This chapter presents the activities and outcomes of the "People's Voices: Developing Cross Media Services to Promote Citizens Participation in Local Governance Activities" project.

The aims of the project were a) to identify and describe a number of cross media services that can be used to promote citizens’ participation in political decisions and civic activities, and b) to develop a conceptual design and a prototype system of such a service. The project included a number of field trips from Sweden to Uganda, and used participatory design and ethnographic techniques for requirements elicitation, actively involving the different stakeholders. The developed system allows people in Uganda to use their mobile phones to submit reports of irregularities in local governance or poor services delivery using an interactive voice menu interface.

We hope that our specific contribution will emphasize on how novel ways of integrating and using ICT can provide opportunities to encourage and facilitate civic engagement in North Uganda. The potential massive adoption of the kind of interactive mobile services described in this book chapter can be used in unique ways to provide opportunities to make governmental services more innovative, transparent and cost-effective, as well as to encourage citizens to become more engaged and goal-focused for the common good of their society.

Recent studies in science and engineering education support that inductive learning activities encouraging active student involvement may improve students’ motivation, development of soft skills and academic performance, compared to traditional lectures. Until recently, several technology-enhanced learning environments have been proposed to facilitate such activities in classrooms. However, these commonly depend on dedicated hardware devices, such as clickers or tablet PCs. Contrastingly, smartphones are being massively adopted by society as these become increasingly powerful and inexpensive. Even so, the use of smartphones as learning tools in lecture halls has still not been widely adopted. In this paper we present CollPhoto, a paper-plus-smartphone environment that supports face-to-face problem solving activities in the classroom. CollPhoto provides the instructor with instant visibility of students’ work, and facilitates him/her conducting discussions, based on a selection of students’ responses. We report on the design and initial validation of CollPhoto in the context of two computer science courses.

Education systems worldwide must strive to support the teaching of a set of New Media Literacies (NMLs). These literacies respond to the need for educating human capital within participatory cultures in a highly technologized world. In this paper, we present Collboard, a constructivist problem solving activity for fostering the development of specific NMLs in classrooms: collective intelligence, distributed cognition and transmedia navigation. Collboard encompasses successive individual and collaborative work phases that prompt active student participation and engagement. It integrates digitally augmented appliances, namely, digital pens as a means to support individual work, and interactive whiteboards as a collaborative knowledge construction space. We report on the conceptual design of Collboard, its different technological and software components, as well as our findings from experiences we conducted in a Swedish school with 12 students from a 7th grade maths class. Findings from the experience provide an indication that Collboard can be well integrated in classroom teaching, and that it can foster the development of collective intelligence, distributed cognition and transmedia navigation in different knowledge domains. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Teaching and learning the principles of wireless communication is a challenging issue mainly because it is difficult for students to translate the theoretical models that are commonly used in this area into practical knowledge. In order to address this challenge, we explore how to design and implement novel teaching and learning activities that integrate the principles of situated learning supported by mobile, positioning and web technologies. In this paper we present the results of our on-going efforts in this direction describing the rationale of our approach, an application supporting a learning activity designed under this approach and the outcomes of an evaluation we conducted with 28 engineering students. Obtained results show that the proposed approach offers the students new possibilities to combine theoretical and practical knowledge in a variety of collaborative situations in which mobile and web technologies played a central role.

Situated Learning stresses the importance of the context in which learning takesplace. It has been therefore frequently associated with informal learning or learning outsidethe classroom. Mobile technologies can play an important role supporting this type oflearning, since it mainly occurs on the field. In this paper we present a learning system and amethodology based on the use of patterns. Students learn about patterns by finding instancesof them on the field, or by recognizing new patterns unknown to them so far. The teacherproposes tasks to the students consisting on finding instances of patterns or discovering newones along a path or inside a pre defined area on a map. This work illustrates the role thatgeo-referenced data collected on the field can play in supporting situated learning activities.

The latest developments of information and communication technologies (ICT) and its large penetration in different sectors of our society pose new challenges and demands in the field of education. This special issue entitled “Designing Nordic technology-enhanced learning (TEL)”, presents and discusses how researchers in the Nordic countries are currently framing and thinking about issues that are related to pedagogical design of learning spaces, digital literacies, educational professional development, design of tools engaging students in collaborative inquiry learning as well as design-oriented multimodal understandings of learning.

The objective pursued with the special issue has been to reflect upon current problems that educational institutions, practitioners and TEL researchers are facing in the Nordic countries as regards the acknowledgment of young people's ICT practices within formal education. Such analytical work has led us to identify and elaborate on what we believe constitute forthcoming research challenges for learning and education in the Nordic countries.

