Learning analytics has become a robust research area in the last decade, as innovative analytic models of learning data have been created with the goal of enhancing teaching and learning. However, barriers to large scale adoption of such technologies in higher education still exist. In recent years, a strand of research has begun to investigate stakeholders' expectations of learning analytics, hoping to find ways to integrate the innovations into everyday teaching practices. For instance, studies have investigated instructors' ideas about how learning analytics might be helpful, as well as concerns about student data privacy. However, most studies have taken a general approach rather than considering instructors' day-to-day experiences. Using survey methods, we presented instructors with hypothetical scenarios of learning analytics in use across disciplines, class sizes, teaching activities, and types of student data. We asked for ratings of both usefulness and privacy concerns for each proposed teaching situation. Our respondents considered scenarios involving learning outcomes-related data (e.g. grades) to be more useful than those that involve student interactions (e.g. language, social activity). In contrast, privacy concerns were lower for outcomes-oriented scenarios than interactions-focused scenarios. An interesting new finding was a negative correlation of usefulness and privacy; we discuss this in the context of instructors' possible cost-benefit reasoning. We reflect on our findings with respect to future efforts in developing and fielding learning analytics tools.

This paper presents an exploratory investigation of how students might benefit from recorded class lectures. Our overarching goal is to inform design of an artificial intelligence (AI) tool that adds value to lecture recordings. To study this possibility, we surveyed undergraduate students about their active learning strategies and their visions of how AI might help them to engage more richly with digitized learning materials. We report our findings and discuss implications for design of a tool that can add value to recorded lectures; we also consider more generally the possibilities of using lecture recordings to enhance student learning.

Many initiatives have focused on attracting girls and young women (K-12 or college) to computer science education. However, professional women who never learned to program have been largely ignored, despite the fact that such individuals may have many opportunities to benefit from enhanced skills and attitudes about computer programming. To provide a convenient learning space for this population, we created and evaluated the impacts of a nine-week web development workshop that was carefully designed to be both comfortable and engaging for this population. In this article, we report how the professionals’ attitudes and skills grew over the course of the workshop and how they now expect to integrate these skills and attitudes into their everyday lives.

Options for students to learn and connect with each other have diversified in recent years, with online resources and campuses playing an increasing role. Flexibility and comfort are becoming a priority as students choose when, where and how to pursue learning goals. Nonetheless, students want to feel sense of community with their peers and instructors; institutional bonds are in turn associated with enhanced learning. In this paper, we explore the feelings of community among students studying at a geographically distributed university. We seek to understand how the students understand community, the levels of community they feel and how their campus location may affect these feelings. In this paper, we present findings from both a survey and an interview study and consider the implications for tools that might promote community.

Locating and grasping objects is a critical task in people’s daily lives. For people with visual impairments, this task can be a daily struggle. The support of augmented reality frameworks in smartphones has the potential to overcome the limitations of current object detection applications designed for people with visual impairments. We present AIGuide, a self-contained offline smartphone application that leverages augmented reality technology to help users locate and pick up objects around them. We conducted a user study to validate its effectiveness at providing guidance, compare it to other assistive technology form factors, evaluate the use of multimodal feedback, and provide feedback about the overall experience. Our results show that AIGuide is a promising technology to help people with visual impairments locate and acquire objects in their daily routine.

People with visual impairments (PVI) must interact with a world they cannot see. Remote sighted assistance (RSA) has emerged as a conversational assistive technology. We interviewed RSA assistants ("agents") who provide assistance to PVI via a conversational prosthetic called Aira (https://aira.io/) to understand their professional practice. We identified four types of support provided: scene description, navigation, task performance, and social engagement. We discovered that RSA provides an opportunity for PVI to appropriate the system as a richer conversational/social support tool. We studied and identified patterns in how agents provide assistance and how they interact with PVI as well as the challenges and strategies associated with each context. We found that conversational interaction is highly context-dependent. We also discuss implications for design.

Online users' attitudes toward privacy are context-dependent. Studies show that contextual cues are quite influential in motivating users to disclose personal information. Increasingly, these cues are embedded in the interface, but the mechanisms of their effects (e.g., unprofessional design contributing to more disclosure) are not fully understood. We posit that each cue triggers a specific "cognitive heuristic" that provides a rationale for decision-making. Using a national survey (N = 786) that elicited participants' disclosure intentions in common online scenarios, we identify 12 distinct heuristics relevant to privacy, and demonstrate that they are systematically associated with information disclosure. Data show that those with a higher accessibility to a given heuristic are more likely to disclose information. Design implications for protection of online privacy and security are discussed.

Distance learners often experience social isolation and impoverished social interaction with their remote peers. To better understand the connections that distance learners are able to build with peers, we interviewed them about whether and how they perceive or cultivate connections with one another. Our analysis reveals how connections in an online learning environment are formed and experienced across different social contexts and technology affordances, and what strategies and practices enable and inhibit these connections. We discuss the implications of our findings for concepts of shared identity and evolving peer relationships among online learners and for design directions that might address their social needs.

Inspired by initiatives like Girls Who Code, the authors developed a similar learning opportunity in a higher education environment. Code for Her, a nine-week coding workshop series, was piloted to determine if interest existed in the academic community. With an overwhelming response (over 100 applicants), the authors saw a need in the community for an informal learning space targeting women and gender-diverse individuals. Currently, two distinct workshop sections, one for students and one for faculty and staff, are being conducted in a single academic semester, each focusing on learning three web development languages. The goal of this study is to investigate the impacts of the workshop series on its participants using a mixed methods approach. The authors will examine measures of self-efficacy, computing behavior, knowledge, and learning to determine, at an exploratory level, how the workshops have an effect on their learning, motivation, attitudes, and computational thinking. Preliminary results from a baseline survey indicate that keeping a flexible curriculum and learning environment is imperative to the ever-changing needs of participants week to week. Further, results indicate a slightly positive attitude towards achieving programming tasks, future predictors of their behavior after the workshop, and self-efficacy. The authors plan to conduct a post survey, collect participant projects as artifacts for analysis, and arrange follow-up focus groups to determine if participant attitudes, motivation, and retention of the content have changed over a period of time. The authors hope to improve future workshop offerings and expand our research efforts.

Females, racial minorities, and other diverse individuals face many challenges in learning to program. Researchers have investigated these challenges for many years, yet participation by these groups continues to be low. Our action research project is investigating a non-formal learning activity for female and gender-diverse faculty, staff, and students in a university setting. Using surveys, observations and focus groups, we probed learners' experiences, to examine the short- and longer-term impacts of the workshop. We observed increases in self-efficacy and predictions of future use of programming; trepidation about computing decreased. We discuss the need to offer learning spaces for skills that can empower members of these groups.

Adoption rates of parental control applications ("apps") for teens' mobile devices are low, but little is known about the characteristics of parents (or teens) who use these apps. We conducted a web-based survey of 215 parents and their teens (ages 13-17) using two separate logistic regression models (parent and teen) to examine the factors that predicted parental use of technical monitoring apps on their teens' mobile devices. Both parent and teen models confirmed that low autonomy granting (e.g., authoritarian) parents were the most likely to use parental control apps. The teen model revealed additional nuance, indicating that teens who were victimized online and had peer problems were more likely to be monitored by their parents. Overall, increased parental control was associated with more (not fewer) online risks. We discuss the implications of these findings and provide design recommendations for mobile apps that promote online safety through engaged, instead of restrictive, parenting.

Research questions about community among online learners are gaining importance as enrollments in online programs explode. However, what community means for this context has not been studied in a comprehensive way. We contribute a quantitative study of learners' feelings and behavior expectations about online community, adapting scales for sense of community (SOC) and developing an instrument to assess community collective efficacy (CCE). Our analysis of students' responses to these scales revealed two factors underlying SOC (shared identity and interpersonal friendship) and three factors underlying CCE (identity regulation, coordination and social support). We used these factors to discuss contrasting definitions of community (shared identity versus ego networks). Exploratory data analyses also revealed relationships to other student variables that begin to articulate roles and mechanisms for online students' felt community, and raise design implications about what we might do with and for the community structure.

This paper presents a possible implementation of progressive authentication using the Android pattern lock. Our key idea is to use one pattern for two access levels to the device; an abridged pattern is used to access generic applications and a second, extended and higher-complexity pattern is used less frequently to access more sensitive applications. We conducted a user study of 89 participants and a consecutive user survey on those participants to investigate the usability of such a pattern scheme. Data from our prototype showed that for unlocking lowsecurity applications the median unlock times for users of the multiple pattern scheme and conventional pattern scheme were 2824 ms and 5589 ms respectively, and the distributions in the two groups differed significantly (Mann-Whitney U test, p-value less than 0.05, two-tailed). From our user survey, we did not find statistically significant differences between the two groups for their qualitative responses regarding usability and security (t-test, p-value greater than 0.05, two-tailed), but the groups did not differ by more than one satisfaction rating at 90% confidence.

