Using Multimedia and Virtual Reality for Web-Based Collaborative Learning on Multiple Platforms

Since the advent of the Internet, educators have realised its potential as a medium for teaching. The term e-learning has been introduced to describe this Internet-based education. Although e-learning applications are popular, much research is now underway to improve the features they provide. For example, the addition of synchronous communication methods and multimedia is being studied. With the introduction of wireless networks, mobile devices are also being investigated as a medium to present learning content. Currently, the use of 3-dimensional (3D) graphics is being explored for creating virtual learning environments online. Virtual reality (VR) is already being used in multiple disciplines for teaching various tasks. This chapter focuses on describing some VR systems, and also discusses the current state of e-learning on mobile devices. We also present the VR learning environment that we have developed, incorporating many of the techniques mentioned above for both desktop and mobile devices.

TeleTables and Window Seat

People can use computationally-enhanced furniture to interact with distant friends and places without cumbersome menus or widgets. We describe computing embedded in a pair of tables and a chair that enables people to experience remote events in two ways: The TeleTables are ambient tabletop displays that connect two places by projecting shadows cast on one surface to the other. The Window Seat rocking chair through its motion controls a remote camera tied to a live video feed. Both explore using the physical space of a room and its furniture to create “bilocative” interfaces.

Context Sensitive Mobile Services

The advancements in mobile technologies make the collection of customers’ context information feasible. Service providers can now incorporate context information of customers when providing personalized services to them. This type of services is called context sensitive mobile services (CSMS). Context refers to the environment around customers when there are business transactions between customers and service providers. Location, time, mobile device, services, and other application specific information are all possible components of context. Compared to other types of mobile services, CSMS can fit to customers’ demands better. CSMS can follow push model or pull model. Different context sensitive services are sensitive to different context information with different degrees of sensitivity. In the future, CSMS can find good support from data mining approaches to understand customers better. Security is currently an important issue for CSMS.

Wireless Technologies for Mobile Computing

Mobility and computing were two concepts that never met a decade or two ago. But with the advent of new wireless technologies using radio propagation, the impossible is now becoming possible. Though there are many challenges to be overcome in terms of improving the bandwidth and security as with a wired network, the developments are quite encouraging. It would definitely dictate the way we do transactions in future. This chapter briefly explores some popular wireless technologies that aid in mobile computing, like 802.11 networks, Bluetooth networks, and HomeRF networks. Under 802.11 networks, we investigate the details of both infrastructure and ad hoc networks and its operations. The reader is thus made aware of these technologies briefly along with their performance, throughput, and security issues, which finally concludes with user preferences of these technologies.

Building Applications to Establish Location Awareness

An emerging challenge in the design of interfaces for mobile devices is the appropriate use of information about the location of the user. This chapter considers tradeoffs in privacy, computing power, memory capacity, and wireless signal availability that accompany the obtaining and use of location information and other contextual information in the design of interfaces. The increasing ability to integrate location knowledge in our mobile, ubiquitous applications and their accompanying tradeoffs requires that we consider their impact on the development of user interfaces, leading to an agile usability approach to design borne from agile software development and usability engineering. The chapter concludes with three development efforts that make use of location knowledge in mobile interfaces.

When Ubiquitous Computing Meets Experience Design

In this chapter we provide an overview of the main implications of emerging ubiquitous computing scenarios with respect to the design and evaluation of the user experience. In doing that, we point out how these implications motivate the evolution of the human-computer interaction discipline towards a more interdisciplinary field of research requiring a holistic approach as well as new adequate research methods. We identify challenges for design and evaluation and consider different classes of methods to cope with these challenges. These challenges are illustrated with examples in which ubiquitous technology is used both for its design and for the study of the users’ everyday life. In our discussion we support the idea that ubiquitous technology provides new means for the study of human experiences as well as human deliberate engagement with technology; the latter as an alternative to automation and invisible technology.

Interacting with Interaction Histories in a History-Enriched Environment

A ubiquitous computing environment would capture a large amount of interaction histories of objects in the environment over a long period of time. Such interaction histories serve as valuable sources of information for people to solve problems and make decisions in the present time. Our approach is to enrich the space by providing interaction history information through noticeable wear expressed within a physical environment. A history-enriched environment (HEE) allows people to use interaction histories of people, things, and places on demand, and to obtain relevant information by tracing links among objects. We argue that taking into account two aspects of people’s cognitive activities—situated encountering and information-triggered information needs—is key to building an HEE. This chapter describes how to design an HEE through the Optical Stain environment, which we designed as an HEE.

A Software Engineering Perspective on Ubiquitous Computing Systems

We are now facing a migration from the traditional computing, based on personal computers, to an era of pervasiveness, on which computing devices will be spread all around us, seamlessly integrated into our lives. It is this new stage of computing that researchers have named of ubiquitous computing, also known as pervasive computing. There is no doubt that this vision is certainly a promising computing paradigm for the 21st Century. However, its completely new characteristics have an impact on the way that software is developed. We should emphasize that, for example, to achieve the seamless integration characteristic of ubiquitous computing environments, applications must implement mechanisms for discovering the needs of users in order to present them with relevant information at the right place and at the right time. This, and other intrinsic features of ubiquitous computing systems, makes necessary

Formalizing Patterns with the User Requirements Notation

Patterns need to be described and formalized in ways that enable the reader to determine whether the particular solution presented is useful and applicable to his or her problem in a given context. However, many pattern descriptions tend to focus on the solution to a problem, and not so much on how the various (and often conflicting) forces involved are balanced. This chapter describes the user requirements notation (URN), and demonstrates how it can be used to formalize patterns in a way that enables rigorous trade-off analysis while maintaining the genericity of the solution description. URN combines a graphical goal language, which can be used to capture forces and reason about trade-offs, and a graphical scenario language, which can be used to describe behavioral solutions in an abstract manner. Although each language can be used in isolation in pattern descriptions (and have been in the literature), the focus of this chapter is on their combined use. It includes examples of formalizing Design patterns with URN together with a process for trade-off analysis.

Leveraging Pervasive and Ubiquitous Service Computing

The advancement of technologies to connect people and objects anywhere has provided many opportunities for enterprises. This chapter will review the different wireless networking technologies and mobile devices that have been developed, and discuss how they can help organizations better bridge the gap between their employees or customers and the information they need. The chapter will also discuss the promising application areas and human-computer interaction modes in the pervasive computing world, and propose a service-oriented architecture to better support such applications and interactions.