This work draws attention to the question of how in-service teachers learn to teach computational thinking and programming across subjects in K-9 education. Drawing on qualitative analyses of 298 reflective notes provided by 120 in-service teachers attending a professional development program, we pay attention to the following emergent themes: i)developing an understanding of the subject of computational thinking in K-9, ii)connecting programming with the teachers’ own subject matters, iii)understanding the purpose of teaching computational thinking. These themes point at the importance of scaffolding in-service teachers to learn to program with educational materials, tools and programming environments but also with a sound and inspirational pedagogy that addresses the fundamental questions of: what, how and why programming and computational thinking should be part of the compulsory school curriculum?

This chapter describes aspects related to the design approaches and innovative learning activities of the research projects, and also illustrates the problem of sustainability and scalability of educational technology innovations with examples from the Swedish educational context. The research projects on mobile learning have been conducted in both formal and informal learning settings. The factors that can be regarded as both barriers and supports for the sustainability and scalability of technological innovations in Sweden are technology, and partnerships. A geometry mobile (GEM) project is an ongoing mobile learning project in the field of mathematics trying to find alternative ways to support the learning of geometry. The chapter presents a math education and playful learning (MULLE) project to introduce mobile learning activities in primary schools. It pays attention to the role played by research, and the resulting knowledge base, both at national and international level.

This paper presents the overall goals and preliminary results of an on-going research project that aims at: understanding the intricacies and complexities of introducing mobile technologies into schools’ curriculum and accepted teaching practices; analyzing actual transformations that the use of mobile technologies in schools brings to contemporary forms of learning. The results of the project will contribute to a better understanding of new media literacies and their implications for curriculum design and everyday educational practices.

We report two studies that fed into user-centred design for pedagogical and technological scaffolds for social, constructive learning through creative, collaborative, reflective video composition. The studies validated this learning approach and verified the utility and usability of an initial prototype (scaffold) built to support it. However, challenges in interaction with the target technology, multi-touch tabletops, impacted ability to carry out prescribed learning activities. Our findings point to the need to investigate an alternative approach and informed redesign of our scaffolds. We propose coupling of distributed user interfaces, using mobile devices to access large, shared displays, to augment capability to follow our constructive learning process. We discuss also the need to manage recognised challenges to collaboration with a distributed approach.

The use of multiple mobile devices is increasing in mobile learning, bringing a need for collaboration and resource sharing among participating pupils. This paper presents an approach that addresses information and resource sharing for mobile devices in indoors and outdoors settings. Our solution consists of aggregated mobile devices, forming organizations. These Mobile Virtual Devices (MVDs) provide a new mechanism that facilitates design of mobile learning activities offering a virtual complex device that combines the features of several mobile devices.

The increasing use of mobile devices to support collaborative activities creates a need for developing new methods and perspectives to facilitate information sharing. In this paper, we present an approach for information sharing in mobile collaborative settings through the use of Mobile Virtual Devices (MVD). MVD emerges as a new conceptualization of an organization of mobile devices that supports collaborative tasks. The use of MVD allows designers and users to interact with and through mobile devices in novel ways, considering the aggregation of mobile devices as a single entity. The notion of MVD has been conceptualized on the idea of multirole devices, using components to provide and consume resources.

Through the analysis of the different iterations of the Geometry Mobile (GEM) project, a mobile learning effort in the field of mathematics, we have identified a major architectural issue to be addressed in the design and implementation of m-learning applications. Due to the dynamic nature of the field many challenging requirements are continuously emerging. One of them relates to the possibility to support collaborative activities that demand sharing resources between students and their mobile devices in constantly changing conditions. These situations generate the need of using decentralized distributed architectures in which mobile devices can share resources to carry out the activity covering the concerns defined by the different stakeholders. This paper describes our current efforts connected to identifying a set of requirements for M-Learning activities. Thereafter, we elaborate on why a decentralized distributed system (DDS) can be used to provide a novel solution to tackle the mentioned above problems. Moreover, initial aspects related to the design of a DDS, including a self-adaptation mechanism are presented.

Mobile technologies have emerged as facilitators in the learning process, extending traditional classroom activities. However, engineering mobile learning applications for outdoor usage poses severe challenges. The requirements of these applications are challenging, as many different aspects need to be catered, such as resource access and sharing, communication between peers, group management, activity flow, etc. Robustness is particularly important for learning scenarios to guarantee undisturbed and smooth user experiences, pushing the technological aspects in the background. Despite significant research in the field of mobile learning, very few efforts have focused on collaborative mobile learning requirements from a software engineering perspective. This paper focuses on aspects of the software architecture, aiming to address the challenges related to resource sharing in collaborative mobile learning activities. This includes elements such as autonomy for personal interactive learning, richness for large group collaborative learning (indoor and outdoor), as well as robustness of the learning system. Additionally, we present self-adaptation as a solution to mitigate risks of resource unavailability and organization failures that arise from environment and system dynamism. Our evaluation provides indications regarding the system correctness with respect to resource sharing and collaboration concerns, and offers qualitative evidence of self-adaptation benefits for collaborative mobile learning applications.

