This paper presents a study developed in the framework of a training course for teachers of STEM areas on the JuxtaLearn process. This process, divided into eight steps, aims to improve student understanding of threshold concepts by planning, editing and sharing creative videos in CLIPIT. CLIPIT is an online platform for collaborative learning designed to support the JuxtaLearn process. We describe the training of eight teachers, and the subsequent supervision of one of them, a math teacher, made to understand how the JuxtaLearn process was applied with her students. We collect qualitative data through the observation of the teacher's work. Also, quantitative data through initial and final quizzes applied to the students, to understand their level of understanding of the tricky topic, automatic records on CLIPIT and a satisfaction questionnaire applied to the eight teachers to assess the ease of use with the CLIPIT. The results show that teachers were able to put into practice the eight steps of the JuxtaLearn process and suggest that students’ engagement in creating creative videos helped them in overcoming tricky math topics.

This paper presents a study developed within the international project JuxtaLearn. This project aims to improve student understanding of threshold concepts by promoting student curiosity and creativity through video creation. The math concept of 'Division', widely referred in the literature as problematic for students, was recognised as a 'Tricky Topic' by teachers with the support of the Tricky Topic Tool and the Problem Distiller tool, two apps developed under the JuxtaLearn project. The methodology was based on qualitative data collected through Think Aloud protocol from a group of teachers of a public Elementary school as they used these tools. Results show that the Problem Distiller tool fostered the teachers to reflect more deeply on the causes of the students’ misunderstandings of that complex math concept. This process enabled them to develop appropriate strategies to help the students overcome these misunderstandings. The results also suggest that the stumbling blocks associated to the Tricky Topic ‘Division’ are similar to the difficulties reported in the literature describing Threshold Concepts. This conclusion is the key issue discussed in this paper and a contribution to the state of the art.

This paper presents a study developed in the scope of a larger project that aims to understand how video editing and content sharing in public displays can be used at schools to promote the informal engagement of students with curricular contents that are essential to foster future learning. The study involved a video competition where students were invited to create videos around specific pedagogical topics. These videos were subsequently presented in the public display at the school, and students could use a mobile application to rate, create comments or just bookmark the videos. Findings suggest that students are receptive to creating videos and sharing them in public displays. However, the results also show that few students that used the application to interact with the content. Many reasons for this are presented such as unawareness that the display is interactive ‘because it seems like a regular TV’, too small a number of interesting videos shown during the video contest. Particular barriers included not owning a mobile device capable of interacting, and the limitation of the large screen which does not allow searching ‘the videos we like’, as YouTube seems to do.

We live immersed in a technological world. Learning is not an exception; most classrooms are equipped with multiple devices intended to improve the learning process for students. Especially for novice teachers, there is a need to provide usable technological tools that help them with their counterpart teaching tasks. This paper presents a set of teacher authoring tools to facilitate the tasks of identifying learning tricky topics , noting student difficulties, and creating quizzes for knowledge evaluation. The resulting quizzes, generated by these tools, are used at the start of learning activities, where students explain tricky topics by creating educational videos that use juxtaposition, and which are then shared and commented among peers.

Researchers designing and deploying technologies in the wild can find it difficult to balance pure innovation with scalable solutions. Tensions often relate to expectations around current and future roles of the technology development. We propose a catwalk technology metaphor where researchers as boundary creatures focus on innovation whilst providing links to prêt-à-porter (ready to wear) developments. Evidence from 140 participants, within three “in-the-wild” field-based learning case studies (for mobile, distributed, sensor and augmented reality systems), conceptualise the researchers’ “boundary creature” role in managing design process tensions. Stakeholders, including participants, expected the research projects to produce ready to wear (prêt-à-porter) boundary objects for current practices even when researchers sought to take catwalk approaches by innovating technologies and changing practices. The researcher design role (RDR) model articulates researchers’ narratives with the design team, stakeholders and users around what is innovated (e.g., technology, activities) and how the intervention changes or sustains current practices.

A variety of computing technologies, in addition to the personal computer, are now commonly used in many settings. As networking infrastructures mature, it is increasingly feasible and affordable to consider closer integration and use of these heterogeneous devices in tandem. However, little is known about how best to design or evaluate such ‘device ecologies’; in particular, how best to combine devices to achieve a desired type of collaborative user experience. A central concern is how users switch their attention between devices, to utilize the various elements to best effect. We describe here the development of an ecology of devices for groups of students to use when engaged in collaborative inquiry-learning activities. This included a multi-touch tabletop, laptops, projections, video streams and telephone. In situ studies of students and tutors using it in three different settings showed how individuals and groups switched their foci between the multiple devices. We present our findings, using a novel method for analysing users’ transitions between foci, identifying patterns and emergent characteristics. We then discuss the importance of designing for transitions that enable groups to appropriately utilise an ecology of devices, using the concepts of seams, bridges, niches and focal character.

Interaction between in situ and distanced collaborators focused on the physical environment is an under-explored research area, where there is potential for novel mobile and indoor technologies to enhance activities. This paper describes research in progress to explore how new forms of collaborative learning in scientific fieldwork can be supported. We describe field trials of a prototype system designed to connect higher education students engaged in earth science fieldwork with peers based in a 'mission control' type environment. We discuss how analysis of these trials is leading us to identify new requirements to support effective collaboration between users based across contrasting locations, including issues of spatial coherence, deictic communication and reflection.

This article reports on work studying how technology can empower or exclude its users due to interactions between social context, system design, and implementation. The analysis is based around the introduction and use of digital libraries in four different settings, three clinical and one academic. Across the four settings, in-depth interview and focus group data was collected from 144 users and analyzed with reference to “communities of practice”. The four settings represent three different approaches to digital library implementation: making digital library resources available from existing computer systems in people's offices and the library (a traditional approach); making computer systems, and hence digital libraries, available in shared spaces (in this case, hospital wards); and employing information intermediaries to work with staff and library resources. These different approaches engendered different perceptions of the technology. The traditional approach produced perceptions of technology as being irrelevant for current needs and community practices. Making technology available within shared physical space but with poor design, support, and implementation procedures was widely perceived as a threat to current organizational structures. In contrast, technology implemented within the community which could adapt and change practices according to individual and group needs, supported by an information intermediary, was seen as empowering to both the community and the individual. We relate the findings to a discussion of evolutionary and revolutionary approaches to design and to the concept of communities of practice.

When ubiquitous multimedia technology is introduced in an organization, the privacy implications of that technology are rarely addressed. Users usually extend the trust they have in an organization to the technology it employs. This paper reports results from interviews with 24 Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) attendees whose presentations or contributions to IETF sessions were transmitted on the multicast backbone (Mbone). Due to a high level of trust in the organization, these users had few initial concerns about the privacy implications of this technology. However, interviewees' trust relied on inaccurate assumptions, since the interviews revealed a number of potential and actual invasions of privacy in transmission, recording and editing of multicast data. Previous research found that users who experience an unexpected invasion of their privacy are not only likely to reject the technology that afforded the invasion, but lose trust in the organization that introduced it [2,3]. We discuss a number of mechanisms and policies for protecting users' privacy in this particular application, and propose a strategy for introducing networked multimedia technology in general.