We report an investigation of how older adults engage in social activities and community events in support of their mental, physical, and emotional health. We focus on personal and collaborative agency in a community context, and construe health as an outcome that is coproduced by a person and other engaged community members. Using qualitative methods, we investigated the coproduction of health among members of retirement communities and people who are ageing in place. We found that our participants, irrespective of living arrangements, engaged in a diverse range of coproduction activities, including physical, socialising, service, discussion, and interest-based activities. We also identified desired but less-supported coproduction opportunities, such as opportunistic activities and the need to better appropriate social resources to enable coproductions. We draw from these findings to consider design implications of technological support for facilitating older adults to coproduce.

Health forums and support groups depend on participant self-disclosure for their success, but the sensitive nature of personal health concerns raises privacy concerns that may constrain what users are willing to reveal. To address this issue, we explore the impact of visual cues designed to convey (1) two facets of social influence-crowd size and social network connectivity-and (2) provide a frame designed to enhance the forum's sense of community. A 3 (Cue type: Crowd, Connectivity, None) x 2 (Framing) factorial experiment (N = 218) showed that cues implying greater crowd size and connectivity lead to more self-disclosure of sensitive information, and higher intentions to revisit the community. Further, user belief in the community-building heuristic positively predicts self-disclosure and intentions, while also moderating the effect of the connectivity cue in a direction which implies that the cue encourages disclosure by triggering the community-building heuristic. Implications for the design of online groups are discussed.

We present a comprehensive and structured review of 132 peer-reviewed publications between the years of 2008 and 2015 to inform Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) researchers and interaction designers about the current and multi-disciplinary knowledge on the topic of adolescent online safety and risks. Overall, we found that the existing literature has deeply studied the phenomena around adolescent online safety through an in-depth examination of the prevalence, perceptions, behaviors, characteristics, and outcomes associated with various online risk experiences. However, very few studies have moved beyond formative evaluations that inform design to novel design interventions or summative evaluations of new designs that serve to effectively change the status quo.

We present a lab study of multiple feedback designs for guiding small-scale arm-and-hand movement for people with visual impairments (PVI), so that they can reach out to and grasp an item on a shelf. Little attention has been paid to the guidance of small-scale arm-and-hand movements by PVI, yet this is an essential element of product acquisition in a grocery shopping task and other similar daily activities. We developed a feedback interface that allowed us to explore two types of auditory feedback (speech and tones), haptic vibration feedback, and a combination of both. The result of the study demonstrated that the multi-modal navigational feedback, specifically speech and haptic, was the most effective and preferred mode for small-scale navigation.

We conducted a structured, qualitative feature analysis of 75 Android mobile apps designed for the purpose of promoting adolescent online safety. Through this analysis we identified 42 unique features that mapped to a theoretically derived conceptual framework of teen online safety strategies balanced between parental control strategies (through monitoring, restriction, and active mediation) and teen self-regulation strategies (through self-monitoring, impulse control, and risk-coping). We found that the apps strongly favored features that promote parental control through monitoring and restricting teens' online behaviors over teen self-regulation or more communicative and collaborative practices between parents and teens. We use the lens of value sensitive design to discuss the implications of our results and identify opportunities for designing mobile apps for online safety that embed more positive family values.

Past research has shown that parents tend to underestimate the frequency with which their teens experience online risks. However, little is known about whether and how teens communicate with their parents when online risks do occur. In a two-month, web-based diary study of 68 teen-parent pairs, participants provided separate accounts of the teens' weekly online risk experiences. We found that most teens had little or no communication with their parents regarding their online risk experiences, and parents and teens shared very different perceptions and reactions when risks were reported, helping explain why communication was so poor. We discuss the implications of our results and make recommendations for how researchers and designers may work to improve the state of family communication regarding adolescent online risks in the future.

Collaborative learning technology has been widely applied in various disciplines in support of dialectical discourse and argumentation. Technologies not only allow multiple users to concurrently analyze and edit documents in the same virtual space but also present richer cues for collaboration awareness. However, researchers still know very little about how the synching mechanisms work together to support small group collaborative argument creation. This study investigates the experiences of 14 dyads that worked together in Critical Thinker, a web application that enables learners to collaborate on an argumentative task with a juxtaposed argumentation structure and multiple synchronous collaboration affordances. Our qualitative data showed that the learners are able to leverage different synching mechanisms in a complementary manner and appropriate the dialectic structure for collaborative argumentation.

Cross-sectional research suggests that online risk exposure (e.g., cyberbullying, sexual solicitations, and explicit content) may negatively impact teens, increasing concerns over the risks teens are exposed to online. Yet, there has been little research as to how these experiences impact teens' mood over time, or how long these effects may last. To examine the effects of online risk exposure on mood, we asked 68 teens to report their weekly online risk experiences, emotions, and sense of well-being for two months. We found that teens experienced more negative emotions the week that they reported cyberbullying and exposure to explicit content, but these effects were gone one week later. In addition, teens reported a slight in crease in positive emotions and mental well-being during weeks they were exposed to other risks. Our results suggest that most of the risks teens in our study experienced online only pose brief negative effects, if any, and initiates a discussion on how our society may overly problematize the negative effects of online risk exposure on teens.

It is important to support independent living for people with visual impairments (PVI). Part of this can be accomplished with individual assistive technologies. However, in this paper we emphasize the social and collaborative needs for PVI to fully integrate into society as equals. The study assesses how PVI collaborate with different types of sighted partners when shopping together. We chose to study grocery shopping because it is a critical and challenging task for PVI. We conducted field observations and in-depth interviews with five PVI and their sighted shopping partners, including spouses, caseworkers, and store-provided courtesy shoppers. We found several factors that modulated these collaborations with varying forms of common ground: 1) knowledge about how to assist PVI; 2) interpersonal knowledge resulting from common experience and interpersonal relationship history; and 3) knowledge of shopping as a practice. We discuss our findings with respect to the implications for designing collaborative interactions.

In our study, 68 teens spend two months reflecting on their weekly online experiences and report 207 separate risk events involving information breaches, online harassment, sexual solicitations, and exposure to explicit content. We conduct a structured, qualitative analysis to characterize the salient dimensions of their risk experiences, such as severity, level of agency, coping strategies, and whether the teens felt like the situation had been resolved. Overall, we found that teens can potentially benefit from lower risk online situations, which allow them to develop crucial interpersonal skills, such as boundary setting, conflict resolution, and empathy. We can also use the dimensions of risk described in this paper to identify potentially harmful risk trajectories before they become high-risk situations. Our end goal is to find a way to empower and protect teens so that they can benefit from online engagement.

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have experienced rapid growth and attracted significant attention within aca-demia. However, despite widespread acceptance of MOOCs as a unique opportunity to transform educational practices, many questions remain regarding their sustainability, given the high dropout rates and challenges related to collabora-tive learning support [12]. Recent research has attempted to address these concerns by analyzing students' MOOC expe-riences and how MOOCs may fall short in meeting students' learning needs [41]. However, very little research has approached the problem from an instructor perspective. We report an interview study of 14 MOOC instructors in which we used grounded theory to uncover the complex processes, motivations, and challenges associated with teaching a MOOC. A key finding is that we should provide support through the whole instruction process. By enhancing sup-port for instructors and their MOOC collaborators, we may improve outcomes for all MOOC stakeholders, including students.

The Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) have experienced rapid development. However, high dropout rate has become a salient issue. Many studies have attempted to understand this phenomenon; other have explored mechanisms for enhancing retention. For instance, social media has been used to improve student engagement and retention. However there is a lack of (1) empirical studies of social media use and engagement compared to embedded MOOC forums; and (2) rationales for social media use from both instructors' and students' perspectives. We addressed these open issues through the collection and analysis of real usage data from three MOOC forums and their associated social media (i.e., Facebook) groups as well as conducting interviews of instructors and students. We found that students show higher engagement and retention in social media than in MOOC forums, and identified both instructors' and students' perspectives that lead to the results. We discuss design implications for future MOOC platforms.

Isolation and loneliness has been shown to be a significant cause of disease and mortality among elderly adults. The coproduction of activity is one potential method of prevention, through the promotion of social interaction and community engagement. The present study aims to facilitate coproduction in a continuing care retirement community, promoting health and wellness in elderly adults. To achieve this, we engage in the participatory design of a public interactive display for organizing community activity. We explore design needs and usability concerns from elderly residents, and discuss the trajectory of co-design work to realize this technological intervention.