The use of collaborative activities in education has proven to be an effective way to enhance students’ learning outcomes by in- creasing their engagement and motivating discussions on the learning topics under exploration. In the field of Technology Enhanced Learn- ing (TEL), the use of information and communication technologies has been extensively studied to provide alternative methods to support col- laborative learning activities, combining different applications and tools. Mobile learning, a subset of TEL, has become a prominent area of re- search as it offers promising tools to enhance students’ collaboration and it provides alternative views for teaching and learning subject matter in relevant and authentic scenarios. While many studies have focused on the pedagogical opportunities provided by mobile technologies, fewer are the efforts looking at technological related aspects. Hardware and software issues in this field still remain as challenges that require a deeper level of study and analysis. This paper presents and discusses the findings of a deep analysis based on the outcomes of three mobile collaborative learning activities and their requirements. These results have helped us to identify a number of arising challenges that need to be addressed in order to warranty Quality of Service (QoS) in these collaborative M- learning activities. Moreover, the paper offers a view on current practices in M-learning activities, which evidences the lack of research addressing software engineering aspects in mobile collaborative learning. 

Cultural events are of increasing importance as value creators in our society. They can serve to promote the attractiveness of a region, to increase social interactions and the quality of life and, not the least, to boost local economies. Today, a comprehensive and up-to-date online overview of cultural events in Småland, a region in southeastern Sweden, is missing mainly due the fact that information is distributed across different actors, communication channels and different media (e.g. individual organizers, commercial vendors, community calendars, newspapers calendars).

The ultimate purpose of our research is to significantly increase access to information and awareness of cultural attractiveness in Småland using innovative web technologies, both for its inhabitants as well as tourists. Reporting on the first stage of the project, this paper focuses on the exploration of requirements to design a mobile application and a website.

First guidelines for the design of web and mobile interfaces have been in existence since the early 2000s (Weiss, 2003) and have been updated accordingly to reflect the evolution of technology and the evolution of web and mobile applications. In order to get users to use the application or website, they need to be simple, easy to understand, and present meaningful information to the user (Rubino et al., 2014).

Functionalities for a cultural event app and/or website include those referring to general ones pertinent to any user-friendly app and specific ones related to information on cultural events. General major functionalities identified in the literature include:

• Clear and concise way of displaying the content (Boiano et al., 2012);

• Interactive and quick responding interfaces (ibid.);

• An interface which is easy to understand with few controls (Gena et al., 2013);

• The ability to share information, write reviews and connect, which in turn will make the application more visible for the general public (ibid.); and,

• Utilising user-generated content (ratings, tags, comments, and so on) as a source of information about a user, and for adaptation and recommendation purposes (ibid.).

Our methodological approach involved three major steps. First, an interview with cultural events providers, using contemporary art as a use case, was conducted in order to identify initial needs and requirements for building the two types of interfaces. The interviews were conducted with two representatives of a governmental institution promoting contemporary art in the region, called Nya Småland (in English New Småland, http://www.nyasmaland.se/9/). After the first round of interviews, initial mock-ups of the interfaces were built, followed by another round of interviews to gain insights and feedback on those designs. Themes in the interviews focused on requirements, functionalities, cultural event providers in the different regions and user groups. The interviewees said that it is generally important to make contemporary art galleries and their activities visible to a wider audience through a good-quality app and a web site. It is often hard to reach the public with cultural events; one reason could be lack of money for advertising. The information gathered from the interviews was then used when creating a new round of refined mock-ups.

In conclusion, the interviewees consider a quality app and a website for cultural events on contemporary art an important way in which to increase visibility of cultural events in the region and beyond. In addition, preserving information about past events for future uses is considered important, especially for journalists, politicians and journalists. Future research efforts will focus on developing an interactive prototype and gain feedback from content providers and a range of potential end user groups.

This position paper presents and analyses thecross-sector and cross-disciplinary Digital Humanities Initiativeat Linnaeus University along the axes of its strengths,weaknesses, opportunities and threats. Our long-term vision is tocreate a leading education in this field and to establish a leadingresearch regional centre that combines in novel ways alreadyexisting expertise from different departments and facultiesworking in close collaboration and co-creation with people anddifferent organizations (both public and private sector) from thesurrounding society.

Cultural events are of increasing importance as value creators in our society. They can serve to promote the attractiveness of a region, to increase social interactions and the quality of life and, not the least, to boost local economies. The ultimate purpose of our research is to significantly increase awareness of cultural attractiveness in Småland using innovative web technologies, both for its inhabitants as well as tourists. Reporting on the first stage of the project, this paper focuses on the exploration of requirements to design a mobile application and a website of cultural events in the region with contemporary art as a use case. 

