Rosella Gennari

Free University of Bozen-Bolzano | Unibolzano · Faculty of Engineering

Primary school curricula teach children conversation norms for promoting positive social interactions, such as turn-taking and turn reserving, while curricula discourage other aspects of conversations, such as overlapping in turns. However such norms are abstract and difficult to master. Recently, interactive tangible solutions (briefly, tangibles)...

Algorithmic Thinking (AT) is at the core of Computational Thinking (CT). A number of initiatives target CT, few of them focus on AT and even less deal with Graph Algorithmic Thinking (GAT) with younger learners. This paper reports on tangibles’ design for GAT, appealing to different senses so as to engage learners actively. It presents a field stud...

In recent years, research in child-computer interaction shifted the focus from design with children for giving them a voice in the design process, to design by children so as to bring child participants different benefits, such as engagement and learning. Design workshops, encompassing different stages, are however challenging in terms of engagemen...

Fig. 1. Part of the physical board with cards (left) and digital app (right) of IoTgo for scaffolding the design of smart things. Digital well-being interventions usually take the form of programs which help an individual monitor the time spent with smart devices. This position paper argues that a different and inclusive perspective on digital well...

There is growing interest in how to enable in-service teachers to promote computational skills in their classes. Different researchers also highlight the importance of developing a critical mindset toward digital technology. This paper reports a case study, part of a training program for in-service teachers, organised by researchers and the local S...

Computational and design thinking are orthogonal and complementary ways of thinking, which are fundamental for nowadays’ learners and yet taught in isolation. Teachers’ understanding of them can be a barrier to their introduction. This paper reports on an intervention for primary- and secondary-school teachers, introducing them to both forms of thi...

Smart things are pervasive in children’s life. However, children do not know how to create them. Chatbots for children can help them learn how to create their own smart things and reflect around them. This paper reviews current research in the area of chatbots for children with educational aims. It presents a preliminary contextual inquiry with chi...

Fig. 1. Physical card-based tools (boards and cards to the left) and digital tools (the app to the right) for scaffolding the design of smart things and their programs. Designing smart things, so as to ideate and program them, is a complex process and an empowerment opportunity. Toolkits can help non-experts engage in their design, that is, in thei...

Smart things are everywhere: smart watches, smart jewellery, smart art installations. All have in common the capability of sensing with input devices (e.g., buttons), computing, reacting with output devices (e.g., light matrices), and connecting with other smart things. Engaging their end users in their design can be challenging and yet give end us...

Smart solutions are widespread and diversified. Smart cities and smart objects are example of smart solutions. Their design usually follows certain patterns so that they can detect events and react accordingly. As future citizens, children are expected to interact with them in their daily lives. It is thus crucial to provide children with the tools...

The smart city concept is becoming even more popular, but it can still be unclear for several people. As it does not represent a vague possibility, but a concrete truth that (future) citizens face in their daily lives, it is crucial to provide learners with all the skills and the awareness to properly face and deal with challenges that smart cities...

This paper revolves around graph algorithmic thinking, related to graphs and their properties. Algorithms for graphs are used to investigate problems young learners are familiar with, such as how information is spread in a social network. However, graph algorithmic thinking is not taught at school. School teachers, besides learners, are often unfam...

Smart things are everywhere, from smart watches to smart toys. Children are used to them but they do not know how they are made. Engaging children in the design of smart things can help them learn of them and develop their own. Smart-thing design with children was usually held in person, in informal settings, with a learning by-doing and playful ap...

State-of-the-art and novel methodologies and technologies allow researchers, designers, and domain experts to pursue technology-enhanced learning (TEL) solutions targeting not only cognitive processes but also motivational, personality, or emotional factors. The International Conference in Methodologies and Intelligent Systems for Technology-Enhanc...

Design of new technology with children has been widely investigated, and lately several workshops have been organised with children for designing novel IoT or smart objects, e.g., for smart cities or parks. Gradually, the research focus has shifted, from an analysis of the technology itself, which children help create, towards an analysis of childr...

