Katherine Howland

A Card Based Metaphor for Organising Pervasive Educational Experiences

This paper looks at the card metaphor used successfully in the Equator Ambient Wood and Chawton House projects to structure and author content as part of innovative school field trips using wireless and ubiquitous technologies. The framework provided by the metaphor is laid out and observations made as to how it has been used by domain experts in creating educational experiences. The trade-off between formalisation and restricting pedagogy is examined and key benefits that the metaphor provides are given

A learner-centred design approach to developing a visual language for interactive storytelling

Creating interactive stories in the form of narrative-based games can have motivational and educational benefits for children, but scripting languages can be a barrier to the activity. This paper describes a learner-centred design (LCD) approach to creating a visual programming language (VPL) for scripting plot events in game-based interactive stories. The LCD approach, unusual in the field of VPLs, was essential to ensure that the software effectively supported our child target users in the game creation process.

Learning and Teaching in Virtual Worlds: Boundaries, Challenges and Opportunities

As evidenced by this book, the use of virtual worlds for teaching and learning is attracting increasing attention. Many universities have a virtual presence in environments such as Second LifeTM (SL), but there is little guidance to educators on how to best make use of the affordances of virtual worlds. In this chapter, we use our own practical experiences of developing learning experiences in SL as a base from which to examine the boundaries, challenges and opportunities that may be confronted in moving into teaching and learning in the virtual world. We use the “Diffusion of Innovation” model and its extensions to educational contexts both to analyse our experience and to consider the challenges facing later adopters of the technology. Our analysis suggests that students and staff and staff from different institutional settings have different profiles in terms of their attitude to risk, and their focus on learning products or process. Part of the learning experience involves helping students become aware of these characteristics, and allowing them to experiment with situations of greater risk. Finally, we identify a number of areas where improvements in the technology are needed in order to make it more welcoming to more risk averse users and to enable more flexible use of resources.

Script Cards: A Visual Programming Language for Games Authoring by Young People

This paper describes Script Cards, a visual programming language which enables young people to script story events in a 3D role-playing game (Neverwinter Nights). Script Cards is designed to eliminate the need to learn a complex scripting language when creating interactive stories. An initial evaluation of Script Cards suggests that young people found it easy to use

Young People's Descriptions of Computational Rules in Role-Playing Games: An Empirical Study

A study was carried out which examined the extent to which young people aged 11-12, with no prior instruction in programming, are able to write computational rules which govern play in a 3D computer role-playing game. Expressing these rules required the use of common computational structures such as conditionals, sets and loops. We analysed the rules written for their structure and style, and recorded the types of errors made. It was found that although young people were able to abstract away from the game play experience, very few of the rules were error-free. The most common errors were errors of omission (leaving elements out that should have been included) rather than errors of commission (including elements which should not be part of the rule). These findings have implications for the design of the Flip language, which aims to support young people as they begin to develop computational skills through game design.

Language-based support for computational thinking

This paper explores the potential for simplified programming languages to support the development of computational thinking skills in non-programmers. We suggest that novice programming languages might offer a starting point for non-programmers to engage with a substantial subset of computational thinking concepts, and assess a number of languages from this perspective. We outline four key computational thinking skills and examine the support provided by existing languages. We then describe additional characteristics which would be important for a new language aimed specifically at developing computational thinking skills.

Supporting Domain Experts in Creating Pervasive Experiences

Located pervasive experiences are often constructed as one off deployments with domain experts acting in a consultancy role to technical specialists who construct the experience. In this paper we will look at how pervasive infrastructures might be constructed that can support domain experts as direct experience authors. We present a case study based around a locative pervasive system supporting school field trips, and describe how aspects of the construction and running of the experience were handed over to the domain experts. Based on our experiences we suggest a number of key principles that we believe make it possible for non-specialists to become pervasive authors: separation of the information layer, use of metaphor, in-situ authoring, robustness, varied location modelling and coarse orchestration

Programming language, natural language? Supporting the diverse computational activities of novice programmers

Given the current focus on teaching computational concepts to all from an early age, combined with the growing trend to empower end users to become producers of technology rather than mere consumers, we consider the issue of computational notation. Specifically, where the goal is to help individuals develop their understanding of computation and/or use computation in real world settings, we question whether natural language might be a preferred notation to traditional programming languages, given its familiarity and ubiquity. We describe three empirical studies investigating the use of natural language for computation in which we found that although natural language provides support for understanding computational concepts, it introduces additional difficulties when used for coding. We distilled our findings into a set of design guidelines for novice programming environments which consider the ways in which different notations, including natural language, can best support the various activities that comprise programming. These guidelines were embodied in Flip, a bi-modal programming language used in conjunction with the Electron toolset, which allows young people to create their own commercial quality, narrative based role- playing games. Two empirical studies on the use of Flip in three different real world contexts considered the extent to which the design guidelines support ease of use and an understanding of computation. The guidelines have potential to be of use both in analysing the use of natural language in existing novice programming environments, and in the design of new ones. HighlightsNatural language presents problems when used for program generation.Natural language is beneficial when used for program comprehension and debugging.Novice programming environments should use multiple notations for support.

Expertise A report and a manifesto

This article explores the stakes of digital transformation through a consideration of digital expertise. Expertise is investigated as it operates in everyday situations – drawing on empirical research undertaken in Brighton, UK, as part of the Communities and Cultures Network+ project. It is also deployed as a heuristic for inquiry into questions of use and the policy of use and investigated in relation to questions of automation that provoke reconsideration of the role of humans and machines in circuits of expertise. This latter necessitates reconsideration of how expertise can be theorized, and this is developed through an account that insists on the importance of both the material and the circulating imaginary for understanding the operations of digital expertise. Drawing these together to develop a new understanding of the economy of digital expertise, inspiration is finally drawn from earlier attempts to develop new models of technological expertise in the context of public science, undertaken with the specific intent of contributing to furthering the democratization of knowledge. In this article too, expertise is invoked albeit in a rather different way as constituting the grounds for the development of a political demand. The article closes with a question concerning the stakes of a demand for digital expertise.This article explores the stakes of digital transformation through a consideration of digital expertise. Expertise is investigated as it operates in everyday situations – drawing on empirical resea...

Natural language and programming: Designing effective environments for novices

Given the current drive to teach computational concepts to all from an early age, we consider whether traditional programming languages are truly necessary, or whether natural language might be a suitable medium for program generation and comprehension, given its familiarity and ubiquity. We conducted an empirical study on the use of natural language for computation, and found that, although it provides support for understanding computational concepts, it introduces additional difficulties when used for coding. Following a design study with target users, we distilled our findings into a series of design guidelines for novice programming environments that incorporate natural language. These guidelines drove the design of Flip, a bimodal programming language for young peoples game creation activities. Two empirical studies examined the extent to which these embodied design guidelines support ease of use and an understanding of computation. The guidelines have potential both for analysing the usability of existing novice programming environments, and for designing new ones.