A two-tier test approach to developing location-aware mobile learning systems for natural science courses

The advancement of wireless and mobile technologies has enabled students to learn in an environment that combines learning resources from both the real world and the digital world. Although such an approach has been recognized as being innovative and important, several problems have been revealed in practical learning activities. One major problem is owing to the lack of proper learning strategies or tools for assisting the students to acquire knowledge in such a complex learning scenario. Students might feel excited or engaged when using the mobile devices to learn in the real context; nevertheless, their learning achievements could be disappointing. To deal with this problem, this study presents a mobile learning system that employs Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology to detect and examine real-world learning behaviors of students. This study also utilizes each student’s responses from a two-tier test (i.e., multiple-choice questions in a two-level format) to provide personalized learning guidance (called two-tier test guiding, T³G). The experimental results from a natural science course of an elementary school show that this innovative approach is able to improve the learning achievements of students as well as enhance their learning motivation.     

Experiences in developing mobile applications using the Apricot Agent Platform

The trend of increasing mobile services has set a new challenge for service providers: how to develop more advanced and user-friendly, context-aware and personalized mobile services for the users. Apricot Agent Platform is an agent-based software platform designed for developing context-aware and personalized mobile services. Apricot Agent Platform supports the development of user-friendly mobile services by providing tools for combining various mobile and Internet-based services. Apricot agent architecture consists of an agent platform, agents and agent containers. For the developers of mobile services, it provides built-in functionality and communication mechanism. Furthermore, this paper describes four demonstrators that are built up on the Apricot Agent Platform to evaluate the usability and efficiency of the platform in the processes of building mobile services. The outcome of the evaluation indicates relatively promising results and the further target for development is revealed.     

A context-aware ubiquitous learning environment for conducting complex science experiments

Context-aware ubiquitous learning (u-learning) is an innovative approach that integrates wireless, mobile, and context-awareness technologies to detect the situation of learners in the real world and provide adaptive support or guidance accordingly. In this paper, a context-aware u-learning environment is developed for guiding inexperienced researchers to practice single-crystal X-ray diffraction operations. Experimental results showed that the benefits of this innovative approach are that it is “systematic”, “authentic”, and “economical”, which implies the potential of applying it to complex science experiments, such as physics, chemistry or biotechnology experiments, for graduate and PhD students in colleges, or research workers in research institutes.     

Distributing the personal digital environment throughout your entertainment environment: handling personal metadata across domains

It is a fact, that we are surrounded by more and more ubiquitous services in entertainment computation. All sorts of devices are more and more connected, and personalization becomes more and more a major issue. We are living in a world with two layers: the real physical layer being our real-world, and its synthetic overlay consisting of location-based services, chatting applications, or Web 2.0 offers. In the real-world, communication between humans is a matter of personality of different persons: exchanging information about each other, finding common interests, or finding common conversation themes. In the synthetic overlay, communication becomes a matter of distribution of personal profiles or automating profile matching. The open-source platform Portable Personality (P2) () faces this challenge, and provides a platform for cross-service interchange of personal context information based on any generic metadata type. P2’s software architecture is designed for mining, enriching, and exchanging personal profiles between arbitrary multimedia services. The long-term vision of P2 is to provide a personality profile rather than a personal context information profile to enable communication between human and device as a matter of personalities, rather than automated matching of profiles. Two different scenarios, the Smart Social Network (SSN), and the personalization of audio-visual data are presented as practical use-case for P2.     

An adaptive navigation support system for conducting context-aware ubiquitous learning in museums

In context-aware ubiquitous learning, students are guided to learn in the real world with personalized supports from the learning system. As the learning resources are realistic objects in the real world, certain physical constraints, such as the limitation of stream of people who visit the same learning object, the time for moving from one object to another, and the environmental parameters, need to be taken into account. Moreover, the values of these context-dependent parameters are likely to change swiftly during the learning process, which makes it a challenging and important issue to find a navigation support mechanism for suggesting learning paths for individual students in real time. In this paper, the navigation support problem for context-aware ubiquitous learning is formulated and two navigation support algorithms are proposed by taking learning efficacy and navigation efficiency into consideration. From the simulation results of learning in a butterfly museum setting, it is concluded that the innovative approach is helpful to the students to more effectively and efficiently utilize the learning resources and achieve better learning efficacy.     