Our methodological approach involved three major steps. First, interviews with cultural event providers, with focus on contemporary art, were conducted in order to identify initial needs and requirements for building the two types of interfaces.The interviews were conducted with two representatives of a governmental institution promoting contemporary art in the region, called Nya Småland (in English New Småland, http://www.nyasmaland.se/9/). After the first round of interviews, initial mock-ups of the interfaces were built, followed by another round of interviews to gain insights and feedback on those designs. Themes in the interviews addressed requirements and functionalities, both from perspectives of cultural event providers as well as those of user groups. The interviewees agreed that it is generally important to make contemporary art galleries and their activities visible to a wider audience through a good-quality app and a web site. It is often hard to reach the public with cultural events; one reason could be lack of money for advertising. 

In conclusion, the interviewees consider a quality app and a website for cultural events on contemporary art an important way in which to increase visibility of cultural events in the region and beyond. In addition, preserving information about past events for future uses is considered important, especially for journalists and politicians. Future research efforts will focus on developing an interactive prototype and acquiring feedback from content providers and a range of potential end user groups.

This paper reports on a panel discussion at the International Digital Humanities (DH) Symposium, held in Växjö, 7-8 November 2016. The panel was organized to carry out a review of different DH initiatives related to current projects, educational initiatives and research and development activities, principally from the following universities: Linnaeus University, Sweden; Aarhus University, Denmark; University of Helsinki, Finland; and the Norwegian University for Science and Technology, Norway. Furthermore, the report proposes the formation of a Nordic hub of DARIAH-EU (Digital Research Infrastructure for the Arts and Humanities) and the challenges and opportunities arising from it. Opportunities include, for example: joint research and innovation efforts, education, expertise and experience exchange, and bringing in international perspectives to address transnational and regional challenges. The following challenges have been identified, namely: student recruitment, job opportunities in an emerging new market for graduates, and funding schemes.

BACKGROUND AND MOTIVATION

The particular exploration of new ways of interactions between society and Information Communication Technologies (ICT) with a focus on the Humanities has the potential to become a key success factor for the values and competitiveness of the Nordic region, having in mind recent EU and regional political discussions in the field of Digital Humanities (European Commission, 2016; Vetenskapsrådet’s Rådet för forskningens infrastrukturer, 2014). Digital Humanities (DH) is a diverse and still emerging field that lies at the intersection of ICT and Humanities, which is being continually formulated by scholars and practitioners in a range of disciplines (see, for example, Svensson & Goldberg, 2015; Gardiner & Musto, 2015; Schreibman, Siemens, & Unsworth, 2016). The following are examples of current areas of fields and topics: text-analytic techniques, categorization, data mining; Social Network Analysis (SNA) and bibliometrics; metadata and tagging; Geographic Information Systems (GIS); multimedia and interactive games; Music Information Retrieval (MIR); interactive visualization and media.

DARIAH-EU (http://dariah.eu), is Europe’s largest initiative on DH, comprising over 300 researchers in 18 countries, thereby opening up opportunities for international collaboration and projects. Among the Nordic countries, Denmark is the full partner with four universities, Copenhagen, Aarhus, Aalborg and University of Southern Denmark (DARIAH-DK). Danish DARIAH-EU activities are facilitated by the national DH Infrastructure DIGHUMLAB, hosted at the DARIAH-DK coordinating institution, Aarhus University. Sweden’s first academic institution, Linnaeus University, joined in May 2016 as a collaborative partner. Finland (University of Helsinki) and Norway (Norwegian University of Science and Technology) also became collaborative partners, in November 2016. The Nordic Hub of DARIAH-EU (DARIAH-Nordic) held its first meeting on 8 November in Växjö, Sweden, in connection with the International Symposium on Digital Humanities (Växjö, 7-8 November, https://lnu.se/en/research/conferences/international-digital-humanities-symposium/).

The Digital Humanities in the Nordic Countries (DHN) organisation was established in 2015 in order to create a venue for interaction and collaboration between the Nordic countries, including the Baltic countries. The ambitions behind the DHN initiative thus largely overlap with the recently formed Nordic Hub of DARIAH-EU. The panel would like to present different perspectives on Nordic contributions to DH as well as the aims of the DARIAH-Nordic and discuss possible joint opportunities and challenges in Nordic DH. With its tradition in supporting the Humanities research and development, Nordic countries may serve as a bastion for (Digital) Humanities. The Nordic Hub of DARIAH-EU and DHN may pave the way forward towards reaching that aim.

A DH ECOSYSTEM OF CROSS-DISCIPLINARY APPROACHES

Mats Malm (previous chair of DHN) will present the visions and ambitions behind DHN and the recently established Centre for Digital Humanities at the University of Gothenburg, which will start a Master programme in Digital Humanities in the autumn of 2017. While both the Centre for Digital Humanities and DHN aim at broad inclusiveness, he will here focus on the use of textual databases for re-examining the history and cultural heritage of the Nordic countries. This implies collaboration on common textual resources and technologies for mining, at the same time as it raises a number of questions concerning cross-disciplinarity and exchange of perspectives and methods.