Understanding the impacts and consequences of information and communications technology in local communities through theoretical and practical approaches has long been studied. Among different types of technologies, mobile technology suggests new opportunities for community informatics because a growing number of people across different age groups have adopted smartphones, which have become an indispensable part of people's daily lives. Because mobile technology transcends the limitations of time and place, it expands the ways of accessing and interacting with local community information and lowers the barrier to participation. In this paper, we present our ongoing initiatives in community informatics including digital cultural heritage and local volunteer efforts mediated by mobile technology. We highlight how mobile technology, together with increased mobility, immediacy and social presence, shows a significant influence on local communities with respect to community identity, awareness and participation and also social support networks.

The increasing popularity of the Internet and social media is creating new and unique challenges for parents and adolescents regarding the boundaries between parental control and adolescent autonomy in virtual spaces. Drawing on developmental psychology and Communication Privacy Management (CPM) theory, we conduct a qualitative study to examine the challenge between parental concern for adolescent online safety and teens' desire to independently regulate their own online experiences. Analysis of 12 parent–teen pairs revealed five distinct challenges: (a) increased teen autonomy and decreased parental control resulting from teens' direct and unmediated access to virtual spaces, (b) the shift in power to teens who are often more knowledgeable about online spaces and technology, (c) the use of physical boundaries by parents as a means to control virtual spaces, (d) an increase in indirect boundary control strategies such as covert monitoring, and (e) the blurring of lines in virtual spaces between parents' teens and teens' friends.

We cannot fully protect adolescents from experiencing online risks; however, we can aim to better understand how online risk experiences impact teens, factors that contribute to or prevent teens from exposure to risk, as well as factors that can protect teens from psychological harm in spite of online risk exposure. Through a web-based survey study of 75 adolescents in the US, we develop and empirically validate a theoretical model of adolescent resilience in the presence of online risks. We show evidence that resilience is a key factor in protecting teens from experiencing online risks, even when teens exhibit high levels of Internet addiction. Resilience also neutralizes the negative psychological effects associated with Internet addiction and online risk exposure. Therefore, we emphasize the importance of design solutions that foster teen resilience and strength building, as opposed to solutions targeted toward parents that often focus on restriction and risk prevention.

Through a secondary data analysis of a nationally representative Pew survey [35-36], we empirically test the validity of two contrasting theoretical models of adolescent information privacy behaviors. Our results suggest that in seeking to understand the underlying processes of teens' privacy risk-taking and risk-coping behaviors within social media, a "risk-centric" framework may be more useful than a traditional "concern-centric" framework that emphasizes privacy antecedents and outcomes. Our newly proposed and validated "risk-centric" framework implies a possible risk escalation process wherein teens make online disclosures and render themselves more susceptible to experiences of risky online interactions; in turn, these risky experiences are associated with higher levels of teen privacy concern. Higher levels of teen privacy concern predict both advice-seeking and remedy/corrective risk-coping behaviors. Drawing on theories of information privacy and developmental psychology, we discuss these findings from the perspective of allowing teens to experience some level of online risk so that they can learn how to navigate the dangers and reap the benefits of online engagement.

Through an empirical, secondary analysis of 588 teens (ages 12 - 17) and one of their parents living in the USA, we present useful insights into how parental privacy concerns for their teens and different parental mediation strategies (direct intervention versus active mediation) influence teen privacy concerns and privacy risk-taking and risk-coping privacy behaviors in social media. Our results suggest that the use of direct intervention by itself may have a suppressive effect on teens, reducing their exposure to online risks but also their ability to engage with others online and to learn how to effectively cope with online risks. Therefore, it may be beneficial for parents to combine active mediation with direct intervention so that they can protect their teens from severe online risks while empowering teens to engage with others online and learn to make good online privacy choices.

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have recently experienced rapid development and garnered significant attention from various populations. Despite the wide recognition of MOOCs as an important opportunity within educational practices, there are still many questions as to how we might satisfy students' needs, as evidenced by very high dropout rates. Researchers lack a solid understanding of what student needs are being addressed by MOOCs, and how well MOOCs now address (or fail to address) these needs. To help in building such an understanding, we conducted in-depth interviews probing student motivations, learning perceptions and experiences towards MOOCs, paying special attention to the MOOC affordances and experiences that might lead to high drop rates. Our study identified learning motivations, learning patterns, and a number of factors that appear to influence student retention. We proposed that the issue of retention should be addressed from two perspectives: retention as a problem but also retention as an opportunity.

The Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) paradigm has developed rapidly and achieved significant attention from a broad range of populations. However, many people who enroll in MOOCs do not have successful learning experiences. For example, some studies suggest that the relatively weak feelings of community and meager opportunities for collaboration may be contributing to a high dropout rate in MOOCs. In light of such problems, we are exploring new design features that could support enhanced social interactions, collaborative learning and feelings of community. We present our design ideas through a set of activity design scenarios, along with an analysis of possible benefits and negative consequences of our design.

In this paper, we describe the first phase of a longitudinal study focusing on young people's attitudes towards computing careers and their computational self-efficacy. Using summer camps as a springboard to pique their interests, we are interested in enhancing their knowledge in computing topics and assessing their views through surveys. Working from the findings of this first phase in the project, we discuss our future plans for an online community learning system that is grounded in a socio-cognitive learning process, and intended to engage young people in continuous engagement with and exposure to computing concepts and skills.

Annotating documents has long been a widely used strategy for distilling important contents and externalizing related thoughts and ideas in context. No one has studied the activity of annotating dynamic texts, such as online chat, although online conversation is an important communication media for global companies. In this paper, we investigate Instant Annotation (IA), a real-time annotation-enhanced chat tool. We contrast the use of the enhanced chat tool to a standard chat tool for multilingual groups doing a brainstorming and decision-making task. Results show that group satisfaction and perceived control of the conversation are enhanced for the participants who used IA. We also report new patterns of annotation use and discuss design implications for group chat tools.

One goal of local communities is to create and reinforce community identity by connecting residents to their local heritage. Technologies have enabled and facilitated the creation and consumption of digitized history content provided by official history institutions as well as individuals. Although much research has been conducted to understand technical and social aspects of digital cultural heritage, little empirical research has investigated how people perceive, experience, and interact with community content that is socially generated and tied to locations, particularly with respect to building community heritage. To address this, we developed a mobile application called Lost State College (LSC) and conducted a user study with 34 local residents. The study results indicate that meaningful historic places evoked special attention from the participants, and that those who have lived in the community longer tended to contribute more to the community heritage effort. Participants utilized social features as a way of learning local history, reflecting personal experiences and stories, and co-creating rich layers of local history information from their perspectives.

Adolescence is characterized by heightened risk-taking and independence from parents; these tendencies seem to be magnified by the opportunities afforded through online interactions. Drawing on Kohlberg's Cognitive Moral Development (CMD) theory, we conduct a qualitative study of 12 parent-adolescent dyads that examines the interplay between parenting behaviors and adolescent moral development. We show an association between adolescent moral judgment and online behavior, and we illustrate how parenting style and mediation strategies influence the teen's moral growth and decision making about online behaviors. We also note that parental mediation strategies are moderated by parents' digital literacy: reduced digital literacy is associated with more restrictive or indulgent strategies; while more digitally competent parents are more likely to monitor and mediate their teen's behaviors as they engage online. We also found that experience, not restriction, facilitates the teen's moral growth.

To better understand end users' security compliance behaviors, we designed an experimental study to investigate how fear appeals and point of reference manipulations could influence end users' security behavioral intentions. The findings suggest that fear appeals and point of reference collectively influence users' perceived persuasiveness of the IT security communication messages. Specifically, higher fear messages are generally more persuasive than low fear ones when the messages are self-referenced. However, in other-referenced messages, the levels of fear appeals do not make differences. Further, our results indicate that users regard IT security issues as peripheral for them and it is suggested that personalized IT security communications might have greater potential in successfully persuading end users for security compliance.

In this paper we describe a set of computing activities that were used in an outreach enrichment program for middle school girls. The computing activities used a combination of scaffolded exam-ples and minimalist workbooks to introduce and support interaction with computational thinking (CT) concepts, including problem solving, abstraction and basic computational vocabulary. We describe the activities briefly, followed by a discussion of the girls' experiences, drawing primarily from interviews conducted at the end of each activity.

For 3 years, the authors of this article and several other colleagues have worked with 11 nonprofit community groups to help them take greater control of their information technology in terms of technology acceptance, adoption, and literacy through a research project. As part of this project, the authors explored informal learning methods that the groups could benefit from and practiced them with the community representatives who played key roles in the daily life of the organizations. In the present article, the authors reflect on the developmental trajectories observed for two individuals, each from a different nonprofit organization, with respect to information technology efficacy and ability. The authors analyze these trajectories as a sequence of the following four technology‐related roles—technology consumers, technology planners, technology doers, and technology sustainers. The authors describe these roles, the methods used to promote informal learning, and implications for other researchers studying informal learning in communities.

