Helene Gelderblom

Brownies or bags-of-stuff?: domain expertise in cooperative inquiry with children

Researchers often utilize the method of Participatory Design to work together with users to enhance technology. In particular, Cooperative Inquiry is a method of Participatory Design with children that involves full partnership between researchers and children. One important challenge designers face in creating learning technologies is that these technologies are often situated in specific activities and contexts. While children involved in these activities may have subject expertise (e.g., science inquiry process), they may not have design expertise (e.g., design aesthetics, usability). In contrast, children with design expertise may be familiar with how to design with researchers, but may not have subject expertise. Little is known about the distinction between child design and subject experts in Cooperative Inquiry. In this paper, we examine two cases -- involving children with design expertise and those with subject expertise -- to better understand the design process for both groups of children. The data from this study suggests that similarities do exist between the two cases, but that design and subject knowledge does play a significant role in how children co-design learning technologies.

Ten design lessons from the literature on child development and children's use of technology

The existing knowledge base on child development offers a wealth of information that can be useful for the design of childrens technology. Furthermore, academic journals and conference proceedings provide us with a constant stream of new research papers on child-computer interaction and interaction design for children. It will require some effort from designers to gather and digest the scattered research results and theoretical knowledge applicable to their products. We conducted an extended research project whereby the existing knowledge relating to the design of technology for children aged five to eight have been gathered and presented in a way that makes it accessible and useful to designers in practice. This paper provides and extract from that research, focusing on ten useful lessons learnt from existing literature.

Designing technology for young children: what we can learn from theories of cognitive development

The majority of guidelines and principles for design of technology are aimed at products for adults. The limited guidelines available for design of young childrens technology do not focus sufficiently on age-related requirements or they offer high-level advice that is only useful in the planning stages of design. This paper reports on research aiming to develop a set of guidelines for the design of technology for children aged five to eight years. We believe that the existing knowledge base on child development provides an ample starting point for setting up a useful framework of such guidelines. This paper demonstrates how the knowledge contained in psychological theories of child development can be translated into guidelines for the design of technology.

The complementary role of two evaluation methods in the usability and accessibility evaluation of a non-standard system

Usability, which is generally defined in terms of application effectiveness, efficiency and user satisfaction, is one of the focus areas of human-computer interaction (HCI). Accessibility is the design of systems that can be perceived, understood and used by people with varying abilities. Although accessibility concerns are aimed at making systems usable for people with disabilities, support for direct accessibility, the built-in redundancies in an application that enable as many people as possible to utilize it without system modifications, is beneficial to people with or without disabilities. Different usability evaluation methods (UEMs) are available. Selecting between the various methods can be influenced by the type of system being evaluated. The Digital Doorway (DD), a non-standard computer system deployed to promote computer literacy amongst underprivileged communities in South Africa, was evaluated using the heuristic evaluation method and a field usability study. The heuristic evaluation method revealed a large number of usability and direct accessibility-related problems, some of which could be classified as low-severity problems. The field study showed additional problems that affected the successful completion of user tasks. Since a number of these were a direct consequence of the context of use, they were not recognized as problems by expert evaluators. The study showed that the heuristic evaluation method can be optimized by complementing it with another method that involves user participation and is, preferably, carried out in the intended context of use.

A blended learning approach for teaching computer programming: design for large classes in Sub-Saharan Africa

The challenge of teaching programming in higher education is complicated by problems associated with large class teaching, a prevalent situation in many developing countries. This paper reports on an investigation into the use of a blended learning approach to teaching and learning of programming in a class of more than 200 students. A course and learning environment was designed by integrating constructivist learning models of Constructive Alignment, Conversational Framework and the Three-Stage Learning Model. Design science research is used for the course redesign and development of the learning environment, and action research is integrated to undertake participatory evaluation of the intervention. The action research involved the Students’ Approach to Learning survey, a comparative analysis of students’ performance, and qualitative data analysis of data gathered from various sources. The paper makes a theoretical contribution in presenting a design of a blended learning solution for large class teaching of programming grounded in constructivist learning theory and use of free and open source technologies.

