Merja Bauters is Docent of semiotics in the University of Helsinki, Research fellow in Learning Environments research group (LeGroup), AALTO University and researching lecturer at Metropolia University of Applied Sciences and has been lecturing in over 30 different courses on design, design methods, semiotics and project communication. She received her PhD from Department of Philosophy, History, Culture and Art Studies, University of Helsinki 2007, discussing Charles Peirce thoughts on interpretation. Has directed PhDs and over 100 bachelor thesis and acted as opponent to PHD on teachers learning in Socio-Technical System. Bauters has been involved in multiple EU- and national projects, on learning and technology enhanced learning
Museums are seeking different ways to attract and engage audiences. Digital stories in various fo... more Museums are seeking different ways to attract and engage audiences. Digital stories in various forms have been utilized as one approach to increase audience experience. This paper presents how to bring audio stories as a part of museum?s activities by developing a modular audio story platform. Most of the functionality is included in Android applications, which allow visitors to attach stories with emotions to artifacts, share stories with other visitors and enrich existing stories with sounds. All the audio files, linking of the artifacts and related audio files are managed by audio digital asset management system. Our platform supports curated audio stories, but the main emphasis is in the visitors? audio stories. We differentiate from the other digital storytelling systems by attaching emotions onto the visitor stories, and combining the soundscapes and audio stories as visitor modified audio stories.
Museums are seeking various ways to attract and engage audience. Activities like virtual museums,... more Museums are seeking various ways to attract and engage audience. Activities like virtual museums, mobile audio guides, augmented reality as well as interactive digital stories aim to provide interactive experiences for an audience with familiarity of digital interaction. Our target is to enable visitor's role change from a passive audience to an active participator as content creator. We concentrate on audio augmentation for museum context because audio provides another perspective into the content in question. In this paper, we discuss our experiences of bringing user generated soundscapes as a part of museums' activities by developing a soundscape platform and a number of mobile applications running on it. Most of the functionality is distributed as ease of use and intuitive mobile applications, which have been evaluated in real context in two workshops. The workshops had different user groups and goals. The first one evaluated ease of use and feelings evoked of the young audiences, and the second one ease of use and acceptance of use for other museums than the Museum of Technology, which was our primary design environment.
We have developed an audio story sharing and audio augmented reality platform for cultural instit... more We have developed an audio story sharing and audio augmented reality platform for cultural institutions. Using the platform, cultural institutions can develop creative extracurricular activities. Our platform contains backend service for audio content management and three separate Android applications to support audio story sharing and augmenting reality with soundscapes. This paper introduces the results from two workshops, suitable as extracurricular activities for students that have utilized the platform. To assess how students experience workshops and the platform we have developed an instrument to measure engagement. Our instrument is based on student engagement research. With this instrument we are able to analyze not just the engagement as a whole but also the behavioral, emotional and cognitive engagement components. Workshops create holistic experiences; thus, we need to take into account the platform and context when measuring user engagement.
