Wan Fatimah Wan Ahmad

Designing 3 Dimensional Virtual Reality Using Panoramic Image

The high demand to improve the quality of the presentation in the knowledge sharing field is to compete with rapidly growing technology. The needs for development of technology based learning and training lead to an idea to develop an Oil and Gas Plant Virtual Environment (OGPVE) for the benefit of our future. Panoramic Virtual Reality learning based environment is essential in order to help educators overcome the limitations in traditional technical writing lesson. Virtual reality will help users to understand better by providing the simulations of real-world and hard to reach environment with high degree of realistic experience and interactivity. Thus, in order to create a courseware which will achieve the objective, accurate images of intended scenarios must be acquired. The panorama shows the OGPVE and helps to generate ideas to users on what they have learnt. This paper discusses part of the development in panoramic virtual reality. The important phases for developing successful panoramic image are image acquisition and image stitching or mosaicing. In this paper, the combination of wide field-of-view (FOV) and close up image used in this panoramic development are also discussed.

The Development of New Conceptual Model for MobileSchool

The advancement of mobile web technology and cloud computing give wider space for improvement of mobile learning system practices. This paper presents a new conceptual model for to-be developed learning management system called Mobile School. This system allows the users to performe teaching and learning activities via both personal computers and mobile devices. This new model is proposed to solve three main identified problems, mobile device physical limitations, ineffective and limited communication among teachers, students, parents and school administrators, and usability problems with the existing mobile learning systems. Thorough literature studies have been conducted to identify the problems of current mobile learning systems and practices, and to determine the possible theories or concepts that can be integrated in the new conceptual model to solve the identified problems. As a result, a new conceptual model that incorporates all necessary concepts, theories and principles has been proposed. The detailed discussions will be presented throughout this paper.

Number skills mobile application for down syndrome children

Down syndrome (DS) children seem to have difficulties in learning numbers compared to reading. They need customized learning in numbers due to their slower pace of learning. Unfortunately, there is limited theory to guide DS children to learn and master in mathematics. With the advancement of technology, the learning style of special children has been improved from time to time from the paper and pen method, to the use of computer application such as courseware to the latest technology such as mobile application in smart phones and tablets. As for now, there is no personalized mathematics learning mobile application for DS children. The objectives of this paper are to report on the development of a mobile application on learning the basic numbers for DS children and to evaluate the user acceptance on the developed mobile application. The study will be focusing on the DS children with moderate level of IQ who are learning to recognize basic numbers. The method used to achieve the objectives is Rapid Application Development (RAD). The mobile application was developed using Eclipse Android Development Tool (ADT). An observation has been conducted to 5 DS children who have different level of IQ. The finding shows that the mobile application is really suitable for DS children who have moderate level IQ.

A Comparison of Architectures for a Usability-Aware Customized Mobile Learning Management System (CMLMS)

Cloud computing is a computing technique in which it allows resources being accessed in cloud without giving the burdens to the users machine. An advantage of this approach is it can overcome the limitation of existing mobile phone technologies especially limited memory storage and limited processing power consumption. It will also increase the compatibility of the developed system with the mobile devices, thus, the usability of the system can be improved. In relation to that, this paper presents a comparative study of architectures for a usability-aware customized mobile learning management system (CMLMS). The study has been conducted to four mobile learning system architectures. The mechanism of the architectures, advantages and disadvantages have been determined using usability aspects as the main criteria of the comparison. Based on the conducted comparative study, cloud architecture for CMLMS has been chosen as the architecture to be implemented in the development of CMLMS. The study shows that the proposed architecture will give more benefits as compared to the studied architectures and some of the weaknesses of the studied architectures can be overcome.

User Experience Study on Folktales Mobile Application for Children's Education

Early exposure to devices such as smart phones and tablets among children as a learning tool has been very common nowadays. Learning using devices like iPads and tablets can stimulate childrens motivation and concentration. Therefore, evaluation and measurement of user experience for mobile learning application become crucial. There were some studies have been done in order to get feedback from users in terms of comparing the application and getting perception rather than observing the quality of the application. This paper presented the study on evaluation of user experience for folktales mobile application called MFolktales by implementing user experience questionnaire tools. The objective of this study is to access the significance and impact of the MFolktales mobile application towards end users. The MFolktales mobile application has been developed based on a validated conceptual model, and the study includes the analysis and the definition of the design principles and requirements. This application contains an animation story module and several games modules which aim to promote Malay folk stories to children. This research is limited to children aged 5 to 7 years old. The prototype was tested on 15 kindergarten students from KEMAS (Community Development Department). As the results, the MFolktales got the positive impression in user perception and achieved as a good product in relative quality.