Mikko Tolonen will present the ongoing developments at the University of Helsinki (and in Finland) regarding Digital Humanities. This includes the recently launched Heldig (Digital Humanities Centre, https://www.helsinki.fi/en/researchgroups/helsinki-digital-humanities) and how it can relate to collaboration in DARIAH-EU. Tolonen will particularly discuss the relationship between the Digital Humanities infrastructure designed to be implemented at the University of Helsinki and how it relates to ongoing grassroot research projects.

Andreas Bergsland will discuss the role that the arts might play within Digital Humanities. As a starting point, he will take the work that has been done at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU): establishing ARTEC, an interdisciplinary task force at the intersection of art and technology. He will argue how some of ARTEC’s initiatives might have both opportunities and challenges partly converging with those of the DH field, but might also expand and enrich current practices. One such initiative, Adressaparken, is a commons area in Trondheim for exploration of sensor-based digital storytelling and an open arena for test and experimentation of new experiences and new digital media. While most DH initiatives in Europe seem to focus on computational humanities projects, Bergsland will explore the unique potential of integrating artistic and creative practices into DH/ARTEC initiatives at NTNU.

Koraljka Golub and Marcelo Milrad will present and analyse the cross-sector and cross-disciplinary Digital Humanities Initiative at Linnaeus University (LNU) along the axes of its strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. Their long-term vision is to: 1) create a leading and innovative educational programme in this field; and, 2) to establish a prominent research regional centre that combines in novel ways already existing expertise from different departments and faculties working in close collaboration and co-creation with people and different organizations (both public and private sector) from the surrounding society. The main goals of this new initiative (launched in February 2016) at the first phase (12-15 months) are twofold; first, to establish the foundations for the creation of a DH educational programme and second, to carry out research and create an innovation centre at the wider region surrounding LNU, encompassing east southern Sweden. A combination of cross-disciplinary, cross-sector and international aspects would provide a solid ground to build a more or less unique international distance Master-level programme. Addressing future societal challenges would be eventually possible, 1) by highly skilled professionals whose education has been markedly enhanced by practice-informed education, and, 2) through joint, cross-sector innovation.

Marianne Ping Huang will present DARIAH-EU related activities in a Danish and European context, focusing on initiatives for cultural creative participation, including born digital cultural data and a presentation of open cross-sectoral innovation with DARIAH-EU Humanities at Scale (2015-2017). DARIAH-EU will set up its new Innovation Board in 2017 and host the first DARIAH-EU Innovation Forum with the Creativity World Forum in Aarhus, November 2017, intersecting with Aarhus European Capital of Culture 2017. DARIAH-EU’s move towards digitally enhanced public humanities, closer collaboration with GLAM (Galleries, Libraries, Archives, Museums) institutions, and public-private innovation will be discussed in light of the scope of DH and the Nordic Hub of DARIAH-EU.

DISCUSSION POINTS: PROSPECTS AND CHALLENGES

The great breadth of cross-disciplinary and organizational initiatives presented above presents significant potential for DH in Nordic countries. Major opportunities lie in the collaborative democratic tradition that supports re-combining already existing expertise and resources encompassing 1) different universities, 2) various disciplines, and 3) the wider community through input from related public and private sectors. These points serve to unite and consolidate already existing expertise in order to create new constellations for collaboration leading to new knowledge and products (expertise, education, research, public and relevant commercial services). Possibilities to collaborate across Nordic countries can take place at a number of levels, including joint research and innovation, education efforts, expertise and experience exchange, bringing in international views to address more regional challenges. Ensuing important value for the general public could be a (re)-affirmation of the value of humanities in particular, and academic practices in general.

Challenges would be discussed in terms of the emerging job market, the low number of students pursuing carriers in humanities at the Master level (e.g., in Sweden), and the fact that DH as a field is still in its infancy, leading to it being quite difficult to get funding and grants to carry out long-term research that sustain our efforts over time. Related to sustainability is the question on how to promote a dialogue and collaboration with potential industrial partners in order to run collaborative projects that go beyond just research. Not the least, epistemological, conceptual and terminological differences in approaches by the different disciplines and sectors may present further challenges and therefore may require additional resources to reach an understanding. Further, while there is a strong collaborative spirit across Nordic countries, there will certainly be administrative issues with cross-university collaboration as the current working structures are based on individual units.

