Call for Makers: Prototypes and Experiences with Wearable Enhanced Learning (WELL) @ EC-TEL 2016

Contributions to WELL2016

1. SIG WELL – Introduction – Ilona Buchem, Fridolin Wild, Ralf Klamma
2. WeKit: Wearable Experience for Knowledge Intensive Training – Ralf Klamma & Fridolin Wild
3. DevOpsUse for Large-Scale Social Requirements Engineering – Ralf Klamma & Milos Kravcik
4. Wearables for Healthy Ageing – Ilona Buchem
5. BBC micro:bit Maker-Boards – István Koren
6. Tactile Feedback – Jazz Rasool, Carl Smith & Jazz Rasool
7. Kinemata – motion memory enhanced – Jana Pejoska
8. Smart Medical Simulation Team Training – Brenda Bannan
9. The TCBL Project – Paul Lefrere, Fridoln Wild & Jesse Marsh
10. Cognitive behavioural therapy training with wearables – Mikhail Fominykh

Introduction

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. 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 is dedicated to “Prototypes and Experiences with Wearable Enhanced Learning”. As a Call for Makers this session aims at attracting and showcasing interesting work done both on the hardware and software side of the Wearable Enhanced Learning. We would especially like to encourage researchers embracing the Open Source Hardware and Software Design to share their ideas for prototypes and/or existing prototypes and/or first application experiences with the research and development community. Participants of this session are encouraged to show-off projects, to demo or discuss how prototypes were made and inspire other participants to add ideas about how to further develop first prototypes and apply them in real-life settings to enhance learning. We invite all makers and researchers including individuals, project groups, non-for-profit and commercial. The special focus is on providing meaningful learning experiences and enhancing learner engagement in wearable  enhanced learning settings.

Theme

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. Wearable technologies – such as smart watches, smart fitness trackers, smart glasses, smart glasses, smart objects, smart earbuds, or smart garments – are breaking the established ground in the realm of consumer electronics. At the same time wearable devices offer new opportunities for learning and interaction. These devices are body-worn, equipped with sensors and conveniently integrate into leisure and work-related activities including physical movements of their users. 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. 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.

At the EC-TEL 2015 the EA-TEL Special Interest Group on Wearable-technology Enhanced Learning (SIG WELL) organised a first Design Challenge titled “Envisioning Wearable  Enhanced Learning”. Building upon the first projects and prototypes introduced last year,  this year’s session will focus on both hardware and software designs, especially embracing Open Source Hardware and Software, as well as on application experiences and user studies in different learning contexts.

Aims

This session is dedicated to “Prototypes and Experiences with Wearable Enhanced Learning”. As a Call for Makers this session aims at attracting and showcasing interesting work done both on the hardware and software side of the Wearable Enhanced Learning. We would especially like to encourage researchers embracing the Open Source Hardware and Software Design to share their ideas for prototypes and/or existing prototypes and/or first application experiences with the research and development community. Participants of this session are encouraged to show-off projects, to demo or discuss how prototypes were made and inspire other participants to add ideas about how to further develop first prototypes and apply them in real-life settings to enhance learning. We invite all makers and researchers  including individuals, project groups, non-for-profit and commercial. The special focus is on providing meaningful learning experiences and enhancing learner engagement in wearable  enhanced learning settings.
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 enhanced learning and how participants approach the process of designing a WELL solution.

Submissions

Participants are requested to submit a 800 word summary (approx. 4 A4 pages) including images and/or links to samples of own hardware/software design work (e.g. mock-ups, prototypes). Design samples help the reviewers to understand the solution and the design approach. Submissions may include work from past, current and future projects or may just represent creative ideas independent of any project scheme or research program. Submissions will uploaded as PDFs to the EasyChair submission system.

The submission Web site for SIG-WELL-ECTEL2016 is https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=sigwellectel2016

Important dates

01 May 2016 – Submission opens
01 June 2016 – Submission ends
15 June 2016 – Notification of authors

Organisers

This session is organised by the founders and the chairs of the EATEL Special Interest Group on Wearable 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

Ilona Buchem, Beuth University of Applied Sciences Berlin

Ilona Buchem is Professor for Digital Media and Diversity at Beuth University of Applied Sciences Berlin. Her research interests include emerging technologies for learning, including mobile and wearable technologies. Homepage: ibuchem.wordpress.com

Ralf Klamma, RWTH Aachen University

Ralf Klamma leads the research group “advanced community information systems” (ACIS) at the information systems chair, RWTH Aachen University. He is coordinating and working in major EU projects for Technology Enhanced Learning (Learning Layers, WEKIT, SAGE and VIRTUS).

Fridolin Wild, Oxford Brookes University (UK)

Dr Fridolin Wild leads the Performance Augmentation Lab (PAL) of Oxford Brookes University. With the research and development of the lab, Fridolin seeks to close the dissociative gap between abstract knowledge and its practical application, researching radically new forms of linking directly from knowing something ‘in principle’ to applying that knowledge ‘in practice’ and speeding its refinement and integration into polished performance.