IADIS INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL ON WWW/INTERNET

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Authors: Maria Georgiou

This study examined if there were any significant differences in students’ achievement scores in science for three units that were taught using traditional methods of instruction and a unit that was taught using educational technology tools in instruction and specifically, interactive multimedia technology. A one-way repeated measures ANOVA was carried out to assess if the differences between the test means were significantly different. Findings showed that students’ scores for the four units were significantly different, F (3, 219) = 22.702, p˂ 0.0005. Students scored higher on the posttest after the use of interactive multimedia technology in instruction. The results of the current study indicate the need to change educational anticipations, as teaching methods become more active, student-centered and constructivist. Multimedia has attributes that can help students improve their learning and motivation while being engaged in active, student-centered and constructivist learning environments. The use of instructional interactive multimedia can satisfy more than one learning modality and can be more effective in meeting students’ learning needs.

14

Authors: Edward Meinert, Michelle van Velthoven, Abrar Alturkistani, Kris A Murray, Philippe Sabatier and Josip Car

A Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) is a form of online education that makes available learning to a large number of individuals at no charge. The impact of climate change on public health has been introduced in MOOCs in various forms, for example, examining the impact of natural disasters, the increase in temperature on work productivity, and the monitoring and evaluation of health adaptation to climate change and its implications for policy. However, despite this work completed to advance understanding in both online and postgraduate education, more effort is required to provide the tools and capabilities to analyse evidence and present findings that demonstrate its impact on specific outcomes, including health and wellbeing. Although these courses are made publicly available, understanding the costs associated with their production and delivery will provide evidence to develop sustainable models for deployment of this form of citizen engagement education.

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Authors: Claudia Steinberger and Joachim Frießer

Structured data on the Web have become very important in recent years and offer machine-readable semantics of the data contained. Schema.org is the most recognized vocabulary for structuring data on websites and serves beyond that also to organize and query Google’s knowledge graph. However, Schema.org is mainly used today to semantically describe real-world entities and their relationships to one another. To describe the functionality and handling of websites has not been the key application area of Schema.org yet, though it also includes an appropriate vocabulary. In addition, most Schema.org tools are limited in terms of the Schema.org classes and properties they offer and do not support the semantical enrichment of web user interfaces. In this article we motivate the potential of the sematic enrichment of web user interfaces regarding their functionality and handling and present possible application areas to consume these structured data. We analyze the requirements on structured user interface data and investigate the suitability of Schema.org as a vocabulary to fulfil them. Since there are hundreds of classes and properties in Schema.org, we present a conceptual model of Schema.org classes and properties that are appropriate to enrich web user interfaces. We investigate to what extent interactive elements on HTML websites or applications can be automatically mapped to our conceptual model elements. As a result, we present a method to semi-automatically produce structured user interface data and illustrate our approach with a continuous use case. As a proof of concept, we introduce Schemator, a comfortable structured user interface data tool supporting our method, which can be used to crowdsource knowledge about the functionality and handling of websites and applications.

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Authors: Jasmina Maric

While many of us researchers dream about the opportunity to design a collaborative art project that would connect our youth with big, mainstream cultural and educational institutions, we seldom analyse the challenges of such collaborations. This paper presents the user-centered, interdisciplinary interaction design (ID) of the collaborative digital art project. The project design is made in collaboration with the young participants of the Meet the Ministry project run by the Dance Company of the Opera House (DCOH) in Gothenburg, and the members of The Swedish School of Library and Information Science Social Media Studies (TSLIS) research group. Using the research through design approach to augment the outreach of the collaborative digital art project, enhance youth engagement with the contemporary dance, and learn from the young participants, we analyze the implications introduced by inter-institutional and interdisciplinary collaboration. This paper proposes a view which suggests that learning can be effective and pure joy, while at the same time delivering 21st-century skills to those who learn, and new conditions for social inclusion and sustainable society. One argument is that we need new teaching approaches to successfully prepare our youngest for the 21st century. The other reason is that we would be better off if the investments in our public institutions could positively influence a larger society, which would result in a more sustainable society. Drawing from the different scientific research experiences this paper calls for interdisciplinary and interinstitutional collaborative art projects as learning tools, and tools to leverage social sustainability.

