. Again this model is limited and makes no useful measure of particularly weak or particularly talented students. Peer assessment has been used with varying success on the MS production courses, both paper based and online versions providing different approaches. The GWAMP (Group Work Assessment in Media Production) survey 2000 to 2004 (www.cemp.ac.uk/research/teaching/gwamp.html) has been a centre of debate and development for refining these processes. The aim of the survey was to find and disseminate good practice in group work and assessment and one of the outcomes has been the development of an online peer assessment tool, CASPAR. Whilst a collaborative group-work approach within student projects is quite common, particularly in media production courses, it was not easy to find any examples of collaboration between students across different courses. An internet search revealed only two examples of institutions with cross-course collaborative projects in their curriculum – and both of these were outside the UK. Stanford University runs a project called ‘Trails’ which is an interdisciplinary collaborative project between students from computer science, information sci-

The Learning Effectiveness of Cross-Discipline Collaboration

181

ence, education and the arts to design interactive educational tools.More information can be found at http://www.trails-project.org/ although this is of limited interest here since it is not media-based. In Canada, Simon Fraser University has an online dance course that provides cross-course collaboration between arts and life sciences students. The project involves the 3D animation of the human figure.(Garland et al, [1999]). The paper on this project provided some useful information and guidance but again this was of limited relevance since the project was based on dance rather than recorded media The nearest example occurs at The Arts Institute, Bournemouth which runs a required collaborative project between the Directing for Film and Acting for Film students. It involves the making of a short film with the acting students doing the directing, and the directing students doing the acting. Students work together to complete a project as an assessed part of their respective courses. Whilst collaboration within production courses is commonplace, at the Media School collaboration across courses has only really taken place on an ad-hoc basis. For example level H BAIMP students are encouraged to choose team skills not only from within their cohort, but also to look beyond the course for specialists in computer animation, or sound/music design or TV directing. Similarly Level H BATV students will often link up with scriptwriters and use them as script-editors. This commissioning process is encouraged by staff but in reality driven by the students in their efforts to improve the quality of their final year productions. Contributors from other courses are not normally assessed on this work and so the benefit to them is purely on their learning experience and employability. Since there is no effective assessment model for cross-course collaboration, this area of work is ripe for development. It is axiomatic that a BATV production is dependent on the quality of its script and similarly it could be said that a BA Interactive Media project is dependent on the quality of its assets. BA Scriptwriters also need to be tempered by the knowledge and experience of the production processes occurring outside their own course. The three media production courses (BAIMP, BATV, BASW) were all rewritten for the year commencing 2005/06 and since this was done simultaneously there was an opportunity to coordinate across the courses and prepare a productionbased unit which emphasized collaboration across the three disciplines. The unit was called simply: “Summer Project”. The first iteration of this project occurred over six weeks from April 2006 and involved one hundred and forty eight students. The eighteen productions resulting from this project were well received by both students and the staff involved and it was retrospectively felt that further research into this area would be beneficial.

182

Mik Parsons

2 Objectives The objectives of this paper are to use the ‘Summer Project’ case study to: •

evaluate the effectiveness of collaboration in cross-discipline mediaproduction.

•

evaluate the teaching and learning resources and processes.

•

provide a critique of the assessment.

3 The Case Study The Summer Project unit was provided as the last of four production units at level C. It was the only unit which was delivered simultaneously to BATV, BAIMP, and BASW course cohorts and required collaboration of students across all three of the courses. The unit lasted for six weeks starting with a briefing lecture and ended with a series of project screenings followed by assessment. (See Appendix 1 for a full Unit Guide). The total number of students was a hundred and forty eight, comprising fifty seven Students from BATV, fifty from BAIMP and forty one from BASW. The students were divided into eighteen groups averaging eight students in each group (e.g. three TV students, three IMP students and two SW students). The groups were predefined by staff and the students had no choice about who they worked with. Groupings were random - the only control applied was to monitor the male/female balance within the groups. An extract from the unit guide shows the aims, learning outcomes and the assessment methods of the project: 3.1 Aim of Unit To consolidate and communicate production skills and critical learning in a collaborative media project between Scriptwriting, Interactive Media and Television Production. 3.2 Intended Learning Outcomes Having completed this unit the student is expected to demonstrate: •

O1 An understanding of image, narratives and audience needs in a collaboratively produced artefact;

•

O2 An ability to evaluate and reflect on this production, including their own role;

The Learning Effectiveness of Cross-Discipline Collaboration

•

183

O3 An ability to work in groups as well as independently to produce a cross course project.

