Intelligent Interface for Blind Users to Perform Collaborative Activities

Author(s):  
S. Rabeeya ◽  
M. M. Waqar ◽  
Muhammad Aslam ◽  
A. M. Martinez-Enriquez ◽  
Q. W. Samyan
Mousaion ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 34 (3) ◽  
pp. 36-59 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jan R. Maluleka ◽  
Omwoyo B. Onyancha

This study sought to assess the extent of research collaboration in Library and Information Science (LIS) schools in South Africa between 1991 and 2012. Informetric research techniques were used to obtain relevant data for the study. The data was extracted from two EBSCO-hosted databases, namely, Library and Information Science Source (LISS) and Library, Information Science and Technology Abstracts (LISTA). The search was limited to scholarly peer reviewed articles published between 1991 and 2012. The data was analysed using Microsoft Excel ©2010 and UCINET for Windows ©2002 software packages. The findings revealed that research collaboration in LIS schools in South Africa has increased over the past two decades and mainly occurred between colleagues from the same department and institution; there were also collaborative activities at other levels, such as inter-institutional and inter-country, although to a limited extent; differences were noticeable when ranking authors according to different computations of their collaborative contributions; and educator-practitioner collaboration was rare. Several conclusions and recommendations based on the findings are offered in the article.


Author(s):  
Dinavence Arinaitwe

AbstractThe study aimed to identify and understand practices and strategies for enhancing learning through collaboration among a master’s degree in vocational pedagogy (MVP) program, vocational teacher training institutions (VTIs), and workplaces. Using in-depth semi-structured individual and focus group interviews, data were obtained from administrators, mentors, supervisors, students, teachers, officers/managers of the MVP, two VTIs, and four workplaces from central and eastern parts of Uganda. The data analysis was based on Engestrom’s cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT) particularly the concept of expansive learning for resolving contradictions within human activity systems. The findings revealed a need for involving actors in timely planning and disseminating the activity plans, increasing duration for collaborative activities as well as involving the students in the tracking of MVP activity record in fostering the institutional capacity to plan and implement collaborative activities. To strengthen the institutional capacity to supervise learning under collaborative activities, findings indicated a need to engaging workplace mentors and facilitators in learning at the MVP as well as joint supervision and collaborative development of supervision guidelines. To foster the communication between partners, the findings revealed a need to institute a collaboration focal person, providing feedback to collaborating actors and government support on a policy encouraging workplaces’ involvement in vocational training. Relationship issues revealed a need to initiate collaboration based on a signed memorandum of understanding as well as organising workshops and symposiums to equip and orient actors to MVP work methods and practices. Due to contradicting learning cultures and traditions amongst the activity systems, some of the suggested strategies required renegotiating the system especially the university before being implemented to minimise further challenges.


Electronics ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 388
Author(s):  
Santos Bringas ◽  
Rafael Duque ◽  
Alicia Nieto-Reyes ◽  
Cristina Tîrnăucă ◽  
José Luis Montaña

Collaborative systems support shared spaces, where groups of users exchange interactions. In order to ensure the usability of these systems, an intuitive interactions’ organization and that each user has awareness information to know the activity of others are necessary. Usability laboratories allow evaluators to verify these requirements. However, laboratory usability evaluations can be problematic for reproducing mobile and ubiquitous contexts, as they restrict the place and time in which the user interacts with the system. This paper presents a framework for building software support that it collects human–machine interactions in mobile and ubiquitous contexts and outputs an assessment of the system’s usability. This framework is constructed through learning that is based on neural networks, identifying sequences of interactions related to usability problems when users carry out collaborative activities. The paper includes a case study that puts the framework into action during the development process of a smartphone application that supports collaborative sport betting.