Recent trends indicate an increasing global demand for skilled IT and Engineering professionals. At the same, it has been acknowledged that there is a decline in the number of graduates in the disciplines of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM). The lack of interest in these subjects, which has been addressed by many scholars, has triggered recent efforts in order to investigate novel ways to attract and engage more young students in STEM related subjects. In this paper, we describe an exploratory qualitative research study that has been carried out by combining the subjects of technology and programming in a series of workshops hosting sixty pupils 12–13 years old. Children have used the Makey-Makey kit and the Scratch programming language together with textiles to explore how the combination of these different forms of expression can influence their engagement and interest with STEM related topics. The theoretical ideas used for the design and implementation of this study were guided by flow theory. Data was collected through observations, video recordings, and semi-structured interviews. The initial results of this study indicate that the attributes of attention, motivation, and empowerment shape the levels of engagement to retain and reinforce the flow state by using all these materials.

Computational Thinking (CT) pervasively shares its methods, practices, and dispositions across other disciplines as a new way of thinking about problem-solving. Few studies have been carried out studying CT from an Information Systems (IS) perspective. This study elaborates on how systems thinking (ST), an acknowledged theory in the IS field, bonds to CT to address some well-known common issues related to CT such as reductionism and dogmatism and to supplement the computing nature of CT with behavioral and societal facets involved in its implications. We studied how ST is applied to CT research in the literature. To do so, two primary approaches have been identified that link ST and CT. First, ST is embedded in CT practices meaning that ST is considered as a component of CT. Second, ST and CT are parallelly studied, and ST is considered as a supplementary concept to CT. Correspondingly, we propose a complementary approach that looks at CT from the ST lenses to provide a clearer picture of CT in an educational context. Moreover, we expect this new perspective can help to broaden the development of educational CT concepts and scenarios by including new notions such as framework, interpretation, norms, paradigm, and context.

Many countries have started to integrate Computational Thinking (CT) as an essential 21st century skill into different schools’ STEM related subjects. Despite positive developments in terms of CT integration into schools’ curricula, there are still important issues and challenges to address on how to teach and use programming and CT in the classrooms. As part of our ongoing efforts to introduce and to apply different maker technologies to foster CT, this paper describes the results of an exploratory study aiming at designing and implementing learning activities in informal settings using the Engino® Robotics Platform (ERP) and the BBC micro:bit. We conducted a one-week-long workshop with the participation of 22 children aged 10-15 years old. The constructionist theoretical perspective and the Four P’s Creative Learning theory (projects, peers, passion, and play) were applied for conceptualizing and designing our activities. The initial results of our efforts indicate that firstly, learning contexts enriched by the combination of different maker technologies can help students to develop CT skills; Secondly, remixing learning experiences can bring CT into STEM subjects; and lastly, the design of the proposed workshop and the planned activities serve as the basis of a learning environment that can foster problem solving, creativity, and heart-ware skills when the four P's are taken into account. The current study contributes with empirical knowledge that can be used for the advancement of design practices to promote CT development in connection to STEM-related subjects both in informal and formal learning settings.

Digital competence is a skill associated with the 21- century abilities essential to contribute to today’s and tomorrow’s digital and technical environments. Computational Thinking (CT), which is a thought process for problem-solving, is one of the emerging trends that make up digital competence. In our explorative study, we have used educational robotics with four pre-service teachers during their four- week s placement at different preschools. We applied three distinct and complementary approaches to design and conduct this study: Systems Thinking (ST); Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge; and Computing Pedagogy. Our findings are categorized in two main perspectives: pre-service teachers and children. In the pre-service teachers' perspective, the participants indicated that their educational program lacks specific content and activities related to digital competence, CT, and programming. Despite the initial pre-service teachers’ thoughts on improvement of children's CT concepts, the findings show that CT practices such as collaboration and trial and error were developed. From the children’s perspective, the empirical findings illustrate that digital competence and CT development vary depending on the age of the children; whereas logical thinking and pattern recognition are skills that were present along the whole age range of children (ages 2-6), other CT skills like algorithmic thinking were developed among older children only (aged 5-6). We learned that an ST approach can behelpful, as multiple factors are involved in the practice. It reveals the underlying features of the situation that emerge when components of the system interact with each other.

Extremely catastrophic situations are rare in Sweden, which makes training opportunities important to ensure competence among emergency personnel who should be actively involved during such situations. There is a requirement to conceptualize, design, and implement an interactive learning environment that allows the education, training and assessment of these catastrophic situations more often, and in different environments, conditions and places. Therefore, to address these challenges, a prototype system has been designed and developed, containing immersive, interactive 360-degrees videos that are available via a web browser. The content of these videos includes situations such as simulated learning scenes of a trauma team working at the hospital emergency department. Various forms of interactive mechanisms are integrated within the videos, to which learners should respond and act upon. The prototype was tested during the fall term of 2017 with 17 students (working in groups), from a specialist nursing program, and four experts. The video recordings of these study sessions were analyzed and the outcomes are presented in this paper. Different group interaction patterns with the proposed tool were identified. Furthermore, new requirements for refining the 360-degrees interactive video, and the technical challenges associated with the production of this content, have been found during the study. The results of our evaluation indicate that the system can provide the students with novel interaction mechanisms, to improve their skills, and it can be used as a complementary tool for the teaching and learning methods currently used in their education process.

