Thanasis Hadzilacos

Providing Universal Access to History Textbooks: A Modified GIS Case

Integrating and accessing structured textual content from various sources is a challenging task and becomes even more so when dealing with multiple languages. The objective of this work is to showcase the technological efforts towards the creation of a digital European history textbook repository that integrates respective textbooks from various countries and publishers. The content integration is achieved by introducing language independent metadata based on space (locations), time (dates), and thematic categories (history gazetteer). Providing adequate interfaces such metadata can be used to provide language-independent access to Multilanguage history textbook content. The specific focus in this work will be on (i) presenting the metadata, (ii) the data management approach including indexing the history textbook content and (iii) the resulting textbook repository including its GIS-based interface allowing for a combination of map, timeline and keyword based search of the history content.

Usability Guidelines for the Design of Robot Teleoperation: A Taxonomy

This paper presents a taxonomy of design guidelines for robot teleoperation developed from a focused literature review of robot teleoperation. A list of user interface design guidelines was assembled, open card sorting and a focus group were used to classify them, and closed card sorting was employed to validate and further refine the proposed taxonomy. The initially obtained set of 70 guidelines is grouped into eight categories: platform architecture and scalability, error prevention and recovery, visual design, information presentation, robot state awareness, interaction effectiveness and efficiency, robot environment/surroundings awareness, and cognitive factors. Agricultural robots were used as an application case study for implementation and field evaluation. The proposed guideline taxonomy was used heuristically to evaluate the usability of an existing user interface of a teleoperated agricultural robot.

Broadening the use of e-learning standards for adaptive learning

This paper presents two specific educational applications that make use of the IMS-Learning Design specification as the basis for adaptive web-based learning. Specifically, learner profiling and personalization is achieved in adaptive courseware compliant with the specification and including a diagnostic learning style test and an educational recommender system. These components make use of the learning style and prior knowledge respectively, in order to adapt the presentation of the learning material and the feedback given to the learner.

Teacher-led design of an adaptive learning environment

This paper discusses a requirements engineering process that exemplifies teacher-led design in the case of an envisioned system for adaptive learning. Such a design poses various challenges and still remains an open research issue in the field of adaptive learning. Starting from a scenario-based elicitation method, the whole process was highly participatory, with requirements validation in iterative cycles. The contribution of the paper is twofold: (a) it exposes the design of an environment which addresses the related challenges mentioned by the participants and the literature and (b) it suggests a methodology of framing key requirements into a set of critical success factors for meeting the end-users’ expectations. The latter could be crucial in cases where the available resources are limited, but the quality of the product must not be sacrificed.

Group-work in the design of complex adaptive learning strategies

This paper presents a case study where twelve graduate students undertook the demanding role of the adaptive e-course developer and worked collaboratively on an authentic and complex design task in the context of open and distance tertiary education. The students had to work in groups in order to conceptualise and design a learning scenario for adaptive learning, develop learning materials and adaptive learning strategies, implement the respective adaptive e-course and finally, reflect on their experience. The primary goal of this intervention was to engage the students in the whole lifecycle of a Technology Enhanced Learning design artefact. In teaching highly complex skills for the ill-structured domain of Learning Design the four components instructional model (4C/ID) was exploited. Students were exposed to a wide range of interconnected issues and made design choices. Mixed research methods are used to conclude on the effectiveness of the intervention. Implications of this study include design guidelines towards an environment that implements complex adaptive behaviour in todays learner-generated digital world where Computer Supported Collaborative learning often converges with Computer Supported Collaborative Design.

On Developing and Communicating User Models for Distance Learning Based on Assignment and Exam Data

Summary. Students who enrol in the undergraduate program on informatics at the Hellenic Open University (HOU) demonstrate significant difficulties in advancing beyond the introductory courses. We use decision trees and genetic algorithms to analyze their academic performance throughout an academic year. Based on the accuracy of the generated rules, we analyze the educational impact of specific tutoring practices. We examine the applicability of these techniques in a senior course and reflect on some software engineering issues involved in the development of organization-wide measurement systems. All results are based on data drawn from academic records.

Profiling Group Activity of Online Academic Workspaces: The Hellenic Open University Case Study

All undergraduate and postgraduate students of the Hellenic Open University (HOU) attend courses at a distance. The lack of a live academic community is reported by many as a drawback in their studies. Systematic exploitation of new communication and collaboration technologies is desirable in HOU but cannot be imposed universally as the average student’s IT competence level is relatively low. In this work, we present a key aspect of the development of an integrated communication environment in which collaboration spaces serving as open communities play a key role in user engagement in the whole communication environment. To track and evaluate user participation, we propose to use indices drawn from inexpensively collected usage data. Such indices, when combined with our detailed knowledge of the internal workings of user groups, provide concrete evaluation of the community online activity.

On the software engineering aspects of educational intelligence

Students who enroll in the undergraduate program on informatics at the Hellenic Open University (HOU) demonstrate significant difficulties in advancing beyond the introductory courses. We use decision trees and genetic algorithms to analyze their academic performance throughout an academic year. Based on the accuracy of the generated rules, we analyze the educational impact of specific tutoring practices and reflect on some software engineering issues involved in the development of organization-wide measurement systems.

Design and development of a semi‐autonomous agricultural vineyard sprayer: Human–robot interaction aspects

This article presents the design aspects and development processes to transform a general-purpose mobile robotic platform into a semi-autonomous agricultural robot sprayer focusing on user interfaces for teleoperation. The hardware and the software modules that must be installed onto the system are described, with particular emphasis on human–robot interaction. Details of the technology are given focusing on the user interface aspects. Two laboratory experiments and two studies in the field to evaluate the usability of the user interface provide evidence for the increased usability of a prototype robotic system. Specifically, the study aimed to empirically evaluate the type of target selection input device mouse and digital pen outperformed Wiimote in terms of usability. A field experiment evaluated the effect of three design factors: (a) type of screen output, (b) number of views, (c) type of robot control input device. Results showed that participants were significantly more effective but less efficient when they had multiple views, than when they had a single view. PC keyboard was also found to significantly outperform PS3 gamepad in terms of interaction efficiency and perceived usability. Heuristic evaluations of different user interfaces were also performed using research-based HRI heuristics. Finally, a study on participants’ overall user experience found that the system was evaluated positively on the User Experience Questionnaire scales.

Let Me Do It: Towards the Implementation of Sustainable Instructional Patterns

We present the design of an online environment providing mechanisms for the exploitation of school ICT infrastructure by empowering teachers to discover and comment on educational activities (patterns, scenarios, experience reports) that can be implemented in their schools. To this end, our design approach will make explicit the linking between the patterns, the learning scenarios and other contextual information. The online environment will not only serve as a repository of educational activities but will help schools to analyze their infrastructure, to select proper scenarios that effectively exploit it and, potentially, to enrich these scenarios by commenting on them.