Designing software for young children: theoretically grounded guidelines

This poster describes a research project aiming to formulate a set of guidelines for designing software for children aged five to six. The primary research method is a comprehensive literature study that will cover two research disciplines, namely development psychology and young children and technology. It focusses on the cognitive development of five to six-year-old children, including their sociocognitive development, development of play and the cultural aspects of development. With regard to young children and technology, we will cover research of the past twenty-five years. Design guidelines will be extracted from prominent theories of development such as those of Piaget and Vygotsky, as well as from existing empirical results in both fields. The validity of these guidelines will be tested empirically.

Using eye tracking to compare how adults and children learn to use an unfamiliar computer game

The learnability principle was originally formulated with computer-based applications mainly for adults in mind. In this paper we compare how children and adults learn to use an unfamiliar computer game to determine whether learnability has different meanings across generations. We recorded eye tracking data while users taught themselves to play a computer game. Comparison of the on-screen focus points and eye gazing patterns showed that adults and children have different tactics when confronted with an unfamiliar game. It revealed aspects of software interfaces that adults and children approach differently. For example, children will focus on the game elements and use a trial-and-error approach instead of reading on-screen instructions, while adults are more willing to interrupt game play to read the instructions. The knowledge gained through this research will help designers to distinguish between the needs of users in different age groups and improve the learnability of their products.

Using the Karplus Learning Cycle to Teach Learners with ADHD Introductory Computer Programming.

Abstract Many learners find the study of introductory computer programming difficult. This is also true of children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and, in order to support them, we need an improved understanding of how they learn programming. This study explored strategies for constructive learning of introductory programming by children with ADHD. The aim was to evaluate the effectiveness of the Karplus learning cycle—a constructivist teaching tool—to teach introductory programming to these learners. Working from an interpretive perspective, data was gathered through action research techniques and analysed using grounded theory methods. Four major constructivist teaching categories emerged, all of which support the use of the Karplus cycle. We concluded that—with some augmentation—the Karplus cycle can be used to assist learners with ADHD to learn introductory programming. We recommend that, to ensure effective learning, the middle phase of the three-phase cycle should be expanded into two sub-phases, and suggest two alternative ways to do this.

Participatory Design of Touch Gestures for Informational Search on a Tablet Device

This study set out to answer the question: what would a gesture set for conducting an informational search on a multi-touch tablet web browser look like if designed in collaboration with users with limited touch screen experience? In addressing this question, we developed such a user-defined gesture set, based on gestures elicited from participants with little or no experience with touch screen devices. Focusing on 24 specific search-related browser functions, 20 participants were asked, in a lab setting, to experiment with and then suggest a gesture for each of the functions. Data collection included video and audio recordings, think-aloud data, informal interviews and self-evaluation of proposed gestures. A combination of qualitative and quantitative analysis revealed the following: one-handed gestures are preferred over two-handed gestures; users who have mostly been exposed to mouse interaction prefer gestures that correspond to point-and-click actions; completion of a task should be possible with more than one gesture; and complex tasks should allow varying combinations of gestures).

Investigating the Effect of Program Visualization on Introductory Programming in a Distance Learning Environment

Program visualization (PV) is one of the approaches to assist novices in introductory programming courses. We investigated the effect of a newly developed PV tool to teach tracing to first-year programming students at a South-African university. The tool takes the form of an interactive computer-based tutorial that teaches students how to draw variable diagrams (VD). All students registered for the introductory C++ module, received the tutorial with their study material and could use it to help answer assignment questions. To determine the effect of using the tutorial, students did an assignment for which they could use the tutorial and completed a questionnaire. Through the questionnaire we acquired biographical data, found out how students used the tutorial and also how they experienced using it. We then correlated these data statistically with their assignment marks. We found that time spent using the tutorial, programming experience and certain biographical properties contributed to higher marks. Drawing their own VDs to understand and debug programs also contributed to better marks.