Work package 4 designs solutions to artefact and mobile layer for informal learning in the workpl... more Work package 4 designs solutions to artefact and mobile layer for informal learning in the workplace. This involves research and theoretical groundwork to define what it means to interact with technology during work and how technology is involved in learning activities in physical work environments. The designs that are created need to be implemented as prototypes and to be scaled for use to have any effect. To have a starting point for the research on interaction with physical artefacts during work practices as well as how, why, what in these moments support and hinder potential learning, a theoretical framework has been formed. The framework is based on the Model for Scaling the Support for Informal Learning at the Workplace developed in the Learning Layers project (see D5.1, Section 4) and on the pragmatist philosophy of experience, change of practices and theory of reflection. These three concepts allow the research to focus on the meaning making that occurs during work events that can lead to learning. Understanding of the learning events in the physical environment of the work place helps us to scope, design and evaluate the designed prototypes and tools. During the first year partners, stakeholders and knowledge across the Learning Layers project was combined into design teams in effort to create rapidly evolving prototypes. During the first year, WP4 turned its design and prototyping efforts to design team CAPTUS. Design idea for CAPTUS formed around the problems in sharing the learning about new tools, methods and materials in ecological and sustainable construction (represented by NNB, Netzwerk Nachhaltiges Bauen). This network has SMEs with varying attitudes towards information technology and the business opportunities are often limited by availability of skilled workforce for specific methods. The initial use case is built around the planned exhibition of sustainable construction in spring 2014 and should subsequently become a means to support the learning of construction professionals. CAPTUS design idea and its prototypes are about mobile and wearable recording of situations and experiences occurring during work practices and using these clips as a basis for learning resources, and to experiment when moving image is the preferred method for supporting personal learning. For first year prototype of CAPTUS we have built an Android application to save and annotate short video clips. The application is called ‘Ach So!’ and it aims to support rapid recording of situations arising in the workplace. Recorded clips are given genres ‘problem’, ‘problem solved’, ‘tricks of trade’ and ‘don’t do this’. This genre-based scaffolding helps the users to get used to short video clips for specific purposes instead of prepared ‘scripted’ videos. Clips can be annotated by pointing and adding textual notes to interesting targets. The annotations and other metadata situating the video to place, time and professional roles is sent to Social Semantic Servers to build domain knowledge and to help finding relevant clips and to enhance the data layers of the project. Clips can also be linked to any existing QR- or barcodes to permanently connect clips with artefacts or locations. With CAPTUS we propose that in workplace and informal learning ‘meaning making’ can be extended to situations without linguistic representations of problems and solutions. Learner or guide instead focuses on events where the look or feel is wrong and solutions that seem or feel right or true. In traditional tutoring and guidance, this nonverbal scaffolding activity can be pointing, showing by example or by undergoing some experience together and telling to focus (to feel, or to look) on certain aspect of it. People are natural at giving this kind of assistance in collaborative situations, but worse at chaining these scaffolding activities together as monologues or lessons without cues from learner. The latter is the case when recording lessons or instructions. We assume that by recording single scaffolding activities at time, to one clip for each activity, this shortcoming can be overcome and guidance can be recorded with necessary ease. Authors: Merja Bauters, Joanna Burchert, Tobias Funke, Ralf Klamma, Istvan Koren, Pekka Kämäräinen, Werner Müller, Kiarii Ngua, Petru Nicolaescu, Jukka Purma.
Museums are seeking different ways to attract and engage audiences. Digital stories in various fo... more Museums are seeking different ways to attract and engage audiences. Digital stories in various forms have been utilized as one approach to increase audience experience. This paper presents how to bring audio stories as a part of museum?s activities by developing a modular audio story platform. Most of the functionality is included in Android applications, which allow visitors to attach stories with emotions to artifacts, share stories with other visitors and enrich existing stories with sounds. All the audio files, linking of the artifacts and related audio files are managed by audio digital asset management system. Our platform supports curated audio stories, but the main emphasis is in the visitors? audio stories. We differentiate from the other digital storytelling systems by attaching emotions onto the visitor stories, and combining the soundscapes and audio stories as visitor modified audio stories.
Museums are seeking various ways to attract and engage audience. Activities like virtual museums,... more Museums are seeking various ways to attract and engage audience. Activities like virtual museums, mobile audio guides, augmented reality as well as interactive digital stories aim to provide interactive experiences for an audience with familiarity of digital interaction. Our target is to enable visitor's role change from a passive audience to an active participator as content creator. We concentrate on audio augmentation for museum context because audio provides another perspective into the content in question. In this paper, we discuss our experiences of bringing user generated soundscapes as a part of museums' activities by developing a soundscape platform and a number of mobile applications running on it. Most of the functionality is distributed as ease of use and intuitive mobile applications, which have been evaluated in real context in two workshops. The workshops had different user groups and goals. The first one evaluated ease of use and feelings evoked of the young audiences, and the second one ease of use and acceptance of use for other museums than the Museum of Technology, which was our primary design environment.
