Semantic and Interactive Search in an Advanced Note-Taking App for Learning Material

in Proceedings of the 24th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction (HCI International) (2022, June)

Note-taking apps on tablets are increasingly becoming the go-to space for managing learning material as a student. In particular, digital note-taking presents certain advantages over traditional pen-and ... [more ▼]

Note-taking apps on tablets are increasingly becoming the go-to space for managing learning material as a student. In particular, digital note-taking presents certain advantages over traditional pen-and-paper approaches when it comes to organizing and retrieving a library of notes thanks to various search functionalities. This paper presents improvements to the classic textual-input-based search field, by introducing a semantic search that considers the meaning of a user’s search terms and an automatic question-answering process that extracts the answer to the user’s question from their notes for more efficient information retrieval. Additionally, visual methods for finding specific notes are proposed, which do not require the input of text by the user: through the integration of a semantic similarity metric, notes similar to a selected document can be displayed based on common topics. Furthermore, a fully interactive process allows one to search for notes by selecting different types of dynamically generated filters, thus eliminating the need for textual input. Finally, a graph-based visualization is explored for the search results, which clusters semantically similar notes closer together to relay additional information to the user besides the raw search results. [less ▲]

AR4OER: A Semantic Platform for Open Educational Augmented Reality Resources

in Proceedings of the 2020 IEEE International Symposium on Multimedia (2020, December)

Tablet computers are gaining in presence in modern-day classrooms, enabling the use of a variety of apps for purposes such as note-taking or assessment. Augmented Reality (AR) experiences in the classroom ... [more ▼]

Tablet computers are gaining in presence in modern-day classrooms, enabling the use of a variety of apps for purposes such as note-taking or assessment. Augmented Reality (AR) experiences in the classroom, made possible by current hardware, permit new ways of interaction and visualization, as well as increase student motivation and engagement. They also overcome the need for potentially expensive hardware required for experiments in certain scientific domains. The movement of Open Educational Resources (OER) has enabled the sharing of heterogeneous learning resources. Their retrieval can be improved by enriching their metadata using Semantic Web technologies. In this paper, we present AR4OER, a semantic platform for heterogeneous AR experiences provided as OER. We showcase four AR scenarios from different school subjects. These scenarios can be integrated through a lose coupling in third-party apps. Apart from describing how this integration works, we demonstrate how a note-taking app can benefit from these scenarios. [less ▲]

Scaffolding support through integration of learning material

in Smart Learning Environments (2019), 6(28),

The ever-growing amount of learning material poses a challenge to both learners and teachers. In order to perform a learning task, students often need to search for additional information. Inquiry might ... [more ▼]

The ever-growing amount of learning material poses a challenge to both learners and teachers. In order to perform a learning task, students often need to search for additional information. Inquiry might be hampered if they do not know what exactly to search for, especially if they lack prior knowledge in a domain. Furthermore, they might need to recall meta-information, e.g., the implicit links between learning resources or the location of an explanation within a document. In addition, their performance in a learning task might suffer from the constant need for further information. As the authoring of learning material is a time-intensive task, reusability of resources in different contexts should be enabled. In this paper, we present the ALMA-Yactul ecosystem, a holistic approach for student-centered integration of learning material. Based on semantic annotations, learners are provided with scaffolding support for retrieving material related to their current study task. This integration of resources is showcased in a variety of applications and domains, such as a plugin for an IDE or an enhanced sketchnoting app. Moreover, we show how Yactul, a gamified student response platform, can benefit from semantic annotations and integration of learning material. Additionally, teachers are provided with semi-automatic annotation support in the popular Office 365 suite to foster the reusability of their content. Apart from presenting the results of its usage in university classes, we also show how high school students without prior knowledge benefitted from this scaffolding support. A significantly better performance in resolving programming-related tasks could be observed compared to a traditional search process. Finally, the ecosystem is evaluated against a state-of-the-art technology integration model. [less ▲]

Immersive Mixed Reality Object Interaction for Collaborative Context-Aware Mobile Training and Exploration

in Proceedings of the 10th ACM Multimedia Systems Conference (MMSys) (2019)

SoLeMiO: Semantic Integration of Learning Material in Office

in Proceedings of E-Learn: World Conference on E-Learning in Corporate, Government, Healthcare, and Higher Education 2018 (2018, October 15)

Learners throughout different educational levels and study domains use a significant amount of time to consult learning material. In addition to the resources given by their teachers, further information ... [more ▼]