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Authors: Francisco J. Mata and Irene Hernández-Ruiz

The coffee paradox is the phenomenon by which the coffee prices received by farmers/producers in developing countries have been increasingly lower, despite a growing demand for this product. This situation affects coffee production in most coffee-producing countries and forces many producers to leave this economic activity. Behind this problem is the fact that coffee is considered an agricultural commodity. Nevertheless, the development of specialty coffee in recent years offers opportunities to de-commoditize this product, allowing coffee farmers to distinguish themselves from the rest. In doing so, they can obtain better prices for their coffee. Although Costa Rica is a country that has conditions to achieve this process, the same must be accompanied by appropriate marketing mechanisms. E-commerce can be used to assist this process. In this paper, we present the background and the design and development considerations for an electronic platform to market Costa Rican roasted coffee through e-commerce, referred to as crgourmetcoffee.com (https://www.crgourmetcoffee.com). This system is proposed as a solution to the coffee paradox un Costa Rica. In this regard, crgourmetcoffee.com is aimed at enabling Costa Rican coffee farmers to sell its coffee directly to final consumers in developed countries, eliminating intermediaries, and thus allowing producers to obtain higher price margins. Besides presenting the underlying principles for this platform, we also discuss the steps taken to make the existing prototype of this system into an operational marketing mechanism and the challenges ahead.

13

Authors: Barbara Engels

Data is the main resource of the digital economy. Accordingly, personal data constitutes the exchange value for the use of numerous online services such as social media. Many Internet users willingly disclose their data to these services. Oftentimes, there exists a discrepancy between individual privacy preferences and actual behavior. Against this background, this study examines the preferences of the so-called digital natives for privacy. 3,000 students aged between 14 and 21 in Germany were asked about their use of social media and their privacy preferences for these online services. In addition, their willingness to pay for privacy-friendly online services is analyzed. The study shows that while privacy is important to many digital natives, most are not willing to pay for it.

14

Authors: Lyndall Cooper-Smith, Bill Davey and Arthur Adamopoulos

Group work is regularly implemented as part of higher education learning. Much research has examined group work to determine both the impeding and facilitative factors, mostly from the perspective of the students’ experiences of group work. To address the negative factors of group work, it would be helpful to understand the perceptions instructors have about group work. In Australia, prospective employers consistently call for business graduates to be able to demonstrate collaborative teamwork skills as part of their employability skill set. Group work in undergraduate courses is seen as the appropriate mechanism for teamwork education. Collaborative teamwork skills are considered the second most sought after demonstratable skill in a prospective employee; communication skills being the most sought after. How then can universities engender a growth in online group work as a means of ensuring their online undergraduates are being educated to develop their collaborative teamwork skills? This research examined the perceptions of instructors about their group work experiences. A phenomenographic research approach was considered the most appropriate, as phenomenography allows for all variations of perceptions to be considered, regardless of other factors such as experience or discipline specificity. Phenomenography facilitates the closer examination of a phenomenon, for example, how students learn. By examining the perceptions individual instructors have about their role in group work, patterns of instruction were illuminated. The findings of the research are expressed as phenomenographic categories of conception. The categories of conception detail the perceptions an instructor has in relation to their pattern of instruction. The categories can be expressed on a continuum of less complex to more complex. The categories do not describe individual instructors, instead all of the instructors’ perceptions of group work. By understanding an instructor’s perceptions about group work, it is expected that changes in practice can be engendered.

15

Authors: Mathew Lane, Wendy Hui, Karen Murcia and Pornpit Wongthongtham

This article is an exploratory analysis and comparison of the demographic distributions of data collected from the 2016 New Coder Survey, with that obtained from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS). In comparing the data sets, the findings suggest that overall females were more likely to engage in online self-paced coding education, particularly when they had no background or previous study in an IT discipline. This contrasted strongly with females having an existing IT qualification. When looking at ethnicity, the research identified that those students who identify as an ethnic minority were more likely to undertake formal tertiary education in IT, rather than engage in online coding study. The research also confirmed that the average age was higher, and diversity of age groups was larger for those undertaking online study, when compared with those undertaking formal tertiary study. The practical implications of this analysis to diversity in Information Technology disciplines such as computer science, and more broadly with STEM-related disciplines are discussed.

17

Authors: Jemar Jude A. Maranga, Leilla Keith J. Matugas, Jorge Frederick W. Lim and Cherry Lyn C. Sta. Romana

Teaching an introductory programming course to an average of 40 students while monitoring their performance can be a challenge for instructors. Preparing coding exercises with test cases and checking students’ programs can prove to be time consuming at times. Moreover, programming has been known to be quite difficult for students to learn. To address these concerns, a web-based Integrated Development Environment (IDE) for C Programming called CodeChum was developed. CodeChum provides instructors with an easier way of creating programming exercises and automating the checking student codes. CodeChum allows students to apply their skills using problem stories attached to learning outcomes, test their solutions, get instant feedback and monitor their current status through a student dashboard. CodeChum was tested within a span of two months on 120 undergraduate students taking up introductory programming courses and 6 programming instructors from Cebu Institute of Technology- University, and another study, for the implementation of the student dashboard, was conducted on 35 students using a system usability scale (SUS) test. A usability and feedback survey for students and instructors was conducted getting inputs of their experience while using the IDE. Results of the survey show that the system was well received both by students and instructors. As for the student Dashboard, results show good initial feedback from the students in terms of its usability and the overall user experience provided by the newly integrated module.