We have developed an audio story sharing and audio augmented reality platform for cultural instit... more We have developed an audio story sharing and audio augmented reality platform for cultural institutions. Using the platform, cultural institutions can develop creative extracurricular activities. Our platform contains backend service for audio content management and three separate Android applications to support audio story sharing and augmenting reality with soundscapes. This paper introduces the results from two workshops, suitable as extracurricular activities for students that have utilized the platform. To assess how students experience workshops and the platform we have developed an instrument to measure engagement. Our instrument is based on student engagement research. With this instrument we are able to analyze not just the engagement as a whole but also the behavioral, emotional and cognitive engagement components. Workshops create holistic experiences; thus, we need to take into account the platform and context when measuring user engagement.
Work package 4 designs solutions to artefact and mobile layer for informal learning in the workpl... more Work package 4 designs solutions to artefact and mobile layer for informal learning in the workplace. This involves research and theoretical groundwork to define what it means to interact with technology during work and how technology is involved in learning activities in physical work environments. The designs that are created need to be implemented as prototypes and to be scaled for use to have any effect. To have a starting point for the research on interaction with physical artefacts during work practices as well as how, why, what in these moments support and hinder potential learning, a theoretical framework has been formed. The framework is based on the Model for Scaling the Support for Informal Learning at the Workplace developed in the Learning Layers project (see D5.1, Section 4) and on the pragmatist philosophy of experience, change of practices and theory of reflection. These three concepts allow the research to focus on the meaning making that occurs during work events that can lead to learning. Understanding of the learning events in the physical environment of the work place helps us to scope, design and evaluate the designed prototypes and tools. During the first year partners, stakeholders and knowledge across the Learning Layers project was combined into design teams in effort to create rapidly evolving prototypes. During the first year, WP4 turned its design and prototyping efforts to design team CAPTUS. Design idea for CAPTUS formed around the problems in sharing the learning about new tools, methods and materials in ecological and sustainable construction (represented by NNB, Netzwerk Nachhaltiges Bauen). This network has SMEs with varying attitudes towards information technology and the business opportunities are often limited by availability of skilled workforce for specific methods. The initial use case is built around the planned exhibition of sustainable construction in spring 2014 and should subsequently become a means to support the learning of construction professionals. CAPTUS design idea and its prototypes are about mobile and wearable recording of situations and experiences occurring during work practices and using these clips as a basis for learning resources, and to experiment when moving image is the preferred method for supporting personal learning. For first year prototype of CAPTUS we have built an Android application to save and annotate short video clips. The application is called ‘Ach So!’ and it aims to support rapid recording of situations arising in the workplace. Recorded clips are given genres ‘problem’, ‘problem solved’, ‘tricks of trade’ and ‘don’t do this’. This genre-based scaffolding helps the users to get used to short video clips for specific purposes instead of prepared ‘scripted’ videos. Clips can be annotated by pointing and adding textual notes to interesting targets. The annotations and other metadata situating the video to place, time and professional roles is sent to Social Semantic Servers to build domain knowledge and to help finding relevant clips and to enhance the data layers of the project. Clips can also be linked to any existing QR- or barcodes to permanently connect clips with artefacts or locations. With CAPTUS we propose that in workplace and informal learning ‘meaning making’ can be extended to situations without linguistic representations of problems and solutions. Learner or guide instead focuses on events where the look or feel is wrong and solutions that seem or feel right or true. In traditional tutoring and guidance, this nonverbal scaffolding activity can be pointing, showing by example or by undergoing some experience together and telling to focus (to feel, or to look) on certain aspect of it. People are natural at giving this kind of assistance in collaborative situations, but worse at chaining these scaffolding activities together as monologues or lessons without cues from learner. The latter is the case when recording lessons or instructions. We assume that by recording single scaffolding activities at time, to one clip for each activity, this shortcoming can be overcome and guidance can be recorded with necessary ease. Authors: Merja Bauters, Joanna Burchert, Tobias Funke, Ralf Klamma, Istvan Koren, Pekka Kämäräinen, Werner Müller, Kiarii Ngua, Petru Nicolaescu, Jukka Purma.
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