HCI can “turn to the wild” but still stay home. Local community life presents a rich context for understanding challenges and possibilities of information technology. We summarize and reflect upon a program of participatory design research in which we facilitated activities and experiences of our neighbors through developing a series of community-oriented programs and information systems through the past two decades. We organize these reflections around five overlapping themes: visibility of community actors, creation of community information infrastructures, the role of place-based identity and activity in community, the effectiveness of participatory relationships, and the research designs and methods appropriate. We frame these reflections around a conceptual model of community, and the suggestion that the local community can be a living laboratory for HCI in the wild.

An emerging trend in classroom technology research is the use of computer mediated communication (CMC) tools in classrooms to encourage students' in-class participation. As part of this research thread, we have been investigating the potential of public digital backchannels for building feelings of community among students in university courses. We designed, deployed and evaluated such a tool in a 15-week field study of two undergraduate classes. We found students found using public backchannel during the class is of little distraction, that teachers' attention to the content posted on the channel influence students' tendency to use tools of this kind. Further, we found that the relevance of the content shared is predictive of students' use of ClasCommons in the classroom; these feelings in turn are related to students' perceptions of self-efficacy, collective efficacy and course-specific social support. We also analyzed the content posted in the public backchannel and considered the benefits and drawbacks of the public digital from both students' and teachers' perspectives. We conclude with suggestions for improving the design and deployment of course-related backchannels.

Cross-cultural communication has become increasingly prevalent in organizations and education systems. Such communication often takes place in a distributed fashion, and many studies have examined the impact of computer-mediated communication (CMC) on distributed cross-cultural groups. For example the literature points to cultural factors that could cause communication failures, such as individualism vs. collectivism, high context vs. low context, and power distance. We contend that language proficiency, a basic and fundamental difference between people from English speaking countries and other countries, is often neglected by researchers. Therefore, we have begun a detailed investigation of cross-cultural group chat. We chose text chat as a target technology because previous studies reported it as non-native speakers' preferred choice for CMC. Our study revealed that language proficiency played a pivotal role in cross-cultural group chat. When people conversed at different levels of proficiency, turn taking was severely disrupted, causing confusion and neglect of discussion points. We also found that some native speakers hold back ideas to accommodate the non-fluency of non-native speakers, slowing down the group process and outcomes. Working from these findings, we discuss possible designs that could assist both non-native and native speakers in cross-cultural group chat.

We evaluated the impacts of hands-on web development workshops organized for female undergraduates who had no programming background. In five groups ranging from 2-8 participants, the women used a special-purpose tool (wProjects) to edit database tables, build queries, and embed the queries in web pages. We gathered background information on a pre-test and assessed knowledge and perceptions in a post-test. In general, the students were successful, enjoyed the projects, and their attitudes about computer-related careers were enhanced. We discuss the potential for workshops such as these in light of the general problem of decreasing females in computer-related professions.

We discuss a study conducted during a summer program for middle school girls that emphasized possible future careers that rely on computer technology. During the weeklong camp middle school girls created an original computer project, visited campus computer labs and listened to invited speakers - all with computer technology as the central theme. This paper discusses the program, girls' reactions to their experiences, and the projects they created during the summer camp.

Researchers have been working to understand the factors that may be contributing to low rates of participation by women and other minorities in the computer and information sciences (CIS). We describe a multivariate investigation of male and female university students’ orientation to CIS careers. We focus on the roles of self-efficacy and peer-based social support as social-cognitive variables in the students’ learning process. We explore these variables and their impact on career orientation through a set of overlapping regression models. In general, we find that strong social support and high self-efficacy are associated with strong orientation toward careers in CIS careers. However the influences of perceived self-efficacy and social support appear to differ for men and women: while low self-efficacy is tied to less social support for males, we see no similar tendency for females. In fact many females who report themselves as low in self-efficacy consider themselves to have high social support among their peers. We discuss the implications of our findings for programs aimed at outreach to both males and females regarding CIS education and careers.

We present a design research project on knowledge sharing and activity awareness in distributed emergency management planning. In three experiments we studied groups using three different prototypes, respectively: a paper-prototype in a collocated work setting, a first software prototype in a distributed setting, and a second, enhanced software prototype in a distributed setting. In this series of studies we tried to better understand the processes of knowledge sharing and activity awareness in complex cooperative work by developing and investigating new tools that can support these processes. We explicate the design rationale behind each prototype and report the results of each experiment investigating it. We discuss how the results from each prototyping phase brought us closer to defining properties of a system that facilitate the sharing and awareness of both content and process knowledge. Our designs enhanced aspects of distributed group performance, in some respects beyond that of comparable face-to-face groups.

Design patterns document successful solutions to recurrent problems in a specific software development domain. However, finding the patterns you need can be difficult, often requiring the designer to comprehend a long narrative description to understand the benefits, implications and trade-offs of each pattern and of its relationships with others. In this paper we propose a visual notation supported by a software tool that may help to identify patterns that could satisfy a designer’s goals, as well as conveying the positive and negative relations among patterns, including dependencies and collisions among patterns selected for a specific problem. This work extends the concept of Softgoal Interdependency Graphs (SIG) enhancing them with a number of visual clues and interaction capabilities to help designers realize the contributions and trade-offs of their design ideas and the complexity of the solution space they are building up.

Emotions are an often overlooked aspect of work since they are not included in formal work models. However, they continue provide critical information as well as be part of a rich social context for action. The following study focuses on the expression of emotions within the context of a particular work environment -- an emergency room -- and high-lights how it is used, why it is invisible in the work, and how it continues to persist through workarounds. These workarounds provide indications towards the design of so-ciotechnical systems to continue to support the expression of invisible emotions.

In many college classrooms, students are passive spectators and the transmittal model of teaching is prevalent in most classes. In contrast, Vygotsky's social-constructivist view emphasizes the importance of making students become active learners. Many active learning techniques have been developed, primarily focused on making students active participants in various kinds of in class activities like discussion, writing and talking. However, there is evidence that the typical university classroom setting presents some obstacles for realizing maximum effectiveness of class wide discussion. These obstacles include the effects of production blocking, the hierarchical power structures within the classroom and the lack of sense of community. Having realized the great potential of Web 2.0 social software in meeting these challenges, the objective in the proposed research is to build an active learning environment by bring backchannel discussion up front using CMC tools. A design based research method will be used to explore effects of using this tool in classes.

Student engagement is a pervasive and persistent goal for educators. In previous work we have reported that activities like public real-time commenting on videos can enhance student participation and engagement. However, these events occur over a limited period of time. Thus a more challenging question is how to increase and sustain student engagement. In this paper we describe the iterative development of Class Commons, a public commenting system with which students can post questions/comments that are shared through a public display in the classroom. The system was used in a senior undergraduate class in the spring semester of 2009. Our findings suggest that students were interested in this system. Students with different self-construal (independent vs. interdependent) appropriate this system for slightly different purposes. In the long run, we speculate that by having the teacher involved more in using this system (responding more quickly, helping structuring the discussions), it has potential for promoting sustained student engagement.

In spite of comparable levels of computer access and use by males and females at home and school, women continue to be under represented in careers and education related to the computer and information sciences. In this paper, we describe outreach activities taking place within the wConnect project, a research effort aimed at building a developmental learning community of women in which members at different levels of sophistication support each other at different stages of their education and careers in computing and related fields. More specifically, we report on a series of hands-on workshops that were designed and delivered by undergraduate members of the community to high school girls. We describe the design and conduct of the workshop activities, the girls' reactions, our own reflections and implications for future work.

We report an empirical study of nonprogrammers who built a database-centered web application using an end-user web development tool. Half of the users spent time planning their project by creating a concept map before starting the programming; across planning conditions, half of the users were males and half female. Participants who did concept mapping or who were male were more attracted to database programming; however planning did not affect feelings of success and in general females felt more successful than males. We discuss the implications of these findings for work on gender and for future EUP tools and training.

We build on our prior work with computer-supported teams performing a complex decision-making task on maps, where the distinction between content and process common ground is proposed. In this paper we describe a distributed geo-collaboration software prototype. The system design rationale was gleaned from fieldwork, literature on team cognition, and an earlier lab study introducing a reference task with face-to-face teams. We report on a controlled experiment that evaluates this design rationale. Distinct sets of measures show that that the prototype supported both content and process common ground, offsetting the costs imposed by the distributed setting. We interpret the results in relation to prior work on common ground and draw implications for moving beyond current models of sharing and coordination.

This study explores the characteristics of rationale development in a complex group decision making task and considers design implications for better supporting rationale development in group decision making. Twelve three-person, multi-role teams performed three instances of a collaborative decision making task with physical maps. We used rhetorical structure theory to analyze the structure of their decision making discourse. We found that groups begin their reasoning processing by stating and relating information and finish their reasoning through a point-counterpoint discussion. We also found that established groups reduced their need to analyze information during the last moments of a decision. Implications for the design of group decision support systems to encourage rationale development are presented.

