Controversies in Cognition

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Controversies in Cognition

• Evaluation of technology use in the wild
• Dr. Danaë Stanton Fraser

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Lectures

• Space. Can we simulate it effectively?
• Spatial Cognition learning what has been
  'learnt' from cognitive maps.
• Laboratory versus Field the Evaluation Debate
• Estimating time-to-collision can we accurately
  estimate when we will reach an object or when a
  moving object will reach us?
• Evaluating in the wild
• Aiding Mobility are electronic and environmental
  devices sufficient for aiding mobility in the
  mobility impaired?

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Introduction

• Traditional technologies in subservient role to
  Psychology
• Methods of recording and storing data
• e.g. desktop computers used to time reactions
• Domains of data gathering
• e.g. digital video recording enables repeatable
  analysis of behaviour
• Methods of conducting experiments
• software provides reproducible experiences during
  experiments
• Access to people
• Larger numbers of participants possible in
  on-line surveys or questionnaires

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Evaluating in the Wild

• New technologies also provide an interesting
  domain for study
• New possibilities for collaboration and changing
  methods of communication (e.g. telephone, email,
  SMS, videoconferencing, )
• The Shared Desktop
• Sensors and Context
• Mobile Systems

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Working with schools (1)

• Education
• Working with schools versus testing in schools
• The practicalities consent, ethics, relationship
  with user group, OFSTED, SATS
• Designing within the physical, social and
  organisational constraints of a real classroom
• Children as partners versus informants
• Design methods

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Working with schools (2)

• How to gain access to schools
• Ethics approval school policies
• Consent forms to parents
• Through school
• Include use of video recordings (research papers
  now often go on the web)
• Teachers approval

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Designing with or for?

• Different ways of designing and working with user
  groups (see Druin, 2002)
• Design partners
• Informants
• Subjects/Participants

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Participatory design

• Involve users as members of the design team from
  the start
• Methods of communication
• brain (and body) storming
• pen and paper interface walkthroughs
• paper/cardboard mockups
• early prototypes
• emerged from Scandinavia

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Designing with Children

• Children and teachers involved in the design
  process.
• Work intensively with teachers and children in
  school to design and develop technologies to be
  integrated into the classroom?
• Interdisciplinary team? Those developing the
  technology should also go to the school!

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Designing with Children

• Integrating with the National Curriculum?
• The physical nature of the classroom means that
  children are continually divided into small
  groups
• Iterative design sometimes slower development of
  technology but a more integrated and usable
  product.

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Traditionally

• Computer in the corner of the classroom
• Computer lessons not linked to domain
• Individual use of machine, or
• Possibility for input lt number of children per
  device
• Children and teachers not actively involved in
  the design of the technology being used

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New Technologies The Shared Desktop

• Working in pairs and groups can have advantageous
  effects on learning and development (Rogoff,
  1990 Wood and OMalley, 1996)
• Role of the computer unique in the way that it
  can structure collaborative activity (Littleton,
  1999)
• Traditionally computer hardware and software
  designed with one user in mind

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• KidStory project - Developing collaborative
  storytelling technologies for children aged 5-7
• Learning in class is a social activity - focus on
  group work
• Designing within the physical, social and
  organisational constraints of a real classroom

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An evaluation study Collaborative behaviour
around the computer

• An exploratory study to examine the effect of
  multiple mice on childrens dialogue and
  interaction

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• Single Display Groupware - allows to co-located
  users to interact with a system simultaneously
• Inkpen et al (1995, 1997, 1999) found significant
  learning improvements - higher levels of activity
  and less off task behaviour
• Abnett et al (2001) gender effects.

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Method

• Participants - 24 children from an infant school
  in Nottingham. Aged 6-7 years.
• Apparatus - KidPad a shared 2D drawing tool with
  a zooming interface (Druin et al, 1997).
• Task - Creative task carried out by pairs of
  children using one or two mice.