3.3 Assessment Students will be required to submit three elements of assessment for this unit. ILO 1 and 3 will be assessed via a group production project (50% of the unit’s weighting). ILO 2 will be assessed through an individual production analysis of 1,500 words (20% of the unit’s weighting). ILO 3 will be assessed by peer assessment (30% of the unit's weighting). The briefing lecture was accompanied by a briefing document specifying the requirements of the project. The following extract gives an outline of the project: CLIENT: The Police The police have allocated funding to extend their Crime Awareness programme to include new media forms and in particular video and the internet. BRIEF Choose from the following crime topics: BURGLARY Car crime Street crimes and muggings Create an interactive programme-package which makes use of narrative form to raise public awareness of crime and informs them of ways to avoid becoming victims. The package should be designed to engage and appeal to an audience of your definition, and provide encouragement to follow weblinks to relevant and more informative sites. The programme should comprise a linear video component, with or without chapter headings, on DVD format, and also an associated website. The Unit Guide (Appendix 1) gives full information about the teaching schedule and a week by week breakdown of the structure of the unit over the six weeks. Following the initial briefing the students were supervised by six academic staff – two from each course. Each tutor was responsible for overseeing three groups and providing them each with two production seminars. In addition, each member of staff took a ‘duty’ week on the online ‘hot-seat’. The hot-seat was aimed

184

Mik Parsons

to facilitate discussion on a forum basis with staff offering different aspects of expertise from within scriptwriting and production. Production workshops were also offered providing additional instruction in software and video hardware. Eighteen production groups meant that the resources needed to be scheduled and shared fairly. Video acquisition was a particular problem and the camera kits had to be allocated to the eighteen groups over a two week period so that each group had fair access. Assessment of the project was done in three components according to the specifications in the Unit Guide. The project was given a group mark and this was arrived at in each case by assigning two staff markers to each project (each staff member was from a different discipline). Students were also required to write a 1500 word reflective essay and also complete a peer assessment.

4 Methodology The project was undertaken in April and May of 2006. The decision to analyse the production as a case study was taken retrospectively and data collection began in November 2006. Information was gathered using two methods. The first entailed interviews with the six staff, conducted in pairs according to their subject specialisms. These interviews were recorded as digital audio files. The second method involved the use of a questionnaire. This was designed primarily for a focus group of participating students. Staff members were also asked to complete the questionnaires in order to provide comparative data.

5 Results of Analysis The staff interviews resulted in a range of opinions, some at variance but the majority in agreement, and included several suggestions for improvement. All were agreed that the overall concept of the Unit is very good and reflects industry practice and needs. One took the view that in industry, production teams would meet initially and then separate and work separately in their respective disciplines, only coming together at scheduled meetings. Another view was that continuous collaboration throughout reflected the experience of many graduates when first entering the industry via small budget productions. The approach to the collaborative process is relevant and this was reflected in the ways in which the student groupings developed. The final results of the project work were extremely encouraging and all the staff felt the Unit had been successful overall. Disadvantages were seen to be in the running of the unit and getting the students to collaborate more successfully. In

The Learning Effectiveness of Cross-Discipline Collaboration

185

particular it was felt by some that more consideration was needed in order to get the Scriptwriters to engage more fully with the production processes. The Scriptwriter staff and students did not share this view however, and felt that their engagement had been very good except in a few isolated cases. The role of a Project Manager was seen to be very influential in the success of the collaborations. Groups were encouraged to appoint a Project Manager and avoid the ‘decision by committee’ approach. One member of staff suggested rotating this role within the group on a weekly basis. Assessment was universally felt to be problematic. Three components to the assessment seemed to be too much particularly at such a busy time of the academic year. Some staff found it difficult to make assessments about other subject areas’ contributions e.g. websites. A system of tick-box assessment for the essays had been introduced in order to make the process more efficient but some staff felt this did not work well and either needed more careful design or else dropping altogether. It was generally agreed that the peer assessment was of a high importance and should be given greater weighting in the assessment. There were mixed feelings about the usefulness of the essay. Staff felt that it was helpful for the students to be reflective but that this could be covered in another unit (Personal Development Planning) and that the peer assessment could then be given more weighting. The hot-seat arrangement was hardly used during the project; some staff felt it unnecessary and that email could be used more effectively. Another view was that it needed better promotion and that all the staff should be available online throughout. Fourteen responses to the questionnaire were collected (six staff and eight students). 5.1 Project Topic The documentary/informational category was felt to be the most popular option. There was more diversity in the student opinions some of whom would have preferred an open brief, an interactive story, or a game option.