In this paper we describe the design and first deployment experiences of a platform-independent, interactive video commenting system, ClassCommons, using a large public display in two sections of a large-enrollment university class. Our preliminary evaluation suggests that students enjoyed the activity of commenting, that they participated a great deal, and that their sense of community was greater after using the system. Further analysis revealed that reading the comments and posting relevant comments are associated with increases in community members' sense of community. We discuss lessons learned and describe further work we are planning using this and similar interactive activities.

Micro-blogs, a relatively new phenomenon, provide a new communication channel for people to broadcast information that they likely would not share otherwise using existing channels (e.g., email, phone, IM, or weblogs). Micro-blogging has become popu-lar quite quickly, raising its potential for serving as a new informal communication medium at work, providing a variety of impacts on collaborative work (e.g., enhancing information sharing, building common ground, and sustaining a feeling of connectedness among colleagues). This exploratory research project is aimed at gaining an in-depth understanding of how and why people use Twitter - a popular micro-blogging tool - and exploring micro-blog's poten-tial impacts on informal communication at work.

We describe work on developing workshop activities that are part of wConnect, a project that is building an online community of women in computer and information science. The workshops are designed by college women for high school girls, with hands-on construction of dynamic web sites. Because of limited workshop time, the activities use scaffolding to help girls achieve the in-tended learning objectives. In this paper we describe the design of the activities, their formative evaluation in a series of four work-shops, and how we are using these results in the larger project.

End users are exposed to tremendous amounts of information from the Internet on a daily basis. As a result, they must decide how to manage and assimilate that information into their daily activities. We argue that Web mashups may be one way for end users to manage their data integration needs. In this paper, we present a study that investigates the types of online information that end users encounter and the types of interactions between information sources that they imagine to be useful. To do this, we examine the first steps of the mashup creation process, data gathering and data integration. Moreover we report on the observations of end users creating a data mashup using an online tool. Finally, we offer a plan for future work.

Information technology teams are often partially distributed teams (PDTs). A PDT consists of two or more subteams that are separated geographically. This articles describes research focused on the use of PDTs to engage students in “real world” IT team learning about the subject matter while also teaching them the skills they will need to work in global software development teams. Findings from a large-scale international study indicate that the introduction of training modules enhanced perceived learning of appropriate PDT teaming behaviors; students with training reported improved shared team identification, trust, awareness, coordination, competence, and conflict with respect to distant subteam members, and higher overall team performance.

In this paper, we discuss the use of visual representations of web design patterns to help end-users and casual developers to identify the patterns they can apply in a specific project. The main goal is to promote design knowledge reuse by facilitating the identification of the right patterns, taking into account that these users have little or no knowledge about web design, and certainly not about design patterns, and that each pattern might include some trade-offs users should consider to make more rational decisions.

We study the development of common ground in an emergency management planning task. Twelve three-person multi-role teams performed the task with a paper prototype in a controlled setting; each team completed three versions of the task. We use converging measures to document the development of common ground in the teams and present an in-depth analysis of the characteristics of the common ground development process. Our findings indicate that in complex collaborative work, process common ground increases, thus diminishing the need for acts like information querying or strategy discussions about how to organize the collaborative activities. However, content common ground is created and tested throughout the three runs; in fact dialogue acts used to clarify this content increase over time. Discussion of the implications of these findings for the theory of common ground and the design of collaborative systems follows.

Virtual teams are increasingly common in information technology (IT)-related fields. Many of these teams are partially distributed, with sub-teams of co-located members working from different geographic locations; thus collaboration in partially distributed teams (PDTs) is an increasingly important skill in IT fields. Though educators are aware of this, innovative teaching strategies and tools to fulfill this essential educational component are hard to find. This paper reports initial experiences with student PDT projects that were supported by a collaborative system created from open-source tools. Several iterations of the online system were tested using globally distributed teams of undergraduate and graduate students from a number of cooperating universities. We discuss the elements of collaboration support that were needed, and consider how others might implement similar PDT activities for educational purposes.

Virtual learning environments, or VLEs, can offer a number of unique affordances for learning computational concepts. This paper offers three design principles for VLEs: adoption safety, immersion identity, and constructability; as well as a discussion of their implementation in one potential VLE: Second Life.

We describe our work on seeding and building a developmental learning community for recruiting and retaining women in educational programs and careers related to computing and information science (CIS). Our approach is explicitly participatory: we work with young women to better understand how they view and approach CIS and to build activities that may attract women who would otherwise be disinclined toward computing. In this paper we focus primarily on the software tools aspects of this research project.

Constructivist learning theorists believe that it is important to encourage reflexivity, helping learners to think about how they approach problems, and how they look for and find solutions. A rationale is an explanation of the reasons underlying decisions, conclusions, and interpretations. In this study, requiring and supporting rationale sharing within the group is proposed as one way of promoting reflective thinking during collaborative learning activities. A collaborative learning activity was designed and implemented in an undergraduate project management course, requiring the documentation and sharing of decision rationales. A collaborative tool was developed to support the activity. The results of the study show that engaging in the process of documenting decision rationales potentially helped the participants to articulate their thoughts and ideas, effectively explore the course concepts, and engage in higher order thinking. Participantspsila feedback on the design of the collaborative space for rationale sharing was collected and design implications elicited.

Mashups - web applications that integrate multiple data sources or APIs into one interface — have attracted considerable attention in recent years. The availability of web-based APIs and a growing array of XML data feeds has enabled this novel approach to web applications. However, due to the relatively advanced programming languages needed to integrate the web APIs and data feeds, mashup development still requires considerable programming expertise. In this paper we share the results of an exploratory study of active web users, their perceptions of what mashups could do for them and how they might be created. These users engage in many Internet-based activities but not web programming. Our results show that the technology initiative present in these users is a predictor of the value they see in mashups and the types of mashups they are interested in creating. While they may lack the programming skills, the users do see benefit in the use and creation of mashups as a tool for sharing and integrating information, as well as a means of effectively searching for information.

We studied the process of sharing and managing knowledge (common ground process) in three-member teams performing emergency management planning tasks on shared maps. We built a reference task and a role-based multi-view prototype for studying this process. In this paper we empirically test the claim that common ground increases through joint experience on a task over time. We model the common ground process using a realistic task, a controlled setting, and multiple measures. We present findings from the analysis of questionnaires, communication transcripts, videos, and artifacts.

End users are typically seen as the weakest link in ensuring security and privacy in computing environments. Our own prior work suggested that end users may have difficulty differentiating between privacy/security problems and other hardware/software concerns. However, a survey of a broad group of internet users showed that, in fact, these users believe that they can not only differentiate between these two sets of concerns, but that in fact users are more concerned with security/privacy concerns than they are with other types of computer problems.

The fifth annual graduate consortium at VL/HCC addresses the question: How can researchers and designers of end-user development environments better address the needs of an increasingly diverse population?

We report an exploratory study of the impacts of design planning on end users asked to develop a simple interactive web application. Some participants were asked to create a conceptual map to plan their projects and others to write scenarios; a third group was asked to do whatever they found useful. We describe the planning that each group underwent, how they approached the web development task, and their reactions to the experience afterwards. We also discuss how participants' gender and experience was related to their web development activities.

The workforce is ageing as older workers re-enter the workforce or delay retirement. One consequence is that work groups are increasingly becoming intergenerational. Because group work relies on many collaborative tools (e.g. email, shared calendars), it is essential to understand the special requirements that intergenerational groups have for groupware. Can we design collaborative tools that leverage the differing abilities and contributions of older and younger workers in groups? We focus on how best to support intergenerational groups, offering an analytical framework that combines ideas from the theory of small groups and activity theory. We consider design implications for computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW) and outline design principles for groupware that supports intergenerational groups. Finally, we discuss methodological issues that arise when studying intergenerational cooperative work.

Community computing supports human – computer interaction among neighbours in geographical or place-based community organizations. Using a case study of such an organization, we investigate the process of designing their website. Our long-term participatory design approach, integrating developmental informal learning, allowed us to understand how this community organization adopts, evaluates, and sustains website technology. Based on our case study analysis, we present three design heuristics for developing community-based technology: align and afford new possibilities for participation, dynamically manage organizational knowledge and learning, and enhance social capital within community organizations and with the broader community.

Although researchers have begun to explicitly support end-user programmers' debugging by providing information to help them find bugs, there is little research addressing the right content to communicate to these users. The specific semantic content of these debugging communications matters because, if the users are not actually seeking the information the system is providing, they are not likely to attend to it. This paper reports a formative empirical study that sheds light on what end users actually want to know in the course of debugging a spreadsheet, given the availability of a set of interactive visual testing and debugging features. Our results provide in sights into end-user debuggers' information gaps, and further suggest opportunities to improve end-user debugging systems' support for the things end-user debuggers actually want to know.

