Maite Urretavizcaya

A guide to agile development of interactive software with a User Objectives-driven methodology

This paper presents the InterMod methodology. By combining the widely accepted Agile Methods, Model-Driven Developments and User-Centred Design it allows us to develop high-quality interactive applications. As a main characteristic, it plans and organises the software project as a series of iterations that are guided by the User Objectives in an agile and user-centred manner. At each iteration, the software development work can be distributed to different teams according to some developmental and integration activities. Each activity is driven by models that are validated by a multidisciplinary team composed of developers and users. The requirements are incrementally collected and formalised by means of models based on user-centred design. Besides, the Semantically Enriched Human-Computer Interaction model is proposed to speed up project validation. This model enriches a human-computer interaction model with some visual characteristics and the application semantic. Thus, the enriched model provides enough information to generate prototypes so users and developers can easily validate this model. Diagram project is a real case study that is used to illustrate the application of the InterMod methodology through the whole paper.

The IRIS Authoring Tool

IRIS is an authoring tool developed to help human instructors to build intelligent teaching-learning systems in a wide variety of domains. The instructor/designer is required to produce a set of pedagogical requisites, which, in turn, are used to automatically configure a generic tutor architecture and produce an intelligent tutoring system. In order to provide IRIS with a sound basis for producing systems, a theory of instruction that integrates cognitive processes, instructional events and instructional actions has been considered. In this chapter we explain, through the analysis of the cognitive theory, the generic architecture. We present several system components, the requirements of the different components, and show how we integrate these components in IRIS. Moreover, we embed requirements, cognitive principles, and design requisites in an authoring tool in order that human instructors can follow them easily. Various design issues, an example of building a tutor for mathematical differentiation by using IRIS, and some experiences of use and evaluation are also presented.

Helping Teachers to Track Student Evolution in a B-Learning Environment

SigMa is an adaptable feedback generation tool for the three kinds of actors involved in a blended-learning process: teachers, students, and the e-learning platform. This paper focuses on the teacher tool and defines its desirable functionalities and main components. The teacher tool gathers data provided by the e-learning platform’s diagnostic capabilities and analyses it. The results are shown to teachers by means of a Visualisation Interface that informs them about course development and suggests possible changes and improvements. A Teacher Profile is used to adapt the feedback to match teachers’ strategies and preferences.

The InterMod Methodology: An Interface Engineering Process Linked with Software Engineering Stages

InterMod is an interactive application design methodology which proposes using user-centred models to define requirements, describe human-computer dialogue, and evaluate prototypes. In addition, it promotes the early integration of interface models with system functionality. Based on Intermediate Description Design (IDD), which retrieves the formal description of models, InterMod makes it possible to quickly produce incremental prototypes and automatically adapt the design according to the modifications prompted by the evaluations.

Generating Teacher Adapted Suggestions for Improving Distance Educational Systems with SIgMa

In this paper we present SIgMa, an adaptable feedback generation tool for teachers which gives information about course development in an educational Web environment with diagnostic capabilities. First student results are analysed using statistical calculations and data mining techniques. Afterwards, the feedback provision is carried out by a rule-based system that recognizes anomalous behaviour patterns among the analysis results and provides some suggestions for improvement which are adapted to teacher strategies and preferences by means of a teacher model. We present the main proposal and the implementation and a test of a restricted prototype.

A cooperative system for the interactive debugging of novice programming errors

The adaptability of an Intelligent Tutoring System (ITS) is largely determined by its ability to observe and interpret the learning process of the student, specially when she/he performs problem-solving activities. This chapter describes a prototype of an Error Detection, Diagnosis and Correction (EDDC) system in order to be used in CAPRA: An intelligent Tutoring system to teach novice programmers (we have focused on program specification). Our approach is based on (a) an interactive tool facilitating problem solving tasks and communication activities, (b) an intention-based diagnosis supported by knowledge about the domain, the specific problem to be solved, and the inferred student-model, and (c) a Tutor component integrated in the debugger where pedagogic remediation is provided. Finally, the implementation of the EDDC system is based on a blackboard architecture where the different Knowledge Sources cooperate to perform the tasks of error detection, diagnosis and correction.

Efficient Building of Interactive Applications Guided by Requirements Models

The analysis of functional and non-functional requirements of an interactive application not only encompasses the descriptive aspects of its functionality and the user and system restrictions, it must also satisfy user needs, such as usability, along with system needs, such as reliability. InterMod is an interactive application-design methodology with agile characteristics which proposes the use of incremental models to define requirements, configure presentation and develop functionality. This poster is focused on the requirements of the InterMod methodology for the efficient construction of interactive applications. These models include user, system, task and dialog models. An example created with a tool that follows these principles and illustrates our approach to the dialog model is presented.

Integration of a Generic Diagnostic Tool in Virtual Environments for Procedural Training

In this article we discuss the problems related to the process of integrating a generic diagnostic tool in virtual environments for training. Virtual environments are suitable applications for training procedural tasks; however, they usually lack the tools to provide an educational dimension to the training. In this research we propose the use of DETECTive, a generic diagnostic tool, in order to facilitate the development of virtual environments which maximise the educational value of the training. We consider that usability of the integrated system is a priority issue. Therefore, we seek a balance between the cost of knowledge acquisition and reliability in the diagnostic phase. The virtual reality system educationally improved during this research is VIRTOOL, a virtual learning environment for machine-tool processes.

Multiple Paradigms for a Generic Diagnostic Proposal

This work concerns the use of multiple diagnosis approaches to build a generic diagnostic system. The main goal of the project is that the teacher can adapt by herself the generic system to several domains in order to detect the student’s errors during different problem solving processes. Adapting the generic system requires the teacher analyses thoroughly the domain in order to identify and represent its composing objects, procedures and problems together with their resolution mechanisms. The learning tool constructed with this purpose does not support completely the learning process, since its goal is only to monitor and diagnose the learner’s actions. So the other aspects of the teaching activity must be carried out by the teacher or an external (integrated) complementary system (i.e. a tutoring system).

Visualizing Students’ Performance in the Classroom: Towards Effective F2F Interaction Modelling

Students are supposed to work and learn when they are in the classroom, but how are they learning? Answering this question is not so easy, but perhaps knowing the learning activities of the student and following his or her learning progress can be good supporting mechanisms. The PresenceClick environment is intended to let teachers and students nimbly capture what happens in class to provide them, in return, with information about students’ behavior during class. The system involves two platforms −a web system and a mobile application− that working together allow recording of students’ interactions and provide updated graphical visualizations about their behavior.