状态自动机支持的环境感知应用框架研究

环境感知是普及计算中一个重要的研究领域。为了便于开发环境感知应用程序,许多研究者已经提出了一些环境感知应用框架。然而,目前的一些环境感知应用框架侧重于让应用程序直接订阅或查询相关的环境信息,使得开发者需要关注众多的环境信息且要定义许多相似的规则来区分众多不同的操作,造成了开发和修改环境感知的应用程序仍存在着较多的困难。为解决这些问题,本文在研究环境感知应用框架的基础上,引入了信息空间环境状态的概念,提出了一种基于状态自动机的环境感知改进框架BS-CTK,并设计和实现了相应的组件以支持基于状态自动机的环境感知应用开发。     

Automated context aggregation and file annotation for PAN-based computing

This paper presents a method for automatically annotating files created on portable devices with contextual metadata. We achieve this through the combination of two system components. One is a context dissemination mechanism which allows devices in a personal area network (PAN) to maintain a shared aggregate contextual perception. The other is a storage management system that uses such context information to automatically decorate files created on personal devices with annotations. As a result, the user is able to flexibly browse and lookup files that were generated on the move, based on the contextual situation at the time of their creation. What is equally important is that the user is relieved from the cumbersome task of having to manually provide annotations in an explicit fashion. This is especially valuable when generating files on the move, using U/I-restricted portable devices.

记忆计算:概念、特性及研究进展

随着信息技术的发展,尤其是移动互联网与物联网的发展,有关个人工作和生活的数据呈指数型增长。这些海量的数据中蕴含着丰富而有价值的个人信息,如何从这些数据中挖掘出有价值的信息成为当前信息领域的重要问题。针对该问题,介绍了普适计算领域新兴起的研究主题——记忆计算。记忆计算旨在通过各种带感知和计算功能的设备,比如智能手机、可穿戴设备等,实时感知和捕获用户线上线下活动的数据,分析并挖掘其内在价值,进而组织和管理有意义的记忆数据,实现基于情境的记忆数据呈现,以辅助个体记忆,支持社群交流与协作。讨论了基于移动情境感知的记忆计算的概念、特性、系统模型以及当前研究的关键技术与挑战,综述了记忆计算在生活日志、记忆提醒、往事回忆和群体记忆分享等方面的研究进展,并对其未来发展进行了展望。     

Deploying personalized mobile services in an agent-based environment

The mobile Internet allows users to obtain digitized contents and services from wired and wireless networks virtually anywhere at any time via different handheld mobile devices. However, due to the distinct features of mobile users, mobile devices and wireless networks, deploying mobile services is not as straightforward as generally expected. To ensure the success of mobile services, this paper presents a multi-agent framework that considers different contexts to support personalized services on wireless networks. In the proposed approach, client users, content providers, and service providers are all considered as software agents. They interoperate on the same platform to request and deliver mobile services. The most important issues related to agent operations and context awareness in an agent world are also discussed and analyzed. To verify our framework, different application services are developed accordingly on a publicly available middleware platform. Experiments are conducted for both services to evaluate their corresponding performance. The preliminary results show that our multi-agent approach to personalization is promising and efficient in the deployment of mobile services.     

Bridging the gap between students and computers: supporting activity awareness for network collaborative learning with GSM network

The internet has been widely used to promote collaborative learning among students. However, students do not always have access to the system, leading to doubt in the interaction among the students, and reducing the effectiveness of collaborative learning, since the web-based collaborative learning environment relies entirely on the availability of computers and the internet. A web-based collaborative learning scheme based on activity awareness carried out through mobile phones is proposed herein. The proposed mechanism automatically sends SMS messages on a GSM network, based on student identity and learning activity, making the student aware of the collaborative learning context, and further improving the student's learning. A web-based collaborative learning activity was implemented in a Taiwan undergraduate class to examine the proposed scheme. Experiments demonstrated that awareness of the collaborative learning context through mobile phones significantly increased student participation in learning activity and improving student learning performance.     

Implicit human computer interaction through context

In this paper the term implicit human-computer interaction is defined. It is discussed how the availability of processing power and advanced sensing technology can enable a shift in HCI from explicit interaction, such as direct manipulation GUIs, towards a more implicit interaction based on situational context. In the paper, an algorithm is given based on a number of questions to identify applications that can facilitate implicit interaction. An XML-based language to describe implicit HCI is proposed. The language uses contextual variables that can be grouped using different types of semantics as well as actions that are called by triggers. The term of perception is discussed and four basic approaches are identified that are useful when building context-aware applications. Two examples, a wearable context awareness component and a sensor-board, show how sensor-based perception can be implemented. It is also discussed how situational context can be exploited to improve input and output of mobile devices.     