Over the past 25 years, user interface designers and usability engineers have studied and refined human-computer interaction techniques with the goal of improving people's productivity and experience. One result is an increasing number of tools designed to help end users build or customize software solutions for a variety of everyday problems - from email filters, to spreadsheet simulations, to interactive Web applications

Web development is rapidly becoming a routine activity for informal as well as professional software developers. Research has shown that one variable that distinguishes segments of this population is the context in which Web development is carried out - work or nonwork. This paper explores the role of Web development context in a survey of Web developers that probed their development practices and attitudes

Nonprogrammers who wish to construct and share online resources for a group (e.g., discussion boards, calendars, multi-media documents) may do so by using end-user web construction tools such as BaseCamp, MSN Group, and CommunityZero to create group or community websites. Others may prefer collaborative tools like Groove to support a more synchronous style of composition and interaction. However there is little if any support for combining these two approaches to build, refine, and use shared resources using either a web browser or real-time collaborative tools. In this short paper we use two user interaction scenarios to illustrate our current work on integrating these two styles of collaboration.

Journal Article Awareness and teamwork in computer-supported collaborations Get access John M. Carroll, John M. Carroll * School of Information Sciences and Technology and Center for Human–Computer Interaction, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802, USA * Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 8148632476; fax: +1 8146353556. E-mail address:[email protected] (J.M. Carroll). Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Mary Beth Rosson, Mary Beth Rosson School of Information Sciences and Technology and Center for Human–Computer Interaction, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802, USA Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Gregorio Convertino, Gregorio Convertino School of Information Sciences and Technology and Center for Human–Computer Interaction, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802, USA Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Craig H. Ganoe Craig H. Ganoe School of Information Sciences and Technology and Center for Human–Computer Interaction, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802, USA Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Interacting with Computers, Volume 18, Issue 1, January 2006, Pages 21–46, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.intcom.2005.05.005 Published: 14 July 2005 Article history Received: 24 April 2005 Accepted: 17 May 2005 Published: 14 July 2005

As human-computer interaction increasingly focuses on mediated interactions among groups of individuals, there is a need to develop techniques for measurement and analysis of groups that have been scoped at the level of the group. Bandura's construct of perceived self-efficacy has been used to understand individual behavior as a function of domain-specific beliefs about personal capacities. The construct of collective efficacy extends self-efficacy to organizations and groups, referring to beliefs about collective capacities in specific domains. We describe the development and refinement of a collective efficacy scale, the factor analysis of the construct, and its external validation in path models of community-oriented attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors.

Research is presented that examined the effects of various measures of prior computer science experience and cognitive abilities on overall performance in a CS2 course. Participants selected from the CS2 course at two southeastern state universities were used within this study, resulting in a sample size of 161 (School A, n = 76; School B, n = 85). School A is a mid-sized comprehensive university and School B is a large research-intensive university.Self-reported data were collected on measures of experience in object-oriented processing, UNIX programming, web design, computing platforms, and various CS experience. Further, cognitive abilities measures of spatial orientation, visualization, logical reasoning, and flexibility were administered.The results show that the schools significantly differed on all measures of cognitive ability and most measures of prior computer science experience. The schools also differed on the extent to which these measures were related to overall course performance. The results suggest that, for school A, the cognitive ability visualization and the prior computer science experience measure of OO processing were significantly related to course performance. However, when examining school B, no measures were found significant.

We describe a survey of Web developers in which we collected over 300 responses from individuals with widely varying levels of experience and training. This survey continues our studies of informal Web developers, loosely defined as those who develop Web sites but have not been trained as programmers. They are a growing segment of end user programmers, but very little is known about them, and this survey was aimed at helping to characterize this population. In this paper we report on survey questions probing Web development projects, tool use, development process, reuse, and learning and collaboration. Throughout the discussion we compare the responses of developers who self-identify as programmers with those who do not. We use these comparisons as a basis for discussion of tools that might assist nonprogrammers in Web development.

A community computer network facilitates civic participation by providing pervasive local resources online and by connecting people to local communication and discussion channels, public and non-profit organization leaders and members, and many other civic resources. We present findings from longitudinal data (two rounds between 2001 and 2002) of a stratified random survey of 100 households in a mature community network, the Blacksburg Electronic Village (BEV). We offer exploratory and confirmatory analyses, including a ‘civic effects’ model, that show demographic characteristics (education, age) and psychological factors (extroversion) explain staying informed, collective efficacy, group membership, activism, and using the Internet for civic and political purposes. The model further explains differences in respondents' involvement in local issues once they go online. Informed activists with multiple group memberships become more involved in local issues once going online, whereas informed non-activists become less involved once online. Our study suggests that in order to play a constructive role in creating a more civil society, community networks should explicitly pursue strategies that encourage community activism. One way to do this, given the strong role of association membership in activism, is for ISPs to offer bundled standard Internet applications at low cost to non-profit community groups (e.g. email for leadership, online discussion for members, web space). Community networks should also promote and support the use by local groups of innovative tools for non-experts, such as easy collaborative web-based tools for information production and collaboration.

Case studies of professional software development practices describe how real (or realistic) projects are planned and executed. Cases provide engaging models of the activities and materials of software development to students and other novice practitioners. They vividly remind learners of the possibilities for meaningfully applying knowledge and skills in the world beyond the classroom. During the past six years, we have developed and used a collection of usability engineering case studies for teaching human-computer interaction, primarily to upper-level undergraduates in computer science and in information sciences and technology. In this article we describe the rationale for this approach, the structural schema and browser that we developed for case studies, the case-based activities we employ in courses, and the experiences of instructors and students who have used the cases.

Evaluating distributed CSCW applications is a difficult endeavor. Frameworks and methodologies for structuring this type of evaluation have become a central concern for CSCW researchers. In this paper we describe the problems involved in evaluating remote collaborations, and we review some of the more prominent conceptual frameworks of group interaction that have driven CSCW evaluation in the past. A multifaceted evaluation framework is presented that approaches the problem from the relationships underlying joint awareness, communication, collaboration, coordination, and work coupling. Finally, recommendations for carrying out multifaceted evaluations of remote interaction are provided.

This study examined ways to improve students' chances of success learning design concepts through the use of Object-Oriented Programming and Design (OOP&D) patterns by examining potentially effective ways to teach such patterns to novice programmers. Using hierarchical tree, complete-linkage analysis to survey a group of design experts, the study developed an order in which those experts believed thirty fundamental OOP&D patterns should be taught to optimize effective student learning. Once that basic order was identified, it became possible to divide the patterns into six sequential phases of patterns instruction to allow both maximal teaching and learning. Although the study did not present a conclusively effective approach for OOP&D teaching, it did provide information essential for future sequential phase patterns research.

A challenge in teaching usability engineering is providing appropriate hands-on project experience. Students need projects that are realistic enough to address meaningful issues, but manageable within one semester. We describe our use of online case studies to motivate and model course projects in usability engineering. The cases illustrate scenario-based usability methods, and are accessed via a custom browser. We summarize the content and organization of the case studies, several case-based learning activities, and students' reactions to the activities. We conclude with a discussion of future directions for case studies in HCI education.

We report an empirical study of nonprogrammers' mental models regarding particular concerns in web application development such as input validation, database lookup, and overview-detail relationships. The goal of the study was to understand how nonprogrammers think about the data and logic underlying a web application. In continuing work, we are using this understanding as a basis for the design of tools and development resources that are intuitive and easy to use. The current paper describes the empirical work that was done and discusses its implications for the design of end-user web development tools that could be used to develop web applications of intermediate complexity.

Semi-structured interviews were conducted with twelve end users who develop and maintain web content for diverse organizations. We discussed their general background and web projects, with an emphasis on tool usage and problem-solving strategies. Our qualitative analysis of the interview results offers a socio-technical view of everyday programming, with an emphasis on the complex interactions between end-users' personal history, organizational context, and tool use.

Classroom BRIDGE supports activity awareness by facilitating planning and goal revision in collaborative, project-based middle school science. It integrates large-screen and desktop views of project times to support incidental creation of awareness information through routine document transactions, integrated presentation of awareness information as part of workspace views, and public access to subgroup activity. It demonstrates and develops an object replication approach to integrating synchronous and asynchronous distributed work for a platform incorporating both desktop and large-screen devices. This paper describes an implementation of these concepts with preliminary evaluation data, using timeline-based user interfaces.

