International Journal of Child-Computer Interaction最新文献

In this paper we contribute seven design opportunities for future digital health platforms, like Private Social Networks (PSNs), focused on supporting the (un)met mental health and socioemotional needs of children ($\sim$8-12 years old) and their supporting adults (parents and teachers) in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. These were derived from the thematic analysis of a two-phase co-design study with children, their parents, and their teachers (Phase 1), and employees at our industry partner Curatio.me (Phase 2). Our thematic findings contribute understanding about the types of experiences children, families and educators have had, and open the conversation around designing digital health platforms that can support mental health and socioemotional wellbeing in children and their supporting adults. Through individualized tracking, social capabilities, and secure, vetted sources of support, PSNs offer unique opportunities to (1) provide children with a safe space to share, reflect and come together, (2) extend existing practices related to SEL across children’s changing contexts and developmental needs, (2) support an integrated digital ecosystem of care across different stakeholders that allows for engagement and targeted interventions, and (3) support niche or marginalized communities in gaining access to relevant, meaningful and identity-specific support that may not otherwise be available.

This paper presents and explores an analytical, research-based model for computational empowerment in K-9 education. The model, entitled DORIT (“Do your Own Research In Technology”), contributes to Child–Computer Interaction research by providing scaffolding for teachers to create teaching activities emphasising a critical inquiry approach to computational empowerment. We present the DORIT model, its research base and report from a study where 18 in-service teachers took part in codesigning and testing lesson plans based on the model for grades 1, 6, 7 and 9. The lesson plans serve as proof-of-concept demonstrations of how the DORIT model can scaffold teaching activities. We further analyse how the teachers used the model in practice, and report from post-interviews with the teachers regarding their experiences with the model. We conclude the paper by discussing the potentials and challenges of the DORIT model to support computational empowerment in future CCI research.

This paper sheds light on 3–5-year-old children’s enactments of computational empowerment (CE) in activities with computational thinking (CT). CT is widely elaborated on as a universal problem-solving approach and a skill set necessary for thriving in today’s digitized societies. Scholars claim that CT for all should be ensured from an early age, and several studies develop and examine age-appropriate technological tools, as well as pedagogical approaches, for young children’s learning of CT. Based on 1.5 years of co-designing for children’s situated CT in two Danish kindergartens, the present study conducts a socioculturally informed analysis of video-observed interactions between children and educational robots. The findings display how children and robots engage in interactions that transcend children’s mastery of CT in any narrow sense. This is examined as situated enactments of CE; as children’s critical and informed decisions regarding the roles that technologies, in this case educational robots, can play in their institutionally situated social lives. The paper concludes that children’s various enactments of CE deserve scholarly and professional attention, both as an important prerequisite for, and as a necessary limitation to, the implementation of CT in kindergartens.

Initiative or control authority is an important challenge in smart environments, including smart homes. One of the solutions to this challenge is End-user Development (EUD). The EUD refers to defining customized rules by users to determine their desired behaviour and preferences in the format of trigger-action or event-condition-action for their smart home. But EUD rules need an understanding of mathematical logic; hence they are not understandable for general users including children. This paper proposes a user interface specifically designed for children to define EUD tasks in smart homes. The proposed UI was designed and evaluated in three iterations and had two main characteristics: gamification and 3D abstraction level for showing devices. The proposed UI is evaluated through an experiment by 32 participants aged 8–12 to measure efficiency, operability, perceived usability, enjoyment, and engagement. The experiment results show that game-based design improved usability by increasing efficiency and operability metrics. Also, based on the survey result, it improved enjoyment, engagement, and perceived usability.

In this paper we build on a conceptual framing of computational empowerment that seeks to provide alternative endpoints for computer science (CS) education beyond degree attainment and job placement. But, as opposed to a teleological framing that prioritizes ends, we propose using the metaphor of trading zones to construct a framing for computational empowerment that is based on collaborative multi-directional exchanges of resources and knowledge between people with different expertise. This leaves the co-design and implementation of CS education open to emergent directions and possibilities. Using a descriptive case study methodology, we detail trading zones in two different co-design projects that sought to situate CS education in relationship to cultural contexts through multi-directional exchanges of resources and knowledge: (1) a co-design project in a youth boxing gym with coaches, mentors, and staff; (2) a co-design project in a high school barbering program with a barbering instructor and barbering students. Our findings show that the metaphor is useful for the concept of computational empowerment in ways that are reflexive and interventionist.

