There are currently approximately 20.2 million children in Nigeria out of school, exacerbated by ongoing conflicts demonstrating an ongoing need for Emergency Remote Education (ERE). Despite this, Nigeria remains an under-explored context and the specific challenges of providing ERE there are not fully understood. This paper reports on a mixed methods study of teachers experiences of enacting ERE in Nigeria in April 2020 with a questionnaire (n=374), diary study and follow up interviews (n=20) carried out. The contributions of the paper are two-fold; firstly, an in-depth study of ERE in Nigeria, demonstrating that teachers used WhatsApp as a tool of practical necessity, configured it to create a continued sense of place, and continued to enact largely traditional pedagogies. Secondly, through reflection on these findings, we offer initial design considerations for technology use in ERE in low resource settings before outlining continuing design challenges for HCI researchers in this context.
doi.org/10.1145/3613904.3641921
Machine learning (ML) tools with graphical user interfaces (GUI) are facing demand from novice users who do not have the background of their underlying concepts. These tools are frequently complex and pose unique challenges in terms of interaction and comprehension by novice users. There is yet to be an established set of usability heuristics to guide and assess GUI ML tool design. To address this gap, in this paper, we extend Nielsen's heuristics for evaluating GUI ML Tools through a set of empirical evaluations. To validate the proposed heuristics, user testing was conducted by novice users on a prototype that reflects those heuristics. Based on the results of the evaluations, our new heuristics set improves upon existing heuristics in the context of ML tools. It can serve as a resource for practitioners designing and evaluating these tools.
doi.org/10.1145/3613904.3642087
Immigrant English Language Learners (ELLs) who are learning the majority language in a new country are required to participate in the informal language space on a daily basis to gain access to essential economic and social resources. In contrast to formal language spaces, which extensive literature has researched, exploration of informal language spaces, which present a number of linguistic and psychological challenges without scaffolded support, remains limited. In this work, we conduct a qualitative interview study to explore the use of support tools to facilitate participation in daily life for ELLs, investigating the efficacy of these tools, obstacles encountered, and perceptions of what defines positive and negative experiences. We aim to contribute a deeper, more nuanced understanding of the experience of language use in practical scenarios for ELLs and present a set of actionable considerations for designers working with ELLs that prioritize their linguistic, affective, and social needs.
doi.org/10.1145/3613904.3642236
Surgery is primarily taught through mentoring, where an expert mentor supervises a mentee performing surgery, taking over when necessary. Telementoring systems aim to provide mentees with access to remote mentors, but the physical distance between mentors and mentees poses unique challenges to surgical training. We investigate the underlying needs leading to takeovers in onsite mentoring and assess mentors' ability to fulfill address these needs remotely using existing telestration tools, namely pointers and drawings on shared views. Through interviews and workshops with expert surgeons, we find that (1) mentors take over to convey gestures related to instrument placement, tissue displacement, force, and movement, (2) mentors gather information about location of tissue, equipment, and instruments, as well as gesture constraints, and (3) surgeons judge telestration insufficient for these needs. Based on this gap between onsite mentoring practices and telementoring tools, we discuss novel tools to address these needs and their evaluation.
doi.org/10.1145/3613904.3641978
Maintaining a proper body posture during interactions with educational tablet applications is crucial for children's physical well-being and task performance, especially considering digital tablet's increasingly pervasive use in classrooms. In this work we propose WriteUpRight, an interaction system for children's self-regulation of posture while writing on a tablet. The system relies on slowly deforming visual stimuli appearing on the tablet screen and compares two posture correction strategies: the Error Amplification method seeks to induce self-correction by amplifying the postural error, while the Error Correction method seeks to unobtrusively nudge the child towards the correct posture. Through a formative design and a user study with 42 children, we demonstrate the effectiveness of our solution and the advantages of the Error Amplification method with respect to the Error Correction method. The system shows potential for helping children maintain a proper head-screen distance and head roll angle during reading and writing tasks on tablets.
doi.org/10.1145/3613904.3642457
Significant investment of time and effort for language learning has prompted a growing interest in microlearning. While microlearning requires frequent participation in 3-to-10-minute learning sessions, the recent widespread of smart speakers in homes presents an opportunity to expand learning opportunities by proactively providing microlearning in daily life. However, such proactive provision can distract users. Despite the extensive research on proactive smart speakers and their opportune moments for proactive interactions, our understanding of opportune moments for more-than-one-minute interactions remains limited. This study aims to understand user perceptions and opportune moments for more-than-one-minute microlearning using proactive smart speakers at home. We first developed a proactive microlearning service through six pilot studies (n=29), and then conducted a three-week field study (n=28). We identified the key contextual factors relevant to opportune moments for microlearning of various durations, and discussed the design implications for proactive conversational microlearning services at home.
doi.org/10.1145/3613904.3642778
HCI researchers are increasingly interested in the evaluation of educational technologies in context, yet acknowledge that challenges remain regarding the logistical, material and methodological constraints of this approach to research. Through the analysis of the authors’ contributed thematic research vignettes, the following article exposes the practical realities of evaluating educational technologies in school settings. This includes insights into the planning stages of evaluation, the relationship between the researcher and the school environment, and the impact of the school context on the data collection process. We conclude by providing an orientation for the design of HCI educational technology research undertaken in school contexts, providing guidance such as considering the role of modular research design, clarifying goals and expectations with school partners, and reporting researcher positionality.