Using Standards and the 5 R’s*

1. Using Standards and the 5 R’s* * The Right Information at the Right Time, in the Right Place, in the Right Way to the Right Person

2. Using Standards and the 5 R’s Stefan Carmien Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Information Technology (Web Compliance Center) September 3th 2008 L3D Boulder Colorado

3. Overview of talk • Me • The 5 Rs • Universe of one • EU4ALL • Further research • L3D topics redux

4. Stefan Carmien • MS, MS PhD from CU • MS & PHD in L3D • Clever • Dissertation & MAPS • Post doc at Fraunhofer • EC projects • EU4ALL • On to Spain…

5. The 5 Rs and L3D The Right Information at the Right Time, in the Right Place, in the Right Way to the Right Person • right information: relevant to the task at hand → task modelling • right time: intrusiveness (pulling and pushing) • right place: location-aware cell phone (noisy environment versus movie theatre), smart tour guides • right way: multimodal presentation (textual, visual, auditory, tactile) content personalization • right person: taking background knowledge and interests of specific users into account → user modelling, “who do I ask and who do I tell” Who owns this phrase?

6. The 5 Rs and L3D This part of the presentation gives us the opportunity to generate together some ideas about what these phrases mean and produce some examples Who owns this phrase? Google thinks we do….

7. Right Information • Critiquing systems • Admin versus user mode • Dynamically depending on context

8. Right Time • Critiquing system • Error trapping - breakdowns as triggers • Context - dependent on current context and path thru context • When is it the wrong time? (only flag errors)

9. Right Place • We could discuss what this means • i.e. is this in the list for completeness or is it meaningful? • What possible places are there? • Emergency medical information vs. bedside? • MAPS vs. Visions

10. Right Way Personalization • MAPS • OS preferences • EU4ALL • Granularity / Depth issues

11. Right Person • Again, think of an example where this is interesting • Roles: • Administrator versus user? • Parental controls?

12. Virtual Learing Enviroments (VLE’s) and Content Personalization • The right way & right place • Systemic approach based on • WCAG • IMS • ISO • Automatic system wide adaptation

13. Universe of One and Right Way • Disabilities are often complex mixtures • Reduced intellectual ability combined with • Sensory impairments • Motoric impairments • Psychological / developmental impairments • Functional personalisation • In contrast to diagnosis • Allows for temporary disability (I.e. driving car) End-users comprise a set of one

14. Universe of one and Universe of all • The universe of one dilemma is one end of an axis • The other end is truly “one size fits all” • All interface design problems fall on this axis • Applicability • Is design for all just good design in the first place? • Curb cut / space effect transferability

15. A standards based approach to deep customization User (and Device and Content) modelling • Model the user and other components and base delivery on the models • Make user model dynamic and scrutible

16. EU4ALL Content personalization: • Repositories of pedagologial content • Content replacement not adaptation approach • User requests a unit of educational content as part of a class • EU4ALL provides the user personalized content

17. Deep personalization is dependent on three things: • The user • Specific abilities • Specific needs (I.e. sensory..) • Preferences in adaptation • The context • The user agent • The environment (network accessibility, temperature, light) • Local availability of resources (I.e. printers, Java, browser) • The content material or task • Accessibility qualities • Display specifics I.e. mime type • Network requirements

18. Content personalisation process • EU4ALL is a add-on to VLE’s • Content personalization uses the basic structure of VLE user interface and puts EU4ALL in middle of the distance learning course process • SOA architecture • VLE installs EU4ALL as a set of Web Services • VLE provides hooks for EU4ALL functions

19. Process overview EU4ALL is a set of interrelated services • Content personalization • Recommender system • External services access support (I.e. tutor reservation, AT request…) • E-portfolio (someday European projects will not look like someone loaded “e”s into a shotgun and pointed it at calls for proposals) • Internal security, authentication, pedagogical paths…..

20. So How Does it Work? • Request for content object (CO) in learning process • User agent (browser) uses proxy that inserts device model ID into the header of http request containing the request for a CO in the form of the device identifier • VLE passes this to EU4ALL content personalization module (everything is web service calls from here to the return to the VLE)

21. How it works part 2 • Content personalization module then gets: • User profile from user modelling subsystem • Device profile from device modelling system • CO accessibility metadata -digital resource description (DRD) from Learning Object Metadata Repository • It matches them and returns the right one (if there is one)

22. Like this:

23. Granularity Granularity of content • The whole lesson • The individual CO • The components of the CO • The components of the components • The pixels…..

24. Granularity issues • What are we going to make personalized? • Continuum from fonts to SCORM objects • It also brings in a bunch of semantic issues: • Will too fine a granularity miss the pedagogical point? • Will content meaning be scrambled by adapting tiny parts and reassembling them • Granularity always involves authors - are we forcing them to be accessibility experts?

