SIG WELL Design Challenge “Envisioning Wearable Enhanced Learning” at EC-TEL 2015
CfP: Design Challenge
“Envisioning Wearable Enhanced Learning”
1. Submit your abstract & design sample by 30th June 2015 !
To enter this EC-TEL 2015 Design Challenge, submit a 500 abstract (approx. 2 pages) as PDF via EasyChair* and if possible (but not obligatory) design samples of own work (e.g. mock-ups, videos, prototypes) for example (a) via our YouTube channel, or (b) by creating design requirements using the Requirements Bazaar, or (c) by simply pasting a link to your design sample in the abstract. Design samples may be submitted as either PDFs or links to a web site. Design samples help the reviewers to understand the solution, the design approach and visual presentation skills of participants. Submissions may include work from past, current and future projects or may just represent creative ideas independent of any project scheme or research program. We are looking forward to your submission!
Important dates
- 01 May 2015 – Design challenge opens
- 30 June 2015 – Submission of summaries and design samples
- 10 July 2015 – Notification of challenge participants
- 15 and 18 September – EC-TEL 2015 Workshop
*Link to EasyChair: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=wellectel2015
2 Challenge Theme: Wearable Enhanced Learning (WELL)
Wearable technologies – such as smart watches, smart fitness trackers, smart glasses, smart glasses, smart objects, smart earbuds, or smart garments – are beginning to transform personal communications and offer new opportunities for learning and interaction. Since wearable technologies are likely to shape the future relationship between humans and computers, it is essential to look beyond the current perspective of how wearable technologies may enhance learning in the future. According to the recent forecasts (e.g. Cisco, Gardner, Deloitte) for 2018, portable technologies, including mobile and wearable devices, will form the basis of personal communications with the global wearable device data traffic increasing by over 60%. Wearable user interfaces are just starting to transform user experience, improving integration of technologies into everyday life, education, and work.
Wearable Enhanced Learning (WELL) is emerging to be a transformational step in the transition from the desktop age through the mobile age to the age of wearable, ubiquitous computing.
This session called “Envisioning Wearable Enhanced Learning” is a design challenge which aim at arriving at new and innovative designs enhancing learning through wearable technologies. Participants of this design challenge are encouraged to rethink the future of learning once wearable user interfaces are widely and easily available for any learner. Since most of wearable technologies available on the market today lack mechanism for providing meaningful learning experiences, the grand challenge is to invent designs focusing on meaningful user engagement.
3 Challenge aims and participation
The aim of this design challenge is to imagine and design new ways to enhance learning through wearable technologies. Participants are encouraged to rethink the future of learning once wearable user interfaces are widely and easily available for any learner.
- What if you could imagine new ways for people to learn, connect to each other and embed their learning in truly situated contexts with the help of wearable technologies?
- What could people learn and how this learning would be different because of wearable technologies?
- What could be measured and/or shared with others?
- What new relationships between the learners and their environment could wearable technologies facilitate?
- What problems wearable technologies could solve?
- What new problems are likely to emerge?
What matters in the challenge are diverse perspectives on the theme of wearable technology-enhanced learning and how participants approach the process of designing a WELL solution.
4 Focus points and vision
The focus of this design challenge is on imagining the future of wearable-technology enhanced learning (WELL). What is of value is imaginative approach, breaking the limits of the current state of the art and going beyond possible constraints such as financial or technological. The key is that participants devise their own unique WELL solutions.
Focus points include but aren’t limited to:
- Internet of things and data-driven approaches. What data could be gathered and shared to improve the quality of learning? How could this data support different forms of learning (e.g. community-based, peer-driven)? What are the potentials and challenges? From which devices?
- User experience and user engagement. What methods of enhancing user experience and user engagement may be effective for wearable-technology enhanced learning? What engagement metrics may be used in WELL?
- Affective Learning and emotional states. What are the new opportunities to measure, share, or even induce different emotional states through wearable technologies? Could emotion-mapping unlock new learning opportunities? What are the potentials and challenges?
- Safety, ergonomics, and physical well-being. What are the new ways to measure and share information about physical well-being? How could personalization of real-time data support learning?
- Error prevention. How can we apply error proofing to learning by experience? What are the effective ways to detect and predict problematic situations? What can be done to prevent them?
Our vision is to design wearable technology-enhanced learning to enhance learner engagement and motivation. Most of wearable technologies available on the market lack mechanism for providing meaningful learning. We believe there is a chance to invent solutions with wearable technologies, which enable engaging learning opportunities.
6 Challenge organisers
This design challenge is organised by the founders and the chairs of the EATEL Special Interest Group on Wearable Technology-Enhanced Learning (SIG WELL) – Ilona Buchem, Ralf Klamma and Fridolin Wild. SIG WELL aims at stimulating common research on wearable-technology enhanced learning in the area of TEL. This Special Interest Group especially aims to establish a dialogue between education and training organisations, vendors of TEL solutions, and research organisations in order to proactively promote the use of learning technologies and adequate methodologies in diverse environments (such as education, manufacturing, health). The SIG will seek to bring the different stakeholders together in order to enhance knowledge exchange, sharing and cooperation in this area.
- Homepage: http://ea-tel.eu/sig/well/
- Google Group: https://groups.google.com/d/forum/sig-well
- EC-TEL 2015 Workshops: http://ectel2015.httc.de/index.php?id=714
Ilona Buchem, Beuth University of Applied Sciences Berlin
Ralf Klamma, RWTH Aachen University
Fridolin Wild, Open University (UK)