5.2 Production Format There was no clear agreement on this. A video-embedded website or a website with accompanying DVD was equally popular. One member of staff suggested interactive TV as an approach, with the possibility of distributing through other cross-platform media.

186

Mik Parsons

5.3 Unit duration The majority of staff felt that 6 weeks was about right, but the student opinion suggested that 8 weeks would be more popular. 5.4 Seminars All the staff thought two seminars were appropriate given the timescale. Student opinion generally agreed but there were a significant number who thought an extra seminar would be useful (one scriptwriting student suggested a seminar every week). 5.5 The online ‘hot-seat’ Staff felt that the idea was ok but that email to the individual or to the whole cohort would be more accessible and effective. Students simply commented that they had not used the hot seat facility. 5.6 Facilities and workshops These areas received broad support, although there were some misgivings about the quality of camera workshops, and the TV staff felt overburdened with kit sign-off tutorials.

6 Summary and Conclusion The Summer Project appears to be the only example of a student-collaboration project delivered across different courses within media production, and the apparent success of the project suggests that it is worth continuing and developing. The case study revealed a number of issues, but the most significant were connected with the logistics of delivery, the dynamics of collaboration and the adopted modes and tools of assessment. The case study project was immediately a complex one to deliver because of the sheer size of the operation. A hundred and forty eight students divided into eighteen groups with each group requiring seminars, workshops and production resources. The required production resources and technical reliability were relatively demanding (DV cameras, tripods, microphones, monitors, computer editing workstations, DVD and website authoring software, screening room). Many of the complexities of delivery could be avoided by undertaking the project on a smaller scale and it would be interesting to consider situations where this might be possible – in a more dedicated but smaller course option perhaps, or by staggering a large group through the unit at different times of the year. A

The Learning Effectiveness of Cross-Discipline Collaboration

187

shorter variant of the project could also be used within a conference or residential setting with more emphasis on group dynamics than production skills. The collaborative dynamics between the students was largely seen to be successful from both the student and the staff perspective and this was reflected in the final quality of the work presented. All were agreed though that this aspect was the most important to concentrate on, both in terms of setting the project assignment up properly and also in its assessment. For example, a suggestion that the Scriptwriters be required to write content for the website would be one way to increase and spread their involvement. Similarly, the essay-brief could require more to be written about the production areas beyond the students’ specialism, e.g. Script writers would be credited for their understanding and engagement with the TV and IMP areas. With regards to assessment, it was generally agreed that three components to the assessment was too many. During the Summer Term staff are very busy with marking of BA third year degree work and are looking for ways to reduce the assessment loading from earlier years of their courses. The most important components to assess were felt to be the project itself and the collaborative dynamics through peer assessment. The reflective essay was felt to be less appropriate since the issues expressed by students could either be picked up in another unit within each course (e.g. PDP (Personal Development Programme)), or expressed within the peer assessment assignment. Project assessment needed to be done by at least two and preferably three staff members - one from each subject area. Although in the case study two assessors were used for each project, there was still some concern about confidence in marking areas outside the staff specialism. The collaborative dynamics did require careful setting up but this was largely left to individual tutors to organise within their supervision groups. This needs a more common and informed approach and needs to be initiated early in the project – partly at the briefing but more certainly during the first seminar. The role of Project Manager was felt to be extremely important for example, and whether the role should be given to one person throughout or rotated on a weekly basis would have a significant impact on the overall group dynamic. Ultimately, improving the collaborative dynamics may be an issue which could be solved through the assessment process. The CASPAR online assessment tool (see above) enables both formative and summative peer assessment to take place. Peer to peer formative assessment would enable students within a group to reflect back to each other about their respective performance during the project rather than relying on an essay reflection at the end. Using this tool, students would be able to modify their performance and engagement following comments and critique from members of their own group. Working within the