Extreme catastrophe situations are rare in Sweden, which makes training opportunities important to secure the competence among emergency personnel that should be actively involved during those situations. There is a need to conceptualize, design and implement interactive learning environments that allow to educate, train and assess these catastrophe situations more often and in different settings, conditions and places. In order to address these challenges, a prototype system has been designed and developed containing immersive interactive 360 degrees educational videos that are available via a web browser. The content of these videos includes simulated learning scenes of a trauma team working at the hospital emergency department. Different types of interaction mechanisms are integrated within the videos in which learners should act upon and respond. The prototype was tested during the fall term 2017 with 17 students from the specialist nursing program, and four medical experts. These activities were assessed in order to get new insights into issues related to the proposed approach and feedback connected to the usefulness, usability and learnability of the suggested prototype. The initial outcomes of the evaluation indicate that the system can provide students with novel interaction mechanisms to improve their skills and it can be applied as a complementary tool to the methods used currently in their education.

Data mining approaches have proven to be successful in improving learners’ interaction with educational computer games. Despite the potential of predictive modelling in providing timely adaptive learning and gameplay experience, there is a lack of research on the early prediction of learners’ performance in educational games. In this research, we propose an early predictive modelling approach, called GameEPM, to estimate learners’ final scores in an educational game for promoting computational thinking. Specifically, the GameEPM approach models the sequence of learners’ actions and then uses a limited sequence of the actions to predict the final score of the game for each learner. The findings from our initial trials show that our approach can accurately and robustly estimate the learners’ performance at the early stages of the game. Using less than 50% of learners’ action sequences, the cross-validated deep learning model achieves a squared correlation higher than 0.8 with a relative error of less than 8%, outperforming a range of regression models like linear regression, random forest, neural networks, and support vector machines. An additional experiment showed that the validated deep learning model can also achieve high performance while tested on an independent game dataset, showing its applicability and robustness in real-world cases. Comparing the results with traditional machine learning methods revealed that, in the validation and application phases, up to 0.30 and 0.35 R2 gain is achieved in favor of the deep learning model, respectively. Finally, we found that while the lengths of action sequences influence the predictive power of the traditional machine learning methods, this effect is not substantial in the deep learning model

The recently finished EU project JuxtaLearn aimed at supporting students' learning of STEM subjects through the creation, exchange and discussion of learner-made videos. The approach is based on an eight-stage activity cycle in the beginning of which teachers identify specific "stumbling blocks" for a given theme (or "tricky topic"). In JuxtaLearn, video comments were analyzed to extract information on the learners' acquisition and understanding of domain concepts, especially to detect problems and misconceptions. These analyses were based on mapping texts to networks of concepts ("network-text analysis") as a basis for further processing. In this article we use data collected from recent field trials to shed light on what is actually discussed when students share their own videos in science domains. Would the aspect of video-making dominate over activities related to a deepening of domain understanding? Our findings indicate that there are different ways of balancing both aspects and interventions will be needed to bring forth the desired blend.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effects of a ubiquitous problem-based learning system (UPBLS) on students' question-raising performance in field inquiry activities. An experiment was conducted on an elementary school natural science course. A total of 43 sixth and fifth grade elementary students divided into experienced and novice groups participated in the field observation activities with on-line discussion over a period of seven months to evaluate the changes in their questioning ability. Moreover, a rubric for evaluating the students' questioning ability was developed and validated. Supported by UPBLS, the students collected the required wetland ecology data in three wetland field observation activities. The experimental results show that the students' questioning abilities significantly improved during the learning process. Moreover, it was found that both the experienced and the novice students had similar progress trends, implying that the proposed approach is helpful for improving the questioning abilities of students with different levels of prior knowledge.

One major challenge the educational community is facing relates to how to effectively integrate computational thinking (CT) concepts and ideas into a particular school curriculum. Acquiring CT-skills by means of STEM offers rich opportunities within students ́ education which may lead to learning gains. Previous research has shown that, to maximize the appeal and potential of CT learning environments, a precondition must be set first. The materials used must invite problem-based, inquiry-based and self-discovery learning, must be used without creating misconceptions and, above all, must give students the opportunity to acquire knowledge that can be directly transferred to everyday practice in an accessible manner. All the above puts demands on teachers who carry out learning and teaching in these environments. The EU funded TACTIDE project has tried to incorporate relevant curricular components into a coherent task, implementing assignments and challenges across different subjects and curricula of three different European countries. Based on the analysis of each national curricula, common topics have been identified and sub-scenarios have been developed. These sub-scenarios have been conceived to promote the integration between the topics mediated by CT. To achieve this objective, a greenhouse scenario has been conceptualized and designed towards teaching CT, by the use of microcontrollers such as the BBC micro :b it and the Calliope Mini, as an overarching STEM-topic. Using available sub-scenarios, a Moodle-course for teachers was developed for daily school activities to which other subjects in the core curriculum were interconnected in order to integrate CT skills and abilities. Scalability across different school levels and heterogeneous groups of learners, especially focusing prior knowledge, have been considered important design elements.

