Carrie Demmans Epp

Uncertainty Representation in Visualizations of Learning Analytics for Learners: Current Approaches and Opportunities

Adding uncertainty information to visualizations is becoming increasingly common across domains since its addition helps ensure that informed decisions are made. This work has shown the difficulty that is inherent to representing uncertainty. Moreover, the representation of uncertainty has yet to be thoroughly explored in educational domains even though visualizations are often used in educational reporting. We analyzed 50 uncertainty-augmented visualizations from various disciplines to map out how uncertainty has been represented. We then analyzed 106 visualizations from educational reporting systems where the learner can see the visualization; these visualizations provide learners with information about several factors including their knowledge, performance, and abilities. This analysis mapped the design space that has been employed to communicate a learners abilities, knowledge, and interests. It also revealed several opportunities for the inclusion of uncertainty information within visualizations of educational data. We describe how uncertainty information can be added to visualizations of educational data and illustrate these opportunities by augmenting several of the types of visualizations that are found in existing learning analytics reports. The definition of this design space, based on a survey of the literature, will enable the systematic exploration of how different design decisions affect learner trust, understanding, and decision making.

Towards providing just-in-time vocabulary support for assistive and augmentative communication

Many people cannot communicate effectively with those around them. The causes vary but several tools and strategies can support their communication. These tools, which collectively fall under the banner of Assistive and Augmentative Communication (AAC), are rarely adaptive. Of those that are, few provide context-based or just-in-time vocabulary support to users even though the proliferation of smartphones makes this possible. To meet this need, we developed four algorithms to retrieve relevant vocabulary from Internet-based corpora. We used discourse completion tasks to evaluate each algorithms ability to identify appropriate vocabulary across a set of specific contexts. The results indicate that our approach identifies appropriate context-specific words that complement general AAC vocabularies: when combined with a typical base vocabulary, the algorithms outperformed the support provided by the base vocabulary alone. They did this by adding small targeted vocabularies.

Information practices and user interfaces: Student use of an iOS application in special education

A framework connecting concepts from user interface design with those from information studies is applied in a study that integrated a location-aware mobile application into two special education classes at different schools; this application had two support modes (one general and one location specific). The five-month study revealed several information practices that emerged from student attempts to overcome barriers within the application and the curriculum. Students engaged in atypical and unintended practices when using the application. These practices appear to be consequences of the user interface and information processing challenges faced by students. Abandoning activities was a strategic choice and was an unanticipated information practice associated with the application’s integration into lessons. From an information processing perspective, it is likely that students reinterpreted information in the location mode as housing application content rather than being location specific and the information practice of taking photos emerged as an expressive use of the device when an instrumental task was absent. Based on these and other emergent practices, we recommend functionality that should be considered when developing or integrating these types of applications into special education settings and we seek to expand the traditional definition of information practice by including human-computer interaction principles.

Interactive Event: Enabling Vocabulary Acquisition while Providing Mobile Communication Support

We have developed an adaptive communication support tool that also supports vocabulary acquisition. This tool is called VocabNomad; it is one of the few mobile assisted language learning tools that aims to support the call for activities that are fundamentally different than those provided by paper and pencil or computer assisted language learning [1]. VocabNomad meets this call by trying to support the communication of immigrants who are isolated from their surrounding environment because of their limited English language proficiency. In the US, these English language learners (ELL) make up more than 20 percent of the population [2, 3].

Mobile Adaptive Communication Support for Vocabulary Acquisition

Language learners are often isolated because of their inability to communicate. Adaptive mobile communication support tools could be used to scaffold both their interaction with others and their vocabulary acquisition. I propose the exploration of a new tool that is designed to meet this need.