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• Procedure
• Recreate a poem in KidPad
• Children encouraged to work together
• 20 minutes
• Video capture of the computer screen and the
  children were mixed
• An analysis of the process of collaboration

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Examination of behaviour in depth

• Coding scheme developed to capture types of talk,
  physical interaction and their relationship with
  the on screen product
• Qualitative analysis
• The development of the car in the poem analysed
  for each pair (5minutes)

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Characteristics and Behavioural styles observed

• Interaction with 2 mice
• Common themes
• Verbalisation of action
• Little reciprocity or elaboration of ideas
• Active division of tasks - working in parallel
• Still cases of dominant behaviour by one partner

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Results

• Use of two mice
• Greater degree of engagement in task
• more total time spent on creation
• symmetry of mouse use

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Asymmetry with one mouse
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Symmetry with 2 mice
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Video
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• Interaction with one mouse
• More of a mix of behaviours
• Good collaboration - long discussion of ideas,
  reciprocity followed by input of joint ideas,
  conflict followed by compromise
• Conflict not resolved, high degree of negativity
  about others work
• Domination by one partner

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New Technologies Mobile and Wireless

• Outside the school the fieldtrip
• field trip with a difference
• Taking technology outdoors
• Making the invisible visible
• Carry out collaborative discovery and reflection
• To stimulate scientific enquiry

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The Ambient Wood Project

• small groups of children using mobile
  technologies outdoors to support scientific
  enquiry about the biological processes taking
  place in a wood.
• One of the devices used, a probe tool, contained
  sensors enabling measurement of the light and
  moisture levels within the wood. A small screen
  was also provided which displayed the readings
  using appropriate visualisations.

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Handhelds to make the invisible visible

• Measurements of light and moisture at different
  locations were displayed on a PDA in pictorial
  format.
• Mobile devices used to receive location-specific
  information.

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Video
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Key findings

• Analysis of the patterns of interaction revealed
  
• The probe engendered exploration, the generation
  of ideas (about where to probe in order to get
  different readings, or to see readings around
  particular plants).
• Children made links between their readings, for
  example, comparing readings taken by the same
  species of plant, but in different locations.
• Children made predictions about readings they
  might expect in particular locations, for
  example, one pair predicted a moist reading
  because there was lots of moss.
• Many also drew conclusions about the general
  physical state of the woodland, and how this
  related to the environment and the organisms
  found on the basis of their probe readings.

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New Technologies Mobile and Sensors

• Integrating the outdoors with back in the
  classroom
• To explore how emerging networking technologies
  can enhance science education
• Hands-on approach to learning science in schools
• Children learn about presence and impact of
  pollution
• Encourage an understanding of the scientific
  process
• Support collaborative activity between different
  schools and with scientists

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Activities Children as active scientists

• 2 schools involved
• Primary in Nottingham
• Secondary in Brighton
• Sessions to familiarise children with pollution
• Children use mobile carbon monoxide sensors to
  measure pollution levels in their local
  environment
• Use software tools to analyse their data in the
  classroom and to share with others

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Mobile Sensors

• Children can collect pollution data
• Mobile sensor records and gives instant feedback

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Analysing data
Video replay
Textual annotation
Interest point
Time series
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Connectivity, schools and scientists

• Children in same school
• Scientific Teams
• Children in different schools
• Connectivity, Community
• Children and scientists
• Learning from the Experts

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Summary of results

• Results of video analysis and teacher interviews
  suggest that this context-inclusive approach is
  significant for three reasons
• Firstly, it allows individuals to reflect on
  method as part of data collection.
• Secondly it provides an aide-memoir to groups who
  have collected data together in interpreting
  results.
• Thirdly, it allows new participants who have
  engaged in similar processes to understand new
  perspectives on their own and others data.

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Controversies

• Should we be as controlled/experimental as
  possible/as the pre-determined factors allow?
• Is the only benefit of exploration and engagement
  in the field to provide ideas for experiments?
• Is lab-based work appropriate in studying
  field-based use?