Software development teams are often geographically distributed from their customers and end users. This creates significant communication and coordination challenges that impact the effectiveness of requirements engineering. Travel costs, and the local availability of quality technical staff increase the demand for effective distributed software development teams. This research reports an empirical study of how groupware can be used to aid distributed requirements engineering for a software development project. Six groups of seven to nine members were formed and divided into separate remote groups of customers and engineers. The engineers conducted a requirements analysis and produced a software requirements specification (SRS) document through distributed interaction with the remote customers. We present results and conclusions from the research including: an analysis of factors that affected the quality of the software requirements specification document written at the conclusion of the requirements process and the effectiveness of requirements elicitation techniques which were used in a distributed setting for requirements gathering.

This is a perspective paper on community networks - socio-technical infrastructures supporting villages, towns, and neighborhoods. Community networking is well-established, world wide, and addresses critical societal issues, such as the “crisis of community” and the sociality of the Internet. However, community network projects have not emphasized evaluation. Relatively little is known about the economic, social, and psychological consequences of community networks for the individuals, groups, and communities served. Evaluating community networks is a momentous mutual opportunity for the development of CHI evaluation methodologies and for bringing technical CHI expertise to bear on societal issues.

Five public school teachers were observed during two self-study sessions where they learned to use Visual AgenTalk (VAT). The first session emphasized the basic visual programming skills, while the second introduced ways to reuse existing simulations. Two versions of the reuse tutorial were developed, one offering a concrete example world for reuse, and the second an abstract world. During their learning and reuse sessions, the teachers thought out loud as they worked, enabling a detailed analysis of their goals, reactions, problems, and successes. After each session, the teachers also completed user reaction questionnaires. Although all teachers succeeded in learning the basics of VAT, they varied considerably in their reuse of the example simulations. It appears that the simplified components of the abstract world supported reuse to a greater degree than those of the concrete example world.

The World Wide Web has served as a medium for collaboration since its inception. Web-based collaboration has, however, been dominated by systems supporting asynchronous activities such as sharing documents and participating in discussion forums. Supporting interactive, synchronous collaboration on the Web has proven much more challenging. In this paper we describe three of the challenges encountered in the context of supporting network-based collaboration among middle and high school science students: integrating synchronous and asynchronous modes of interaction, minimizing consumption of bandwidth, and adapting non-collaborative software components for collaborative use. We then present the Content Object Replication Kit, a toolkit for building interactive Java-based collaborative systems for use on the Web.

This article presents a critique of conventional collaboration transparency systems, also called “application-sharing” systems, which provide the real-time shared use of legacy single-user applications. We find that conventional collaboration transparency systems are inefficient in their use of network resources and lack support for key groupware principles: concurrent work, relaxed WYSIWIS, and group awareness. Next, we present an alternative approach to implementing collaboration transparency that provides many features previously seen only in collaboration-aware applicaitons. Our approach is based on a replicated architecture where selected single-user interface components are dynamically replaced by multiuser versions. The replacement occurs at run-time and is transparent to the single-user application and its developers.. As an instance of this approach, we describe its incorporation into a Java-based collaboration transparency system for serializable, Swing-based Java applications, called Flexible JAMM (Java Applets Made Multiuser). To validate that the flexible collaboration transparency system is truly an improvement over conventional systems, we conducted an empirical study of collaborators performing both tightly and loosely coupled tasks using Flexible JAMM versus a representative conventional collaboration transparency system, Microsoft NetMeeting. Completion times were significantly faster in the loosely coupled task using Flexible JAMM and were not adversely affected in the tightly coupled task. Accuracy was equivalent for both systems. Participants greatly preferred Flexible JAMM.

Scenario-based design techniques are increasingly popular in KC1 design Although many techniques exist, we see a growing demand for more structured and systematic methods of scenario generation and development.This paper describes a case study in which a collaborative science learning environment was designed using an evolutionary scenario-based design approach.The case study has attempted to make consistent use of scenarios and claims as design representations, to integrate the desigu aE both the system and the activities that incorporate if and to evolve design in an organized and principled manner.We have termed this approach progressive cbesign.

Groups of people working in concert perform most commercial, industrial or in-house software development. These groups are often quite diverse. This panel brings together object-oriented consultants and developers as well as practitioners and researchers interested in human factors and user-centered design, project management and technical writing. The panel will address the question, "To successfully complete today's projects, does object-oriented development as practiced today do an adequate job of supporting ALL of the participants who must collaborate?"

Conventional collaboration-transparency systems, which provide real-time shared use of legacy single-user applications, are inefficient in their use of network resources and lack support for key groupware principles: concurrent work, relaxed WYSIWIS, and group awareness. We present an alternative implementation approach to collaboration transparency that provides many features previously seen only in collaboration-aware applications. Our approach is based on an object-oriented replicated architecture where selected single-user interface objects are dynamically replaced by multi-user extensions. The replacement occurs at run-time and is transparent to the single-user application and its developers. As an instance of this approach, we describe its incorporation into a new Java-based collaboration-transparency system for serializable, Swing-based Java applications, called Flexible JAMM (Java Applets Made Multiuser). We conducted an empirical study to evaluate the effectiveness of Flexible JA...

User-centered design methods have long focused on solitary users interacting with isolated computer systems. The explosion of computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW) has expanded this traditional approach to encompass communication within and among work groups. While these technologies have often been studied from the user's perspective, little research has addressed the roles different communication channels play in coordinating work in cooperative systems. Similarly, many of these systems have been offered with little regard for their appropriate match with the task requirements. This article seeks to accomplish two objectives with respect to the design of cooperative systems. First, issues related to the fundamental communication channels, socio-technical factors, and task characteristics associated with collaborative work situations are reviewed. Second, research strategies incorporating theory-motivated design, ethnographic methods, and controlled testing methods are discussed as a means of addressing the plethora of communication issues present in these emerging computer-based systems. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

We describe and analyze the process of requirements development in scenario based design through consideration of a case study. In our project, a group of teachers and system developers initially set out to create a virtual physics laboratory. Our design work centered on the collaborative development of a series of scenarios describing current and future classroom activities. We observed classroom scenarios to assess needs and opportunities, and envisioned future scenarios to specify and analyze possible design moves. We employed claims analysis to evaluate design trade-offs implicit in these scenarios, to codify the specific advantages and disadvantages in achieving requirements. Through the course of this process, the nature of our project requirements has evolved, providing more information but also more kinds of information. We discuss the utility of managing requirements development through an evolving set of scenarios, and the generality of the scenario stages from this case study.

Participatory design typically focuses on envisionment and evaluation activities.We explored a method for pushing the participatory activities further "upstream" in the design process, to the initial analysis of requirements.We used a variant of the task-artifact fi-arnework, carrying out a participatory claims analysis during a design workshop fm a project addressing collaborative science education.The analysis used videotaped classroom sessions as source material.The participant-teachers were highly engaged by the analysis process and contributed significantly to the analysis results.We conclude that the method has promise as a technique for evoking self-reflection and analysis in a participatory design setting.

Software reuse, a long-standing and refractory issue in software technology, has been specifically emphasized as an advantage of the object-oriented programming paradigm. We report an empirical study of expert Smalltalk programmers reusing user interface classes in small graphical applications. Our primary goal was to develop a qualitative characterization of expert reuse strategies that could be used to identify requirements for teaching and supporting reuse programming. A secondary interest was to demonstrate to these experts the Reuse View Matcher—a prototype reuse tool—and to collect some initial observations of this tool in use during reuse programming. We observed extensive “reuse of uses” in the programmers' work: they relied heavily on code in expample applications that provided an implicit specification for reuse of the target class. We called this implicit specification a “usage context.” The programmers searched for relevant usage contexts early. They repeatedly evaluated the contextualized information to develop solution plans, and they borrowed and adapted it when the sample context suited their immediate reuse goals. The process of code development was highly dynamic and incremental; analysis and implementation were tightly interleaved, frequently driven by testing and debugging. These results are considered in terms of the tradeoffs that inhere in the reuse of uses and the teaching and tool support that might improve the efficiency and accuracy of this approach to reuse.