The term Computational Thinking is closely related to efforts connected to teach a systematic and well-structured way of problem solving that includes a set of tools and techniques used in Computer Science. While substantial research in this field has shown promising outcomes concerning distinct intervention programs and teaching initiatives, the term Computational Thinking itself requires to be revised in order to get a wider consensus about its meaning and purpose. This paper contributes to the ongoing quest concerning the definition of the term by starting with a fundamental perspective on computational theory and corresponding concepts in order to describe the theoretical building blocks of a systematic view to further elaborate on an approach for teaching and learning about Computational Thinking. Additionally, based on this foundational effort, more advanced concepts are presented and discussed in order to better understand this domain. Finally, the paper identifies and discusses a set of relevant challenges taking a cognitive psychology perspective on Computational Thinking.

Nowadays blogs are regarded as tools for communication as well as an important source for spreading information in almost every subject. In recent years, school teachers have started to take advantage of this technology in order to support their educational practices. In this paper we focus on the data generated by a project involving more than 50 Swedish schools where teachers and pupils are posting content related to their astronomy class activities in their blogs with the aims of improving the teaching process. The challenge here is to find suitable methods to explore all these blogs in an interactive and discovery fashion. Our proposed solution to this challenge is to provide a visual and interactive tool for the exploration of blog corpora by teachers, pupils, project managers and parents.

Changes in usage patterns of mobile services are continuously influenced by the enhanced features of mobile devices and software applications. Current cross-platform frameworks that allow the implementation of advanced mobile applications have triggered recent developments in relation to end-user mobile services and mobile mashups creation. Inspired by these latest developments, this paper presents our current development related to a cross-platform software system that enables the creation of mobile mashups within an end-user programming environment.

This study explores the use of mobile games to support informal learning. The results presented in this paper are based on interviews conducted with five Swedish teenage girls out of a total of thirty who participated in a summer course on technology and game design. Together with the researchers and in collaboration with the local orienteering club, the girls have been co-designing a game about local history. The game includes the combination of physical and intellectual activities together with the use of mobile and GPS devices. The goal of this study is to gain insights for the continuous evolvement of the mobile game based on the interaction with the players. The findings are more in the line of formulating relevant questions rather than providing answers in order to gain insights about how to use mobile games to support novel ways of learning. This study is the first out of three we plan to conduct during the spring 2008; including trials with teacher educators and teacher students.

The total population of GPS-enabled location-based services (LBS) subscribers is constantly increasing. These GPS-enabled devices produce a wide range of media content (e.g., text/audio notes, pictures, or videos) enhanced by geo-tagged information. This fact poses a challenge regarding how to store and retrieve it and opens new research opportunities for visualizing this type of data. The overall aim of our current research is to develop novel approaches and methods for visualizing the content of these documents that will be placed in maps using GPS-coordinates as well as to visualize the semantical, temporal, and spatial relations between the documents themselves. We combined different visualization and interaction techniques, such as glyph-based techniques and visual clustering, to analyze the produced data. Our prototype application, called GNV System (GeoNotes Visualization System), demonstrates the interplay of different interaction techniques and components as well as their functionality.

Nowadays, there is a growing variety of mobile devices and online video content that could be used to support a variety of pedagogical strategies used for different cross-context learning scenarios. In order to take advantage of these developments, this paper presents an approach that allows to integrate learning material represented as videos in mobile learning scenarios, mainly by the implementation of a mobile client that allows to consume learning material represented as small chunks of video content. The application of these ideas potentially provides new educational opportunities to support learning across different contexts. Additionally, the videos consumed by the mobile client allow the integration of interactive elements like questions that could be answered by the learner while consuming the video or additional comments that could be provided to the learner. The rationale for the integration of the interactive parts in the video is to increase learners´ engagement and therefore also to increase their involvement and participation in order to generate an active learning experience.

In recent years, hardware for the production and consumption of virtual reality content has reached level of prices that make it affordable to everyone. Accordingly, schools and universities are showing increased interest in implementations of virtual reality technologies for supporting their innovative educational activities. Hence, this paper presents a flexible architecture for supporting the development of virtual reality learning scenarios conveniently deployed for educational purposes. We also suggest an example of such educational scenario for medical purposes deployable with the suggested architecture. In addition, we developed and used a questionnaire answered by 17 medical students in order to derive additional requirements for refining such scenarios. Then, we present these efforts while aiming at deployments usable also for additional domains. Finally, we summarize and mention aspects we will address in our coming efforts while deploying such activities.