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References (1)

• Abnett, C., Stanton, D., Neale, H and OMalley
  (2001) The effect of multiple input devices on
  collaboration and gender issues. In the
  Proceedings of European Perspectives on
  Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning
  (EuroCSCL) 2001, March 22-24, Maastricht, the
  Netherlands. P.29-36.
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• Druin, A., Stewart, J., Proft, D., Bederson, B.,
  Hollan, J. (1997). KidPad A design collaboration
  between children, technologists, and educators.
  Proceedings of  CHI97, Atlanta, GA.
•  
• Druin, A. (2002). The Role of Children in the
  Design of New Technology. Behaviour and
  Information Technology, 21(1) 1-25.
•  
• Inkpen, K., Booth, K.S., Klawe, M., and Upitis,
  R. (1995). Playing Together Beats Playing Apart,
  Especially for Girls. Proceedings of Computer
  Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) '95.
  Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 177-181.
•  
• Inkpen, K. M., Booth, K. S., Klawe, M.,
  McGrenere, J. (1997). The Effect of Turn-Taking
  Protocols on Children's Learning in Mouse-Driven
  Collaborative Environments. In Proceedings of
  Graphics Interface (GI 97) Canadian Information
  Processing Society, pp. 138-145.
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• Inkpen, K.M., Ho-Ching, W., Kuederle, O., Scott,
  S.D. Shoemaker, G.B.D. (1999) This is fun!
  Were all best friends and were all playing
  Supporting childrens synchronous collaboration.
  In Proceedings of Computer Supported
  Collaborative Learning (CSCL99) (eds. C.M.
  Hoadley J. Roschelle) pp. 252259. Lawrence
  Erlbaum, Hillsdale, NJ.
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•  

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References (2)

• Littleton, K. (1999). Productivity through
  interaction An overview. In K. Littleton and P.
  Light (Eds.) Learning with Computers Analysing
  productive interaction. Routledge. London
  p.179-194.
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• Price, S., Rogers, Y., Stanton, D. and Smith, H.
  (2003). A new conceptual framework for CSCL
  Supporting diverse forms of reflection through
  multiple interactions. In Proceedings of Computer
  Support for Collaborative Learning. (CSCL) 2003,
  Kluwer, pp. 513-523.
•   
• Rogers, Y, Price, S., Randell, C, Stanton Fraser,
  D., Weal M. and Fitzpatrick, G. (2005).
  Ubi-learning Integrating Indoor and Outdoor
  Learning Experiences. Communications of the ACM.
  January 2005/Vol. 48, No. 1
•  
• Rogoff, B., Apprenticeship in Thinking Cognitive
  Development in Social Context. New York Oxford
  University Press, 1990.
•  
• Stanton, D., Neale, H. and Bayon, V. (2002)
  Interfaces to support children's co-present
  collaboration multiple mice and tangible
  technologies. Computer Support for Collaborative
  Learning. (CSCL) 2002. ACM Press. Boulder,
  Colorado, USA. January 7th-11th.p.342-352
• Stanton, D. and Neale, H. (2003). Collaborative
  Behaviour around a computer the effect of
  multiple mice on childrens talk and interaction.
  Journal of Computer Assisted Learning (JCAL),
  Blackwell, Vol. 19, no. 2, pp. 229-239.
•  
• Stanton Fraser, D., Smith, H., Tallyn, E., Kirk,
  D., Benford, S., Rowland, D., Paxton, M., Price S
  and Fitzpatrick G. (2005). The SENSE project a
  context-inclusive approach to studying
  environmental science within and across schools.
  Computer Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL
  2005). Taiwan. May.
•  
• Tallyn, E., Stanton, D., Benford, S., Rowland,
  D., Kirk, D., Paxton, M., et al. (2004).
  Introducing eScience to the classroom.
  Proceedings of the UK e-Science All Hands
  Meeting, EPSRC, pp. 1027-1029.
•  
• Wood, D., O'Malley, C., Collaborative learning
  between peers An overview. Educational
  Psychology in Practice, 11(4), 4-9, 1996
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