Heuristic evaluation of Malay Folktales Animated Courseware for childhood education

Heuristic evaluation is an early process to help developers to identify and list down all of the problems and defects of the developed courseware before the application can be released. The evaluation usually involves small group of experts in certain fields, and the process is fast and cheap. This paper discusses the heuristic evaluation of Malay Folktales Animated Courseware for childhood education. In order to make sure the courseware is free from interface and design problems, as well as suitable for the target users, a heuristic evaluation has been carried out, which comprises of a questionnaire distributed to five animators and five Malay language primary schools teachers. There were 14 heuristics and 69 subheuristics included in the questionnaire, where eight heuristics were used for the animators and six heuristics were used for the teachers. The results of this study showed that there were several comments and feedback from the experts that would be considered. In addition, there are needs for some modification on the courseware, and the courseware suitability has been identified through this study.

Evaluation of mobile games with playability heuristic evaluation system

Heuristics evaluation is proved to be an efficient and effective method for inspecting usability of application software and game. However, it is reported in literature that negative usability results may cause failure to the product. In large projects usability evaluation in time consuming and due to time constraints project may fail. There is a need of improving method of conducting heuristic evaluation. Therefore, a motivation is raised to improve the method of conducting heuristic evaluation by automation the process. An automated heuristics evaluation tool empower users to focus on inspecting more usability problems within time constraints and reduce manual efforts. In this study, a playability heuristic evaluation system (PHES) is designed and developed to automate the process of conducting heuristics evaluation for games. To ensure the functionality of this systems, several tests were conducted. The results of this study advocates that with the help of playability heuristic evaluation system (PHES) more playability problems can be identified with in short time.

Airwaves estimation in shallow water CSEM data: Multi-layer perceptron versus multiple regression

In this study, a Multi-Layer Perceptron Neural Network and Multiple Regression techniques are used to estimate airwaves associated with shallow water Controlled-Source Electro-Magnetic (CSEM) data. Both techniques are appropriate for the development of estimation models. However, multiple regression models make some assumptions about the underlying data. These assumptions include independence, normality and homogeneity of variance. Conversely, neural network based models are not constrained by such assumptions. The performance of the two techniques is calculated based on coefficient of determination (R2) and mean square error (MSE). The results indicate that MLP produced better estimate for the airwaves with MSE of 0.0113 and R2 of 0.9935.

Representing visual content of movie cartoons through narration for the visually impaired

Visual impairment is a consequence functional loss of vision which includes partially sighted low vision, legally blind and totally blind. To watch a movie is a challenge for the sight impaired people because most of the scenes are not verbally described in order to understand and have a full view of the program content. Due to this, it narrows down the opportunity of the sight impaired to access interactive learning in order to acquire knowledge and skills for independent learning. This paper presents the use of narration i.e., through spoken words and language in order to represent the visual content of chosen movie cartoons. To represent the visual content, an audio video description has been developed. Two cartoon movies were chosen. A user acceptance test was also conducted with two types of user groups. One group consists of 16 sighted students who were blindfolded to mimic the condition of visual impaired while the other group consists of 6 visual impaired adults. A set of questionnaire on the usability of the audio video description was distributed to the first users once they have completed reviewing the 2 movies. While the second group, was interviewed using the questionnaire as guide. Then, the 2 movies with audio descriptions were reviewed by 8 visually impaired children. Results have shown that the use of narration for audio video description can potentially be an avenue for the visually impaired to enjoy and experience a movie. The audio video description gradually can eliminate the dependence of the sight impaired individuals to their sighted companion who explains enough parts of the movie to them. Finally, the narrated audio video description will be another avenue for the sight impaired to access information through the use of multimedia.