188

Mik Parsons

CASPAR model, students could be required to complete the peer assessment with a reflective account of their own contribution and that of the others in their group. This would negate the need for an additional reflective essay as part of the assessment, and thereby reduce the number of assessed components to just two. On a final note, students pointed out that having completed the summer project they would be more inspired to seek out specialist collaborators when planning their final year projects, and that they now had a better awareness of who and what to look for. Several staff also commented that following the success of the Summer Project, the idea of student collaborative projects should be planned to continue in level I units. Further research could be based on the second iteration of this project with data collection and analysis based on the use of the CASPAR peer assessment tool which was not used in the first iteration. The initial research for this paper also brought to light a learning technique used in the Arts Institute at Bournemouth whereby collaboration takes place across the year groups within a single course. For example on the BA Animation course, students at level C are required to work as in-between artists for students at level I. More research could be conducted into the viability of this ‘cross-year’ approach in relation to the Bournemouth Media courses.

References GWAMP http://www.cemp.ac.uk/research/teaching/gwamp.html Stanford University project ‘Trails’. (2005). http://www.trails-project.org/ Garland I., Teles L., Wang X., (1999). Fostering Creativity through CrossDisciplinary Collaboration in an Online Dance Course. Conference on Computer Support for Collaborative Learning. (1999). Simon Fraser University. FURTHER READING Downie, N., (2001), Assessing Group Work in Higher Education. Oxford Brookes University Gibbs, G., (1995), Assessing Student Centred Courses. Oxford Centre for Saff Development. Mercier E., Booker A., Goldman S. (2005), Bringing Collaboration Front and Center in a Cross-disciplinary Design Course. Paper presented at ED-MEDIA 2005, World Conference on Educational Multimedia, Hypermedia & Telecommunications, Montreal, Canada.

The Learning Effectiveness of Cross-Discipline Collaboration

189

Race, P., (2001) A Briefing on Self, Peer, and Group Assessment. LTSN Generic Centre.

About the Authors

Christopher Bennewith, UK Before undertaking his ongoing acting role as Head of the Department of Design, Chris Bennewith was the Programme leader of the BA(Hons) Interactive Media course. His specialism lies in teaching innovative content creation for mobile and pervasive technologies. Peter A. Bruck, Austria Peter A. Bruck is General Manager and Chief Researcher of the Research Studios Austria Forschungsgesellschaft, Austria’s public-private research institution to bring technology innovations from universities into markets (www.researchstudio.at). Bruck is also honorary President of the ICNMInternational Center for New Media, Salzburg, which selects and promotes best practice in ICT applications and multimedia contents nationally and on a European and global scale (www.icnm.at). He is chairman of the Board the European Academy of Digital Media-EADiM, Netherlands, and Chairman of the Board of Directors the World Summit Award in the framework of the United Nations process of the Summit on the Information Society. Bruck has taught at universities in Canada, US and Europe and has 30 years of experience in research and consulting in these countries and the Middle East, the Arab World, and East Asia. Bruck continues some teaching as Honorary Professor of Information Economy and New Technologies at the Faculty of Law, at the University of Salzburg. In business, Bruck has been on the Board of Management of the Jet2Web Internet Services GmbH of the Austrian Telekom Group, heading the Business Unit on Interactive Media and responsible for the Content and Web Business of the Group. Bruck has initiated the Austrian State Prize in Multimedia in 1997 and the EUROPRIX, Europe’s leading multimedia award in 1998 as well as national best practice competitions and awards around the world. Within the framework of the UN, Bruck is heading the World Summit Award in econtent & creativity as a global process in over 160 UN member states. Stephan Drab, Austria Stephan Drab works as an Assistant Professor at the Bachelor and Master study course "Mobile Computing" at the University of Applied Sciences in Hagenberg, where he lectures courses in the fields Computer Graphics, Mobile Games, Interaction Technologien and Windows Mobile Programming.