A smart bracelet that reacts to a person's heartbeat. A smart bench that invites passers-by to sit close. These and others are smart things, part of the Internet of Things (IoT) and people's lives. However, people are mainly IoT consumers and rarely given the possibility of becoming IoT creators. This paper presents a case study concerning the desi...

The understanding of linguistic messages can be made extremely complex by the simultaneous presence of interfering sounds, especially when they are also linguistic in nature. In two experiments, we tested if visual cues directing attention to spatial or temporal components of speech in noise can improve its identification. The hearing-in-noise task...

Several workshops use toolkits to engage children in the design of smart things, that is, everyday things like toys enhanced with computing devices and capabilities. In general, the toolkits focus on one design stage or another, e.g., ideation or programming. Few toolkits are created to guide children through an entire design process. This paper pr...

Design and art students learn in workshops and through practical activities. They are not usually experienced in physical computing. However, this is fundamental for creating smart things, part of our internet-of-things world and hence of creative design and art work. Moreover, these students’ creativity was severely hampered due to the COVID-19 pa...

Recent research advocates that children should participate across different design stages, from ideation to programming, so that they learn through it. However it is not straightforward how to organise a design workshop with children across different design stages, above all in a short time span. This paper tackles such issue. It presents a worksho...

Children's role in the design of new technology has been widely investigated. Recently, the research focus has shifted, from the technology they help create, towards what children gain by participating in design workshops. This paper intercepts this line of research. It reports on a design workshop with 27 children, aged from 11 to 14 years old, id...

The research purpose of this PhD thesis is to promote Algorithmic Thinking (AT) at school, with 9 to 15 years old learners, in an active engaging way, which asks learners neither to passively listen to a teacher, nor to sit in front of computer screens. The work in this thesis is based on a socio-constructive approach to learning, in which learni...

This book intends to bring together researchers and developers from industry, the education field, and the academic world to report on the latest scientific research, technical advances, and methodologies. The 10th International Conference in Methodologies and Intelligent Systems for Technology Enhanced Learning is hosted by the University of L’Aqu...

This book, which gathers the outcomes of the 9th International Conference on Methodologies and Intelligent Systems for Technology Enhanced Learning and its related workshops, expands on the topics of the evidence-based TEL workshop series in order to provide an open forum for discussing intelligent systems for TEL, their roots in novel learning the...

SNaP is a collaborative board game for children. In the game, children become Designers and the protagonists of the ideation of smart nature ecosystems, reflecting on them. This paper presents the evolution of the game and its usage in a recent workshop with 11-years old children.

This paper discusses the design of smart interactive devices that can be exploited to motivate children to spend time outdoor, play with nature and socialize. It illustrates the design of two screen-less tangibles for nature exploration by children, and presents a board game, based on the use of nature cards, that aims to involve children as protag...

The Internet of Things and, specifically, the Internet of Tangible Things (IoTT) create several opportunities, lately also for outdoors environments. However, people are often consumers of IoTT solutions and not protagonists of their creation. This paper presents research related to the idea of involving people as protagonists in the design of IoTT...

In recent years, the Human Computer Interaction community has increasingly engaged children in the design process of technology for them as co-designers, and recently as protagonists in co-design. It has also recognised the need of “bringing children back to nature”. This paper combines both lines of research, giving children the role of protagonis...

Recent research invites children to be the protagonists of the design of novel smart nature ecosystems for them. Games and card-based workshops can help engage them in co-design and serve as a tool for generating ideas and designing new concepts. The SNaP game is a collaborative card-based board game that aims at engaging 11–14 years old children a...

Younger generations from urban areas spend an increasing amount of time indoors with technology, e.g., with mobiles. GEKI is an exploratory project that investigates how to co-create with younger generations smart nature ecosystems and get them to spend time outdoors. This paper presents the design of a novel board game and a workshop with it for c...