Crossing the line: A field study of inhabited television

This paper reports on an ethnographic field study of 'Out Of This World' (OOTW, Benford et al. 1999) an experiment in 'inhabited television' combining broadcast technologies with a collaborative virtual environment in a live show. The study focuses on the work of producing OOTW and how personnel managed the manifold contingencies of working with complex technology. The use of a specially developed virtual camera control application is discussed together with the methods the director used for live editing views from cameras into a 'broadcast from virtual reality'. The challenges faced by the multiple professions involved (TV personnel, research scientists, actors) are documented and the viability of inhabited TV as a 'new medium' is assessed. Future technological refinements are briefly discussed along with some general implications for CSCW and 'media studies' of the work reported.     

移动计算环境下的QoS技术

QoS管理和控制是移动计算中的一个重要研究领域。该领域的主要研究内容有环境识别、适应性管理、资源管理和资源预留等。本文论述了移动计算环境下QoS研究中的一些基本概念、主要问题、研究内容和方法,并对该领域最近的研究工作进行了综述。     

一种场景驱动的情境感知计算框架

情境感知系统通常以情境信息直接驱动上层服务或应用。普适计算环境的情境信息在来源及种类上存在较大差异,情境信息的多样性导致由情境直接驱动的情境感知系统的扩展性、稳定性不足。对此提出一种场景驱动的情境感知计算框架。该框架以场景为基础,屏蔽了原始情境信息的异构性和多样性;以场景识别为核心,由系统中的基本情境信息识别当前用户的场景信息,由场景信息驱动相关的应用。该框架简化了系统设计的复杂度,有助于提高系统的扩展性和稳定性;同时场景识别采用神经网络的算法,避免了因采用推理所带来的知识库暴涨问题。所开发的原型系统验证了框架的有效性。     

An experiment for improving students performance in secondary and tertiary education by means of m-learning auto-assessment

Mobile learning is considered an evolution of e-learning that embraces the ubiquitous nature of current computational systems in order to improve teaching and learning. Within this context it is possible to develop mobile applications oriented to learning, but it is also important to assess to what extent such applications actually work. In this paper we present a new tool designed to reinforce students’ knowledge by means of self-assessment. Improvement in student achievement was evaluated and an attitudinal survey was also carried out to measure student attitudes towards this new tool. Three different experimental groups were selected for this research, with students aged from 14 to 21 years old, including high-school and university students. Results show that this kind of tool improves student achievement, especially amongst younger learners, with a relatively low impact on current teaching activities and methodology.     

Mobile devices and intelligent agents—towards a new generation of applications and services

If mobile computing is to become the pre-dominant computer usage paradigm in the coming years as is widely anticipated, a substantial increase in the demand for mobile computing applications and services will arise. How best to engineer such applications remains an open question and is naturally the focus of much research. In this article, we propose the use of intelligent agents as the constituent entities around which such applications and services can be conceptualised and realised. We describe the design and implementation of Gulliver’s Genie, an archetypal ubiquitous computing application that commissions a collaborative embedded agents approach.     

Deploying learning designs across physical and web spaces: Making pervasive learning affordable for teachers

Pervasive computing devices and communication infrastructures enable learning situations that occur in both the physical and the virtual world. However, deploying these pervasive situations is still a challenge for teachers. This paper presents GLUEPS-AR, a system for deploying learning designs across physical and web spaces, using mainstream Virtual Learning Environments, Web 2.0 artifacts and Augmented Reality applications. GLUEPS-AR has been evaluated through a mixed methods study on the deployment of three authentic pervasive learning situations. Results highlight that GLUEPS-AR supports teachers in deploying their pedagogical ideas on pervasive learning environments, overcoming the main limitations of existing approaches.     

The Ambient Horn: designing a novel audio-based learning experience

The Ambient Horn is a novel handheld device designed to support children learning about habitat distributions and interdependencies in an outdoor woodland environment. The horn was designed to emit non-speech audio sounds representing ecological processes. Both symbolic and arbitrary mappings were used to represent the processes. The sounds are triggered in response to the childrens location in certain parts of the woodland. A main objective was to provoke children into interpreting and reflecting upon the significance of the sounds in the context in which they occur. Our study of the horn being used showed the sounds to be provocative, generating much discussion about what they signified in relation to what the children saw in the woodland. In addition, the children appropriated the horn in creative ways, trying to scoop up new sounds as they walked in different parts of the woodland.     

Acoustic environment as an indicator of social and physical context

Acoustic environments provide many valuable cues for context-aware computing applications. From the acoustic environment we can infer the types of activity, communication modes and other actors involved in the activity. Environmental or background noise can be classified with a high degree of accuracy using recordings from microphones commonly found in PDAs and other consumer devices. We describe an acoustic environment recognition system incorporating an adaptive learning mechanism and its use in a noise tracker. We show how this information is exploited in a mobile context framework. To illustrate our approach we describe a context-aware multimodal weather forecasting service, which accepts spoken or written queries and presents forecast information in several forms, including email, voice and sign languages.