Abstract:

The concept of Ambient Intelligence (AmI) is already playing an important role in enriching the educational experience. Such technologies offer students increased access to information within an augmented teaching environment, which encourages active learning and collaboration, enhancing their motivation to learn. Research work in this domain includes the learner-centered design and implementation of infrastructure technologies, prototypes of intelligent systems and applications, smart artifacts for learning and serious games. “Home game” is an innovative augmented table-top educational game that combines tangible interaction with a virtual environment, falling under the category of serious games. The system is structured into a set of mini-games (such as ‘Locate the room’ and ‘Find the wrong object’), which can be personalized for each player in terms of content and interaction paradigm, either automatically based on their profile settings or manually by the educators. Home Game is deployed in the Rehabilitation Centre for Children with Disabilities in Heraklion, Crete, Greece.

The role of educators in this setting is helping the students improve their skills, by being present when they are playing the game. In order to further support educators in deriving meaningful insights regarding the progress of each student, the Home Game Learning Analytics Web app was designed and developed. It displays detailed learning analytics in easy and meaningful representations (e.g. graphs, charts, journals) both of quantitative as well as of qualitative nature, while it features a mechanism to assist educators in deciding on-the-fly which game to launch depending on the students’ progress.

The design process was rooted in the principles of web and user-centered design, involving multiple iterations for each step. Requirements elicitation has been carried out through brainstorming with occupational therapists, in order to identify the characteristics and needs of the target audience, i.e. educators of students with cognitive impairments, whereas prototype designs have been consolidated through extended focus groups with human-computer interaction (HCI) and user experience (UX) experts.

The analytical data have been organized around the original mini-games, so as to improve mapping and simplify navigation from the educators’ perspective, while their content is context-sensitive. For example, with respect to the mini-game “Home Presentation”, an educator can be informed about which rooms a student usually misses to identify and the times a student visited a particular room, while when viewing analytics regarding the “Place an Object” mini-game, the system will display any requiring interaction patterns of interest (e.g. answering incorrectly immediately after asking for help). Finally, as far as quizzes are concerned, the system offers full coverage of the learning process, displaying rich information including performance trends, objects that seem to trouble the child, number of helps asked, difficulties on specific questions, preferred means of interaction (cards vs. touch) and their comparison with respect to student’s performance.

The full paper will contain a detailed presentation of the User Interface and the learning analytics data that are displayed in each student’s personal dashboards, so as to facilitate educators in adjusting the learning process according the needs of each student. Furthermore, the results of an expert-based evaluation of the tool will be reported.

Keywords:

Ambient Intelligence, educational games, web-oriented interface, cognitive disabilities, assistive education.