Learners throughout different educational levels and study domains use a significant amount of time to consult learning material. In addition to the resources given by their teachers, further information might be required by the learner. However, leaving the study context to search for related material may lead to distraction or even abandonment of the learning task. Furthermore, traditional learning resources do not foster active learning. In this paper, we present SoLeMiO, a plugin for Office applications, which identifies key concepts in a document and thereby integrates related, heterogeneous resources from an open corpus. We employ concept recognition tools to determine concepts from different domains. Thereupon, resources from different repositories are suggested to the learner and can be consulted from within the current document. Aside from traditional learning resources, active learning is fostered through gamification activities. We showcase the applicability of our approach in multiple disciplines with concrete examples. [less ▲]

Ontology Coverage Tool and Document Browser for Learning Material Exploration

in 2018 Thirteenth International Conference on Digital Information Management (ICDIM) (2018, September)

Document collections in e-learning can cause issues to both learners and teachers. On one hand, inquiry from the vast corpus of available resources is non-trivial without adequate formulation support and ... [more ▼]

Document collections in e-learning can cause issues to both learners and teachers. On one hand, inquiry from the vast corpus of available resources is non-trivial without adequate formulation support and semantic information. Implicit links between documents are hardly understood without a proper visualization. On the other hand, it is difficult for teachers to keep track of the topics covered by a large collection. In this paper, we present an ontology coverage tool and document browser for learning material exploration. Both learners and teachers can benefit from a visualization of an ontology and the documents related to the comprised concepts, overcoming the limitations of traditional file explorers. Guiding users through a visual query process, learners can quickly pinpoint relevant learning material. The visualization, which has been implemented as a web application using the D3.js JavaScript library, can be integrated into different e-learning applications to further enhance the workflow of learners. Finally, teachers are provided an overview of topic coverage within the collection. [less ▲]

An Extensible and Lightweight Modular Ontology for Programming Education

in Advances in Computing - 12th Colombian Conference, CCC 2017, Cali, Colombia, September 19-22, 2017, Proceedings (2017, August)

Semantic web technologies such as ontologies can foster the reusability of learning material by introducing common sets of concepts for annotation purposes. However, suggesting learning material from an ... [more ▼]

Semantic web technologies such as ontologies can foster the reusability of learning material by introducing common sets of concepts for annotation purposes. However, suggesting learning material from an open, heterogeneous corpus is a nontrivial problem. In this paper, we propose an extensible and lightweight modular ontology for programming education. Its main purpose is to integrate annotated learning material related to programming into an IDE such as Eclipse. Our ontology is based on a modular architecture, which is extensible with respect to different programming languages. Aligning language-specific concepts with user-specific tags allows us to suggest learning resources for code elements in a fine-grained and cross-curricular way. Our concrete implementation establishes relations between learning aspects in Java or C code and annotated resources such as articles on online question-and-answer sites. [less ▲]

Contour Drawing and Detection for Collaborative Context-Aware Mobile Training and Exploration

in Proceedings of the 16th World Conference on Mobile and Contextual Learning (mLearn) (2017)

Concurrency-Based and User-Centric Collaboration for Distributed Compound Document Authoring

in Proceedings of the 2017 IEEE 21st International Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work in Design (CSCWD) (2017)

The collaborative authoring of complex document structures by geographically distributed users is no longer a special case in today's global economy or people's personal lives. However, integrating single ... [more ▼]

The collaborative authoring of complex document structures by geographically distributed users is no longer a special case in today's global economy or people's personal lives. However, integrating single-user application responsiveness and feature sets with the additional demands and expectations presented towards distributed multi-user environments remains a challenge. Current solutions approaching this challenge almost exclusively rely on traditional, file-based data structures. This often introduces arbitrary workflow restrictions to the user and reduces the potential to benefit from an otherwise inherently concurrent system. Our distributed compound document authoring environment aims at addressing these challenges while providing system-level collaboration support to the user. We attain this through the close integration of a fine-grained data structure with a highly scalable, priority-based concurrency model for command distribution and application. This paper discusses our enhanced data representation and concurrency model together with the evaluation of their prototypical implementation. [less ▲]

Yactul: An Extensible Game-Based Student Response Framework for Active Learning

in Ponencias del XVIII Encuentro Internacional Virtual Educa, Colombia 2017 (2017)

Student response systems as an active learning strategy have shown to be useful in different study domains. With the advent of gamification, these environments have become very popular to improve student ... [more ▼]

Student response systems as an active learning strategy have shown to be useful in different study domains. With the advent of gamification, these environments have become very popular to improve student engagement. However, existing solutions only provide a static set of activity types and limit their use to classrooms. In this paper, we present Yactul, an extensible game-based student response framework for active learning. Our ecosystem fosters continuous learning both in the collaborative setting of the classroom and the private study environment of the student. Our modular architecture enables a seamless integration of activities from a broad and extensible set. In addition, a mobile app for offline learning extends the experience outside the classroom and allows to replay quizzes anywhere and anytime, track the progress of an individual learner and suggest activities on topics that require more studying. [less ▲]