25. Ways of getting to the right content • Two basic ways: • Replacement in whole or in pieces • Adaptation • There are hybrids: • Replacement in pieces approaches adaptation • Design by modification • Design by composition

26. Getting to the right content with replacement • Adavantage of replacement • Easy to do (just hand them the right one) • You have to have a bunch of right ones • Problems with replacment • Content authors have burden of many adaptations • Later modifications of material will make sets of the same CO out of synch

27. Getting to the right content by adaptation • Advantage of adaptation • It’s the right way - solves the synching problem and the content generation problem • If you solve it by making abstraction of content that can be variously interpreted (like ARIA) this solves future synching problem • If you solve with automatic adaptation (JAWS, active versions of Imergo WCAG colour tests) you don’t have to prepare special versions of content • Disadvantages of adaptation • Creates the need for an abstract way to represent content to it can be instated (and everybody to agree to use it) • Or we need special machines to adapt material at low level (I.e. colour contrast, haptic maps) • This injects all the granularity issues again

28. What did EU4ALL do? • CP by content replacement • Not the right way, but a good first step • Surprisingly few successful CP projects (e.g. TILE) • Lots of unimplemented standards, though (LOM, ISO, IMS etc.) • Approach is to do this the cheesy way and later, in another project do it the right way (proof of concept)

29. Content personalization formula UM + DM + DRD = CP UM and DM and DRD must have matching attributes and range of values Tightly controlled vocabularies Domain dependant Scenario based design of standards

30. Distance learning and standards • LOM (IEEE) • Dublin Core (DC-education extensions) • IMS • ACCLIP • ACCMD • ISO 24751-1,2,3 • DRD, PNP

31. Binding • All of these standards need to be bound in a format to be used • Popular Bindings: • XML • RDF • REST (Representational State Transfer) • Databases • Kind of religious wars

32. The User and the Environment • The standards in the previous slides (except ISO) all assume that the information about the users device belongs with the user model • This is a BIG Problem - users move about & use different devices (its this a ‘right place’ issue?) • User agent & environment & hardware = DM • User agent - typically a browser and it’s various capacities (I.e. Java, flash, mime….) • Environment - initially just network properties but could also be velocity, temperature, time of day, location • Hardware- speakers, processor, memory, input devices, screen….

33. EU4ALL • The designers of the EU4ALL system can’t predict what every use might need • Using user and device modelling and matching it with content modelling • Dynamically providing the right content User Modelling: PNP Device modelling: CC/PP Content Metadata: DRD Content Personalization: CP PNP + CC/PP + DRD = CP

34. Eu4all overview • By making the delivery context independent to user model we provide deep customization • This solution assumes we know enough about • User agent (mime types & assistive technology) • User model (domain experts lists of functional needs) • Content - availability and display requirements (I.e. network bandwidth greater than XX and java)

35. Example Four scenarios:

36. ISO 24751-1 - PNP

37. Controlled Vocabulary The 9 basic "adaptation type" values: • Audio representation • Visual representation • Text representation • Tactile representation • Caption • Audio description • Braille • Digital talking book • electronic book The 5 basic "access mode" values: • Visual • Textual • Auditory • Tactile • Olfactory

38. UAProf • .aif audio/aiff • .aos application/x-nokia-9000 • .asm text/x-asm • .eps application/postscript • .gif image/gif • .html text/html • .java text/plain • .jpg image/jpeg • .jpg image/pjpeg • Text -> audio • Audio-> text • HTML-> correct colour contrast

39. DRD Access mode Is adaptation Adaptation statement

40. Why do this so crudely? Is this not the age of the Semantic Web? • Good question • Of course dynamic adaptation is the right way. • Still more standards: • Language and vocabulary to abstractly represent content has to be created and agreed upon • Use could involve a lot of AI & inference making • "The Best is often the enemy of the good!” • Lot’s of people looking to do a complete solution, perhaps iterative improvement is better - especially since this is a wicked problem

41. The standardization process • Need for agreed upon standard vocabulary • Changes are difficult • On-demand adaptation is much bigger problem • Part of design for all approach

42. What EU4ALL misses • Who does all the content and who keeps it up to date? • Sensory adaptations much easier than intellectual disability adaptations • Similar to the problem of adapting web content • Is this even a real (I.e. logically solvable) problem? • COG-WEB

43. Questions? carmien@gmail.com http://indra.com/~carmien/

44. If we have time - perhaps we could • Help me with my l3d topics sides

45. More L3D Research threads • Design with scenarios and user participatory design • Socio-technical environments and wicked problems • Power of representations • Cross discipline research groups (symmetry of ignorance) • Scaffolding • Errors and plans • Personalization • Web 2.0 and semantic web technologies

46. Design with scenarios and user participatory design • Provide an appropriate venue for the end user to participate in the design process • To ensure the validity of the final design and implementation. • Working with persons with cognitive disabilities, the nature of the end-user prohibited any end-user input of consequence • end-user proxies (caregivers and professionals in special education) • Scenarios • Scenarios can be used in a structured way for initial design • with claims assertion to ensure that the design is valid • Scenario based design can support shareholder analysis and participation by revealing implicit parameters in the prototypes design supporting discussion before coding is done.

47. The Power of Representations Solving a problem may simply mean representing it so as to make the solution transparent Here is an example: two person game Take the numbers from 1 to 9 Players alternate and take one of the numbers The player who can add exactly three numbers in her/his possession to equal 15 will win 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9

48. The Power of Representations Tic-Tac-Toe Grade school children can beat graduate students

49. Socio-technical Environments and Wicked Problems • Computer systems that are designed for interaction with people (in contrast to, say, rocket guidance software) are properly studied in place. • The system, it’s context and the human users form a socio-technical environment • The system itself • The members (actors/stakeholders) of a system • The interactions and the changes in work practices that the introduction of the computational artefacts induce. • Socio-technical environments are often Wicked Problems • Human systems with multiple stake holders (some of which are very implicit, e.g. the legal system) • Interjection of computational artefacts changes the environments work practices

50. Wicked Problems…. • In terms of design, wicked problems in socio-technical environments often require iterations of design, implementation, evaluation cycles to satisfice the stakeholders. • Typically, solutions to wicked problems are not optimal but satisficing, that is acceptable to all stakeholders. • A corollary to this in the domain of task support for persons with cognitive disabilities: • One critical part of the solution is when and how to bring human intervention. • Because the range of error states is too vast to be solved without the possibility of human intervention.