The demand for developmentally appropriate tools and learning environments for early childhood computer science education is greater than ever. One of the most widely used introductory coding environments designed for children ages 5–7 is ScratchJr (Bers and Resnick, 2015, Flannery et al., 2013), which has over 40 million users worldwide. ScratchJr was designed as a “low floor, high ceiling” learning environment — meaning that it is accessible to novice users while also allowing more experienced users to grow their knowledge. In this paper, we evaluate how the “low floor, high ceiling” design of ScratchJr is received in practice through looking at the programming performance of users at different ages, timepoints, and experience levels. We find that the youngest, and most novice users were able to engage with the app to some extent with no instruction, but engagement was optimized with curricular support. Additionally, we found that the oldest, and most experienced users still had room for growth and discovery in the app. We conclude that the design decisions in ScratchJr such as iconography, block variation, and open-endedness of the environment creates a welcoming and engaging experience for a wide range of users, both children and adults.

Social robots provide new opportunities to support general child healthcare programs. However, it is still unclear how social robots could be used in this context and how corresponding behaviours should be designed. To ensure satisfying implementations of such new technological solutions, it is essential to include the end-users in the designing process. We have conducted a co-design study at two primary schools based on three complementary, creative methods: Draw-write-and-tell and/or story-writing-and-telling, Theatre play, and Robot avatar programming. A total of 46 children aged 7–12 years old participated in four robot co-design workshops. The drawings, stories and theatre plays were analysed, resulting in evaluations of 10 scenarios as well as 21 new scenarios and 7 main user requirements for social robots providing mental support in general child healthcare. Evaluation of the activities highlight their stimulation of out-of-the-box thinking and the development of creative solutions (i.e. drawings/stories/theatre plays resulted in robot designs, scenarios and requirements), while children’s reflections show them being enjoyable for participation. The inputs gathered during these co-design workshops will greatly influence future work on the design and application of social robots in the child healthcare domain.

Creativity, the process of creating something new and valuable, benefits children by improving their skills and development, encouraging interaction and engagement, and enabling the generation and expression of novel ideas. In recent years, interactive digital tools have emerged to support the user’s creativity in the open-ended creation of new artifacts. However, the question of evaluating the creativity happening in the interplay between children, digital tools, and products is still open. This systematic literature review investigated the evaluations of digital creativity support tools for children and identified 81 peer-reviewed relevant articles from the last 10 years. This research contributes to practitioners and researchers by providing an overview of the evaluations in a framework based on 10 factors (value, novelty, fluency, enjoyment, user feeling, collaboration, expressiveness, immersion, flexibility, and interaction), nine product areas, three approaches, and five methods. The review demonstrated that the evaluations differ widely, and the area lacks a standard evaluation framework. We propose the dimensions of our analysis as an initial framework for situating the evaluation of digital creativity support tools for children that the child–computer interaction community can further refine.

School bullying is responsible for a large number of child suicides in Japan. Serious games have proved to be effective and highly motivational educational tools capable of increasing awareness, changing behaviour, reduce risk factors and even improving protective skills. This paper presents a novel approach of using both participatory design and gameplay to sensitize children (aged 7–12​ years old) on bullying victimization. Action research strategy is used with intentions to improve the quality of school life in Japan through the use of a serious game called Shimpai Muyou. What makes it stand out from the rest of the crowd is that the entire intervention was design, developed and evaluated through partnering with children in a school setting. The research is largely qualitative and exploratory in nature, stemmed from interdisciplinary core ideas related to technology, education, psychology and interactive theatre. Findings from both formative and summative evaluations indicated that child-users empathically engaged with the synthetic characters, attributing a range of emotions to their actions e.g., empathy, compassion, sadness, anger etc., tackling ethical dilemmas and bullying situations with confidence. From these results, we can conclude that Shimpai Muyou is a useful and engaging school-based anti-bullying intervention.