Sensors ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (9) ◽  
pp. 2898
Author(s):  
Milica Vujovic ◽  
Ishari Amarasinghe ◽  
Davinia Hernández-Leo

The role of the learning space is especially relevant in the application of active pedagogies, for example those involving collaborative activities. However, there is limited evidence informing learning design on the potential effects of collaborative learning spaces. In particular, there is a lack of studies generating evidence derived from temporal analyses of the influence of learning spaces on the collaborative learning process. The temporal analysis perspective has been shown to be essential in the analysis of collaboration processes, as it reveals the relationships between students’ actions. The aim of this study is to explore the potential of a temporal perspective to broaden understanding of the effects of table shape on collaboration when different group sizes and genders are considered. On-task actions such as explanation, discussion, non-verbal interaction, and interaction with physical artefacts were observed while students were engaged in engineering design tasks. Results suggest that table shape influences student behaviour when taking into account different group sizes and different genders.


Author(s):  
Mandi Astola

AbstractStudies in collective intelligence have shown that suboptimal cognitive traits of individuals can lead a group to succeed in a collective cognitive task, in recent literature this is called mandevillian intelligence. Analogically, as Mandeville has suggested, the moral vices of individuals can sometimes also lead to collective good. I suggest that this mandevillian morality can happen in many ways in collaborative activities. Mandevillian morality presents a challenge for normative virtue theories in ethics. The core of the problem is that mandevillian morality implies that individual vice is, in some cases, valuable. However, normative virtue theories generally see vice as disvaluable. A consequence of this is that virtue theories struggle to account for the good that can emerge in a collective. I argue that normative virtue theories can in fact accommodate for mandevillian emergent good. I put forward three distinctive features that allow a virtue theory to do so: a distinction between individual and group virtues, a distinction between motivational and teleological virtues, and an acknowledgement of the normativity of “vicious” roles in groups.


2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 46
Author(s):  
Nazanin Reza Zadeh Mottaghi ◽  
Mahmoud Talkhabi

This study compares the national curriculum of Iran and the UK to find out how the educational system indeveloping countries such as Iran can be improved. Because of implementing thinking skills and cognitive education,the educational system in the UK benefits from a high-quality standard. The science of mind, brain, educationintroduces some principles to improve teaching and learning methods and provide thoughtful and lifelong learnersfor the societies. In this study, we specified the main parts of the national curriculum in both countries and selectedsome of the principles to determine whether these two countries apply them in their national curriculum. Some ofthese principles focus on some significant issues: teaching models, the use of Meta-discipline and HolisticTechniques, authentic learning experiences, use of products, processing and progressing Evaluations, developingexplicit learning objectives, how to benefit from thinking and reflective practices, using collaborative and democraticactivities, preparing students to set personal objectives, giving themselves feedbacks, technology and flippedclassrooms, and beginning Year- Round Schooling. The results show that Iran needs more precise and detailedlearning objectives in its curriculum, use of democratic and collaborative activities with academics and students,develop thinking and reflective practices which play vital roles in upgrading the educational system. Moreover, it issuggested that the UK and Iran should consider embedded evaluations and flipped classrooms to meet the needs ofnew generation of learners.


2012 ◽  
Vol 2012 ◽  
pp. 1-13 ◽  
Author(s):  
George Adam ◽  
Christos Bouras ◽  
Vaggelis Kapoulas ◽  
Andreas Papazois

Supporting collaborative activities among the online players are one of the major challenges in the area of Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOG), since they increase the richness of gaming experience and create more engaged communities. To this direction, our study has focused on the provision of services supporting and enhancing the players' in-game community and collaboration activities. We have designed and implemented innovative tools exploiting a game adaptation technology, namely, the In-game Graphical Insertion Technology (IGIT), which permits the addition of web-based applications without any need from the game developers to modify the game at all, nor from the game players to change their game installation. The developed tools follow a design adapted to the MMOG players' needs and are based on the latest advances on Web 2.0 technology. Their provision is performed through the core element of our system, which is the so-called Community Network Game (CNG) Server. One of the important features provided by the implemented system's underlying framework is the utilization of enhanced Peer-to-Peer (P2P) technology for the distribution of user-generated live video streams. In this paper, we focus on the architecture of the CNG Server as well as on the design and implementation of the online community and collaboration tools.


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