International Journal of Child-Computer Interaction最新文献

Interactive speech technologies such as Siri and Amazon Echo allow people to search for information via speech. These systems generally take a single spoken statement or query as input, which may not be enough to fully capture the user’s information need. Therefore, multi-turn conversations have been proposed to establish more detail. A conversational approach can particularly benefit children who experience more difficulty formulating precise queries. We carried out a study with 32 children comparing multi-turn conversations with single-shot (or Query-Response) interactions. We compared the descriptions of the information needs, as well as children’s search experience. Findings indicate that more elaborate descriptions of children’s information needs (more keywords) were gathered through conversational search, leading to more focused search results compared with the Query-Response search. Further analysis of children’s responses yielded insights into their preferences for conversing with speech-based interfaces. This paper also offers design and methodological recommendations for conversational agents that support children’s information search.

Digital musical instruments (DMIs) offer significant potential for use in special educational needs (SEN) schools. DMIs can provide access to contemporary musical experiences that align with students’ life experiences, as well as active music making for individuals experiencing various barriers to the use of conventional musical instruments. Currently, there is no design framework for DMIs that addresses the specific context of SEN schools. However, research suggests the importance of prioritizing the context of use over the technology in design approaches. To address this gap, we integrate the results of a year-long development project in a SEN school into a social-ecological design framework. We extend an existing DMI design framework to address the unique environment of SEN schools. Our proposed framework serves as a planning and evaluation tool, providing a reference point for future design projects. It helps to determine which stakeholders to involve, define their roles, and it includes additional aspects to address in the goal definition and design process. Our findings highlight the importance of involving multiple stakeholders in the design process, including students, teachers, and assistants. In this regard, we identified a potential tension between stakeholders’ personal interests and their role as advocates for the musicians, which can have both positive and negative effects on the design process. Our research underscores the need for stakeholders to understand the use of technology, pedagogical strategies for effectively using the instruments with individual students while meeting their social-emotional support needs, and musical knowledge, including non-classical music genres. We suggest that the necessary technical, pedagogical, and musical knowledge (TPACK) be inscribed into the instruments themselves and supplemented by educational materials and teacher training. Furthermore, our study emphasizes that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to the design process, design decisions, and pedagogical strategies for different use cases.

Makerspaces and Fab Labs are growing in number all over the world, holding the potential to empower children and adolescents. They form an important pathway to provide young people with access to digital manufacturing technologies while fostering self-determination, collaboration, and creativity. We explore how the engagement in Fab Lab based leisure maker activities may be promoted, taking into account both the perspectives of adolescents and the potential of surrounding systems. For this, we conducted focus group discussions with N = 61 non-maker, adolescent girls and boys from 6th to 9th grade, to scrutinize hindering and promoting factors of their engagement in leisure maker activities, and to explore their preferences regarding the involvement of parents, teachers and peers while considering the ecological sustainability of the activities. A reflexive thematic analysis identified the hindering and promoting factors across different aspects of maker activities such as the purpose, location and setting, content, and learning processes. Implications for the promotion and design of maker activities, as well as implications for further research, are discussed.

Child Computer Interaction (CCI) research stresses the importance of nurturing children's designer and maker identities; children should be growing up as future technology protagonists, who are driving technology development and critically reflecting on it. While the importance of designer and maker skills has been emphasized in the CCI literature, studies focusing on children's identity development are scarcer. This paper starts to fill this research gap. We develop a theoretical framework on children's technology protagonist identity based on multidisciplinary literature base. Based on pre- and post-interview dataset from a long-term critical design and making project with several school-classes, we identify divergent aspects of protagonist identity among children: they position themselves variably as technology users, designers, makers, critics and activists. Different designer and maker identity trajectories are also identified. The paper contributes to CCI research on identity and CCI discourse on technology protagonists and children's technology education.

This paper elaborates on a series of Child–Computer Interaction courses conducted at three universities in Germany. It emphasizes the integration of hands-on activities and a significant project development component, allowing students to practically apply and enhance their CCI knowledge. The article details the course structure, students’ engagement, and the evolution of content, underlining the importance of experiential learning in CCI education. Additionally, it offers reflections on the outcomes and lessons learned, serving as a resource for university lecturers looking to incorporate similar courses in their curriculum.