Article Free Access Share on Integrating task and software development for object-oriented applications Authors: Mary Beth Rosson Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, VA Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, VAView Profile , John M. Carroll Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, VA Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, VAView Profile Authors Info & Claims CHI '95: Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing SystemsMay 1995 Pages 377–384https://doi.org/10.1145/223904.223953Published:01 May 1995Publication History 30citation499DownloadsMetricsTotal Citations30Total Downloads499Last 12 Months61Last 6 weeks5 Get Citation AlertsNew Citation Alert added!This alert has been successfully added and will be sent to:You will be notified whenever a record that you have chosen has been cited.To manage your alert preferences, click on the button below.Manage my AlertsNew Citation Alert!Please log in to your account Save to BinderSave to BinderCreate a New BinderNameCancelCreateExport CitationPublisher SiteView all FormatsPDF

Article Free Access Share on Patterns: cult to culture? Authors: Steven Fraser BNR/Nortel (Moderator) BNR/Nortel (Moderator)View Profile , Grady Booch Rational RationalView Profile , Frank Buschmann Siemens SiemensView Profile , Jim Coplien AT&T AT&TView Profile , Norm Kerth Elite Systems Elite SystemsView Profile , Ivar Jacobson Objectory ObjectoryView Profile , Mary Beth Rosson Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State UniversityView Profile Authors Info & Claims OOPSLA '95: Proceedings of the tenth annual conference on Object-oriented programming systems, languages, and applicationsOctober 1995 Pages 231–234https://doi.org/10.1145/217838.217863Online:17 October 1995Publication History 3citation600DownloadsMetricsTotal Citations3Total Downloads600Last 12 Months19Last 6 weeks0 Get Citation AlertsNew Citation Alert added!This alert has been successfully added and will be sent to:You will be notified whenever a record that you have chosen has been cited.To manage your alert preferences, click on the button below.Manage my AlertsNew Citation Alert!Please log in to your account Save to BinderSave to BinderCreate a New BinderNameCancelCreateExport CitationPublisher SiteeReaderPDF

Raison d'Etre is a hypermedia design history application.It provides access to a database of video clips containing stories and ersonal perspectives of desi 1 r team members recorde at various times through t e course of a project.The system is intended to provide a simple framework for recording and organizing the informal history and rationale that design teams create and share in the course of their collaboration.This paper describes (1) the scenarios of use we are trying to support, (2) the methods we used collecting and organizing the database, and (3) the status of our prototype,

Em irical usability evaluations (particularly forrna~ive J ev uations [13]) hinge on observing and interpreting critical incidents [8] of use.We proposed [3,5] augmenting critical incident methods by analysis of what we called critical threads: sets of causally related user episodes that, taken together, define major usability themes.This paper extents this work to the comparative usability analysis of a related artifact.We discuss how our earlier claims analysis was used to orient and simplify our current evaluation efforts.

ODE: A SELF-GUIDED, SCENARIO-BASED LEARNING ENVIRONMENT FOR OBJECT-ORIENTED DESIGN PRINCIPLES Scott P. Robertson,* John M. Carroll,* Robert L. Mack, Mary Beth Rosson,* Sherman R. Alpert, Jurgen Koenemann-Belliveau” IBM Research T. J. Watson Research Center 30 Saw Mill River Road Hawthorne, NY 10532 Internet:

This paper reports on the results of a survey of user interface programming. The survey was widely distributed, and we received 74 responses. The results show that in today's applications, an average of 48% of the code is devoted to the user interface portion. The average time spent on the user interface portion is 45% during the design phase, 50% during the implementation phase, and 37% during the maintenance phase. 34% of the systems were implemented using a toolkit, 27% used a UIMS, 14% used an interface builder, and 26% used no tools. This appears to be because the toolkit systems had more sophisticated user interfaces. The projects using UIMSs or interface builders spent the least percent of time and code on the user interface (around 41%) suggesting that these tools are effective. In general, people were happy with the tools they used, especially the graphical interface builders. The most common problems people reported when developing a user interface included getting users' requirements, writing help text, achieving consistency, learning how to use the tools, getting acceptable performance, and communicating among various parts of the program.

We are developing an “action science” approach to human-computer interaction (HCI), seeking to better integrate activities directed at understanding with those directed at design. The approach leverages development practices of current HCI with methods and concepts to support a shift toward using broad and explicit design rationale to reify where we are in a design process, why we are there, and to guide reasoning about where we might go from there. We represent a designed artifact as the set of user scenarios supported by that artifact and more finely by causal schemas detailing the underlying psychological rationale. These schemas, called claims , unpack wherefores and whys of the scenarios. In this paper, we stand back from several empirical projects to clarify our commitments and practices.

A prime attraction of object-oriented programming lan~ages M the posslbdit~of reusing code, We examme the support provided by Smalltalk to pro-~ammers attemptin to incorporate an existing class f mto a new.design, .ocussing on issues of usage examples, object-spec~lc analysis, how-to-use-it information, and ob"ect connections.We then describe a i" View Matcher or reuse, a tool that documents reusable classes through a set of coordinated views onto concrete usage examples;in three scenarios, we illustrate how the tool addresses the issues raised in our analysis of reuse in Smalltallc.

No abstract available.

Smalltalk environments should accommodate programmers' conceptualizations of objects as independent, communicating agents by providing tools that allow them to work directly with instances.This paper discusses the requirements for such an environment, assesses the standard Smalltalk environment in this respect, and describes an enhanced Smalltalk environment called Portia which provides additional facilities for interacting with instances.

A curriculum was developed to introduce users to the Smalltalk object-oriented programming language. Applying the Minimalist model of instruction [3], we developed a set of example-based learning scenarios aimed at supporting real work, getting started fast, reasoning and improvising, coordinating system and text, supporting error recognition and recovery, and exploiting prior knowledge. We describe our initial curriculum design as well as the significant changes that have taken place as we have observed it in use.

The most valuable tools or methodologies supporting the design of interactive systems are those that simultaneously ease the process of design and improve the usability of the resulting system. We consider the potential of the object-oriented paradigm in providing this dual function. After briefly reviewing what is known about the design process and some important characteristics of object-oriented programming and design, we speculate on the possible cognitive consequences of this paradigm for problem understanding, problem decomposition, and design result. We conclude with research issues raised by our analysis.

Six expert Smalltalk programmers and three expert procedural programmers were observed as they worked on a gourmet shopping design problem; they were asked to think aloud about what was going through their minds as they worked. These verbal protocols were recorded and examined for ways in which the programmers' understanding of the problem domain affected the design process; most of our examples are from the three Smalltalk programmers who focussed most on the mapping from problem to solution. We characterize the problem entities that did appear as solution objects, the active nature of the mapping process, and ways in which the resultant objects went beyond their problem analogs.

Twenty-two designers were interviewed about their design of interactive systems. They were asked to select a recent project having a significant user interface component, and were probed about the general design process involved, how the design of the user interface fit into that process, and their personal strategies for exploring ideas. Analysis of their responses pointed to two models of the design process. The relationship of these models to the type of user testing done and the strategies used for generating ideas is discussed, especially with respect to the implications for developing tools to support design.

It has become a common recommendation to computer interface designers that they should “Know the User” (e.g., Rubinstein and Hersh, 1984). This panel discussion will examine the issues that arise from this advice.

Eight subjects listened to a set of synthetic voices reflecting a crossing of four voice qualities: head size, pitch, richness and smoothness. The listeners evaluated the voices on sixteen perceptual scales, and judged each voice's appropriateness for twenty voice-output scenarios. Factor analysis of the perceptual ratings recovered two factors, fullness and clarity. A similar analysis of the appropriateness ratings revealed three situational factors, information, entertainment and feedback. Further analyses indicated that the voice qualities associated with the three situational factors were quite different, and suggest ways to optimize voices used for a particular purpose.

The specificity of the adaptation to synthetic speech known to occur with practice was examined by giving listeners selective exposure to a subset of English phonemes (a control group was “trained” on analogous materials produced by a human speaker), and then testing their ability to identify words created from both the previously heard and novel phonemes. The results indicated that while synthetic voice training was generally facilitative, it was most helpful in the identification of the sounds heard before. However, this specific learning effect occured for only certain phonemes. The findings imply that one way to maximize early adaptation to synthetic speech is to identify the “learnable” sounds, and to increase users' exposure to them during introductory or training dialogs.

What are the effects of experience on text editing behavior? Do users inevitably develop optimal strategies for getting their work done? The answer to such questions are becoming increasingly important, as more and more individuals begin to use word processing equipment routinely. In the best of all possible worlds, experienced users do become experts, able to quickly and accurately choose and execute optimal procedures to accomplish any given goal. Such a state of affairs would make designers of editing systems very happy indeed. But another alternative exists, that at least some proportion of experienced and frequent users stabilize at some nonoptimal level of skill.

It is by now a truism to say that computational systems should be designed with ease of use in mind. Indeed, Shneiderman [10] collects together nearly a dozen lists of advice produced by authors in the past decade on how to meet this laudable goal. The advice that is given seems often to be quite good, but it is almost always qualitative in nature, rather vague, and sometimes contradictory. Remarkably little work has been done examining the actual usefulness of carrying out some of the advice, the extent of savings that can be realized by so doing, or the theoretical rationale behind it. In this paper we will present the rationale for investigating two variables that may aid the user, in particular the novice user, and we will describe an extensive experiment designed to examine the actual effects of these two variables. The goals of the work are (1) to understand better the acquisition, representation, and utilization of knowledge by novice or occasional users of computer-based information systems, and (2) to put to the test some ideas derived from current views of memory and attention.