192

Authors

Jana Egger, Austria Jana Egger works as Senior Project Manager at the International Center for New Media where she is responsible for the liason with the European Academy of Digital Media and the support of the EUROPRIX Academic Network. Egger has recently been workpackage leader in EU FP 6 IST Integrated Project INSCAPE on developing an innovative digital story telling software suite. Christoph Grün, Austria Christoph Grün studied Information Systems at the Kepler University of Linz. He is working as a research assistant at the Institute of Software Technology and Interactive Systems, Vienna University of Technology. His research interests comprise e-commerce applications with the focus on mobile services in tourism. Christina Handford, UK Christina Handford is presently studying for her PhD at Staffordshire University with a focus on educational media for the teen target audience. Christina teaches multimedia tools to university students on a part-time basis and is also a selfemployed designer creating e-learning applications and resources. Raphael Kominis, Greece Raphael Kominis has attended the Fines Arts Academy of the city of Tournai Belgium; as well as the Technical University of Crete, department of Fine Arts and New Technologies. Raphael graduated from Staffordshire University with a BA (hons) in Multimedia Graphics and then attained a Masters in IT (multimedia) from Heriot Watt University. Currently he is doing a PhD in Usability and Aesthetics. Jens Krösche, Austria Jens Krösche works as a professor at the University of Applied Sciences Upper Austria in Hagenberg, in the department of Mobile Computing. He studied Informatics at the Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg in Lower Saxony, Germany. His main research topics include Location-Based Services, ContextAware Computing and Geographic Information Systems. Kye Bokyung, Republic of Korea Korea Education and Research Information Service, Republic Korea,

Authors

193

Andreas Jakl, Austria Andreas Jakl is currently working as an assistant professor at the department of Mobile Computing at the University of Applied Sciences in Hagenberg. His research- and teaching topics include mobile development on various Smartphone platforms, with a special focus on sensor technologies. Additionally, he is the Chief Executive Officer and Founder of Mopius, a company developing entertainment applications and games for mobile phones. Rodica Mocan, Romania Rodica Mocan is lecturer at the Media Department of Babes-Bolyi University from Cluj, Romania. She holds a Ph.D in Sociology and her research interests are in the area new media and inteactive multimedia applications and their influence on social life. Tomi Numento, Finland Lecturer for interactive media at Mikkeli University, Finland Mik Parsons, UK Senior Lecturer in Interactive Media Production at the Bournemoth University. In addition to his teaching on Interactive Media Production, he has a continuing involvement in teaching video production, directing, camerawork, lighting, sound and post-production. His professional and teaching experience has spanned a wide range of topics including; TV Graphics, Animation, Computer Graphics, Music, Video and Audio Production, and Interactive Media Production. Christoph Perhab, Austria Christoph Perhab attended the degree programme „Information Management“ at the University of Applied Sciences FH JOANNEUM in Graz. He wrote his diploma thesis about the „Visualization of machine-aided measurements of people counts in different infrastructures“. Since December 2007 he is working as a reserach assistant in the field of digital media technologies at the FH JOANNEUM.

194

Authors

Stefana Racorean, Romania Stefana Racorean is a psychologist and a psychotherapist at the Areopagus Institute of Family Therapy and Systemic Practice, Timisoara. Se holds an MA in counseling and psychotherapy from Babes-Bolyai University. Carina Roels, France After having occupied several positions in the software development field, the decision to work as an independent professional has been taken in 1991. Main specialization fields are Project Management, Methods and Database systems.Student’s training at IT Institute, France since 1991.Today’s interest: new training methods. Sandra Schadenbauer, Austria Sandra Schadenbauer graduated in 2007 from the University of Applied Sciences FH JOANNEUM Graz (Austria) with the degree of DI (FH) in Information Management. She gained knowledge and experience in the field of IT through many projects and an internship in the software development sector. Moreover she dealt with management, implementation and evaluation of projects with a main focus on digital media. Sandra Schadenbauer was engaged in the concepts of usability, web design and new media. In addition she gained skills in public relations (classic PR, PR with new media, design and implementation of corporate design and identity). Stephan Setscheny, Austria graduated in 2007 from the University of Applied Sciences FH JOANNEUM Graz (Austria) with the degree of DI (FH) in Information Management. Niki Theodorou, Greece Born in Athens Greece (1983). BS degree in Applied informatics, University of Macedonia, Thessaloniki, Greece (2005). MA in Interactive Multimedia, Staffordshire University, England (2007) Pekka Uotila, Finland Lecturer for interactive media at Mikkeli University, Finland

Authors

195

Richard Vickers, UK Richard is a Senior Lecturer in New Media at the Hull School of Art & Design,. He previously worked as a freelance photographer and designer, before becoming interested in the possibilities of interactive multimedia in 1994. The emerging digital technologies had an immediate impact on his work as a photographer and he was an early exponent of the ‘digital darkroom’. He gained industry practice as a multimedia producer, working on a broad range of websites and interactive multimedia projects for commercial clients and arts organisations, before moving into lecturing full time.