This study examines how eight-year-old students engage in teacher-guided digital online reading during internet searches for specific information. The research focuses on the students' digital literacy and their ability to evaluate sources and decode complex text. We have used Luke and Freebody's four resources model and the concept of sourcing as theoretical underpinning. The study had a descriptive and exploratory approach. The study involved 17 eight-year-old students from a school with a one-to-one tablet policy. The students were divided into small groups to encourage interaction. Data were collected through audio and screen recordings and were multimodally transcribed to provide a detailed account of the children's internet search interactions. The study reveals that while students demonstrated proficiency in using digital tools and navigating the internet, they often struggled to assess source credibility and critically interpret the information they encountered. Furthermore, the study highlights the importance of guiding young students in navigating the complex media landscape, emphasizing the need to enhance their knowledge of different types of sources and the categories of individuals producing content. The researchers found that students' prior knowledge, such as familiarity with printed books, played a role in how they approached online reading, sometimes leading to difficulties in adapting their strategies for digital formats. In conclusion, this research underscores the need for explicit instruction and collaborative efforts in the classroom to develop students' digital reading skills and their ability to critically assess online sources, thus bridging the gap between technological proficiency and effective digital literacy. The findings offer insights for educators in preparing young readers for digital literacy and effective online information evaluation.

The complexity of sustainability challenges has exposed the limitations of solutions relying on atomistic disciplinary knowledge and linear thinking, evidencing the need for embracing holistic and transdisciplinary mindsets. This paper builds on the assumption that systems thinking can contribute to approaching sustainability issues. In this study we investigate how to nurture systems thinking among young people in and through developing socially sustainable business ideas that utilize Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies. To this end, we analyze 21 9th grade students' contributions during a work practice week at a Finnish university, during which they were introduced to AI, sustainability, and business thinking and invited to generate business ideas for sustainable innovations that use AI. Our multimodal analysis examines students’ business ideation process and outputs to identify various elements present in the working process that contribute to the development of sustainable AI from a systemic perspective. Based on our findings, we propose combining business innovation with sustainability as a strategy to develop learners' systems thinking.

As a response to a recent call for developing teaching materials and sharing examples of good teaching practice in Child-Computer Interaction (CCI), this paper describes previous experiences from incorporating an existing CCI curriculum into an Interaction Design course, that is mandatory for third year Bachelor students enrolled in Communication Design program. This article is an attempt to reflect on the four-year experience constructively and critically in teaching and progressively developing an existing CCI course. The paper describes key elements to teaching how to carry out a theory-oriented and project-based design course formulated around the challenge of interaction design with and for children. As the paper reflects on previous experiences, the contribution of this paper is including formal procedural research ethics into student project proposals as part of core principles and giving students the possibility to manage a group work on several iterations for the same project throughout the semester. I discuss some of the reflections on the teaching experience for interaction design and children have posed to me as a CCI researcher and university teacher and outline a set of lessons learned that I think would shed a light for taking ethical approval for student project works in future CCI teaching practices.

We present a case study in which we seek to investigate what motivates interaction design students to take a small elective course in Child–Computer Interaction (CCI) and what we can offer as a ‘tasting menu’, a small sample of emerging research specialties, to awaken their interest for CCI. The study clarifies what motivated students to take the elective course and what their learning expectations were before the start of the course. We then prototyped and piloted a research-based ‘tasting menu’ type of course and conducted a formative and summative evaluation with the students. The contribution of this paper is a set of recommendations for onboarding new talent to the research field by teaching CCI in a modular fashion to interaction design students, based on students’ and teachers’ experiences.

Current trends demonstrate that researchers and K-12 educators are moving towards integrating computational thinking (CT) concepts outside of the computer science (CS) classroom (Lee et al., 2020). However, one of the present challenges includes a lack of engaging learning content and instruction for translating computational concepts that non-CS instructors can bring into their classrooms. Our research team developed the Grove-Blockly platform, a website that employs block-based programming and physical computing elements with simulations to support CT learning and IoT practices. We designed a 5-day workshop with the National Writing Project for students to engage in STEAM learning through making and creative writing. By examining students’ learning through the processes and outcomes of making, coding, and creative writing, we aim to better understand how learning occurs at the intersections of making, writing, and computing. The findings show students’ positive learning outcomes of CT and physical computing from the workshop. Mainly, students gained a deeper understanding of IoT elements (e.g., sensors, actuators) through the process of making and creative writing. This work provides empirical evidence on how students learn CT and computational practices through making and creative writing. Finally, we discuss how the engagement of STEAM practices supports and empowers students’ learning of CT and physical computing through the creation of e-crafts by students.