Antonio Garcia-Cabot

On the effectiveness of game-like and social approaches in learning

Game-like approaches are becoming increasingly popular in education, with educational games and gamification drawing increasing levels of attention. While games specifically designed for educational purposes have been used for decades, gamification is particularly new and contrasting evidence was presented about its effectiveness. The potential of social networks has also been harnessed by educators and institutions either using popular social networking sites or specific educational instances. This paper studies how well-established approaches (educational game and social networking) compare with more novel ones (gamification and social gamification) in terms of learning performance in an undergraduate course. Four experimental conditions were compared in an experiment (N?=?379). Results suggest that all experimental conditions significantly impact on learning performance, but social gamification returned better results in terms of immediacy and for all types of assessments. Educational games, gamification and social networking are compared.Specific instruments are used or designed for each approach.Four experimental groups and one control group (N?=?379) are part of the experiment.All experimental conditions improve learning in practical assessments.Social gamification returns better results initially and across all learning activities.

An empirical study on m-learning adaptation

M-learning enables students to learn everywhere and at any time. But mobility also brings a new challenge. Students may now be constantly moving and the context from which they learn has to be adjusted dynamically. Therefore adaptation is becoming increasingly important when it comes to m-learning. This paper presents an empirical study to assess the learning performance and attitude of graduate students when they use an adaptive mobile system that tailors learning contents to their skills, their device and current context. Results suggest that mobile adaptation had a limited impact in learning performance of practical skills when compared to an e-learning approach. Information about the context of use of the mobile system was also collected and compared with traditional computer accesses. Results suggest that students learned in similar context independently of the way that they used to access learning contents. This may challenge current assumptions about the mobility of students. Improving the learning performance in a graduate course using an adaptive system.We establish a positive correlation in the usage of the adaptive system.Adapting the learning contents to the learners context and mobile device.We analyze the contexts specified by the students in the experiment.

Comparing Zooming Methods in Mobile Devices: Effectiveness, Efficiency, and User Satisfaction in Touch and Nontouch Smartphones

Mobile devices have small screens that require the user to constantly resize the web content in order to read the text. This study sets out to (a) check whether current mobile devices are able to zoom or increase the font size of text on websites and (b) check the most efficient, effective, and satisfying usability method for the user to do so. A preparation stage with mobile devices and an experiment with real users were designed and carried out. Results suggested that current mobile devices are able to resize text in web pages. User testing returned that there is no difference in the ability to perform the task or in errors or time to complete it between text-resizing methods. However, users preferred increasing/decreasing font size links method in nontouch devices. In the light of results, it is recommended that links are provided to resize the text in web contents and that they are made readily available.

Validation of navigation guidelines for improving usability in the mobile web

Traditional navigation guidelines for desktop computers may not be valid for mobile devices because they have different characteristics such as smaller screens and keyboards. This paper aims to check whether navigation guidelines for Personal Computers are valid or not for mobile devices. To do this, firstly an evaluation was carried out by a group of advisors with knowledge in web design, and then empirical studies were conducted with real mobile devices and users. Results show that most of the traditional navigation guidelines are valid for current mobile devices, but some of them are not, which suggests that a similar process is necessary to validate traditional guidelines for mobile devices. The final result is a set of fifteen navigation guidelines for mobile web sites, from which eleven are totally new because they have not been previously suggested by any standard or recommendation for mobile web sites. Traditional usability guidelines for PC may not be applicable to mobile devices.Strict analysis and evaluation are performed to get mobile navigation guidelines.Analysis and evaluation are carried out in current mobile devices.The process includes two experiments with real mobile devices and users.Fifteen usability guidelines for navigation in mobile web have been stated.

Learning outcomes using objectives with computer science students

One of the main problems that exist when subjects are taught in technical degrees and new technologies are used is how could students be motivated to avoid abandonment In this paper we present our experience in training process with the aid of e-lerning platforms. The course has been planned with ambitious but achievable goals, and other techniques such as gamification and teamwork. This allowed getting good results, the average grade obtained by the students increased 5%, and the number of students who have not passed the course has been reduced.

A Systematic Evaluation of Mobile Applications for Instant Messaging on iOS Devices

Nowadays, instant messaging applications (apps) are one of the most popular applications for mobile devices with millions of active users. However, mobile devices present hardware and software characteristics and limitations compared with personal computers. Hence, to address the usability issues of mobile apps, a specific methodology must be conducted. This paper shows the findings from a systematic analysis of these applications on iOS mobile platform that was conducted to identify some usability issues in mobile applications for instant messaging. The overall process includes a Keystroke-Level Modeling and a Mobile Heuristic Evaluation. In the same trend, we propose a set of guidelines for improving the usability of these apps. Based on our findings, this analysis will help in the future to create more effective mobile applications for instant messaging.

Scrutinizing Systematic Literature Review Process in Software Engineering

Performing the Systematic Literature Review (SLR) in the turbulent field of Software Engineering (SE) brings different obstacles and uncertainties. The commonly used guidelines for performing the SLR in this field are adapted from health sciences and presented by Kitchenham and Charters in 2007. This paper follows the Kitchenham’s three-phases-review-process and fulfils it with the findings, observations and recommendations from other influential authors in the field. The process of SLR is observed from the perspective of appliance in the field of SE and supplemented by the important precautious measures that should be undertaken by the authors performing it. Thus, this paper aims to present the state-of-the-art in performing the SLR in SE.

Usability Guidelines for Mobile Devices: Length of Hyperlinks

The use of mobile devices is increasing in recent years, and their characteristics are different from those of computers (keyboard and screen size, interaction method, etc.), so it is important to specifically study the usability of these devices. This paper presents an experiment carried out with users to find the correct length (from the point of view of usability) of hyperlinks in mobile devices. A real mobile device has been used for the experiment, as well as more than 20 users. The experiment compared three different lengths of hyperlinks and it concluded that users prefer hyperlinks as short as possible and they are identified better when the text is not justified.

Identifying Usability Issues in Instant Messaging Apps on iOS and Android Platforms

With the rise of mobile devices and the high number of instant messaging applications available in the stores, it is necessary to evaluate the usability of such applications to provide a more satisfying user experience. To this end, this paper presents a methodical usability evaluation of instant messaging applications both in iOS and Android platforms. A predefined evaluation was used, which was created to detect the main usability issues of mobile applications, regardless of the device used and the evaluated applications. Consequently, two methods were used: the keystroke level model and the mobile heuristic evaluation. Also, the results suggest that the main problems of this type of applications are difficulties in performing tasks (some of them were not agile nor easy to complete), lack of element cohesion (some icons and buttons did not follow the style of the operating system, bad translations, and too much information on the screen), problems with the user interface (pop-ups overlapping the status bar, clipped elements, sometimes the interface did not rotate, and, in other cases, the interface changed considerably when the device was rotated), and lack of information about privacy and security features. Finally, based on the results, we propose a set of recommendations that will be helpful for developers of this kind of applications.

Dataset on the learning performance of ECDL digital skills of undergraduate students for comparing educational gaming, gamification and social networking☆

This paper reports data about the learning performance of students using four different motivational tools: an educational game, a gamified plugin, a social networking website and a gamified social networking website. It also reports a control group. The data pertain to 379 students of an undergraduate course that covers basic Information and Communication Technology (ICT) skills in Spain. Data corresponds to different learning modules of the European Computer Driving License (ECDL) initiative. The data include variables of four pre-test scores, four post-test scores and a final examination. It was gathered using a quasi-experimental research design during 2014. Data reported here refers to the research paper in (de-Marcos et al., 2016) [1].