Conversations are structured by norms for turn taking. Turn taking is practiced in primary schools, starting from 8 years of age, when turn taking is used for managing group conversations. Being rather abstract for children to master, teachers use physical objects to convey turn taking. However, such physical objects tend not to be effective with c...

We investigated the efficacy of using the eXtreme Apprenticeship (XA) methodology for teaching programming courses at the university by considering an often-neglected aspect: students’ achievement emotions in XA tasks. We involved 53 university students who participated in a XA-based programming course. We assessed students’ performance in the cour...

Social learning curricula teach children social norms for managing conversations, such as the norm of not overlapping in talking turns. Interactive tangible objects (briefly, tangibles) can help teachers in the scaffolding of such norms. Such tangi-bles should be created for the specific social learning contexts of their users, and evolve according...

Preference data in the form of ratings or likes for items are widely used in many Recommender Systems. However, previous research has shown that even item comparisons, which generate pairwise preference data, can be used to model user preferences. Moreover, pairwise preferences can be effectively combined with ratings to compute recommendations. In...

This book presents the outcomes of the 8th International Conference in Methodologies and Intelligent Systems for Technology Enhanced Learning held in Toledo (Spain) hosted by the University of Castilla-La Mancha from 20 th to 22nd June 2018. Further expanding the topics of the previous editions, the conference provided an open forum for discussing...

Interactive tangible objects can help orchestrate conversations in school classes. If such tangibles are created with a meta-design approach, for the specific context of their users, they evolve according to their usage. Specifically, tangible object prototypes are created; prototypes are adopted by their users in ecological studies; their usage is...

If designers give users the means to create or experience interactive prototypes with them, users can contribute and form realistic expectations and experiences. That is especially relevant in case of novel interactive solutions and children as users. In 2017, two prototyp-ing workshops concerning affective objects were organised with children and...

Children, nowadays, are great consumers of media for them [6], and there is growing interest towards novel mechanisms that can consider their specific needs and improve both the recommendation process and output of videos for them. Children, in fact, have unique characteristics , which change with age. In particular, in the 8-12 age range, they lik...

Algorithmic thinking is at the core of computational thinking. Tangible interactive solutions can help children develop al-gorithmic thinking skills. This paper focusses on exploratory research concerning tangibles for graph algorithmic thinking for primary and middle schools. By following an action-research process, tangibles evolved through proto...

Smart interactive tangible objects (briefly, tangibles) can help teachers in the scaffolding of algorithmic thinking of 10-13 years old children. In this work, tangibles deal with graph algorithmic thinking. By following an action-research design approach, tangibles were rapidly developed and used in studies with children and teachers (Bonani et al...

The purpose of our research is to promote algorithmic thinking at school, by means of multi-sensory activities and learning-by-doing. Activities use interactive smart objects to convey algorithmic thinking. The paper illustrates how such objects have been designed and iteratively revised, through field studies with users-pupils and teachers. Object...

Internet of things devices are already part of primary school children's living but their design or fabrication is often not part of their school education. Italian primary schools, in particular, bring their own restraints to the integration of their design. This paper explores how to bring the design of IoT tangibles to primary-school children an...

Algorithimic thinking is at the heart of computational thinking: it requires teaching how to model a problem, as well as to specify the instructions for solving it, that is, an algorithm. In many countries, computer science education in primary or secondary schools is moving towards computational thinking education. Several scholars and teachers ha...

The ability of taking responsible decisions concerning eating depends on the eating context. This paper considers users of university canteen environments. It outlines the GAPH project and system for informing canteen users about their eating choices, and the effects of choices on their diet. The main component of the system is a tangible solution:...

Education researchers voice the need of technology that can aid in the scaffolding of socio-emotional learning of primary-school children. In particular supporting norms for conversing with peers can enhance children's engagement in school activities, which can positively impact on their academic achievements in turn. This paper reports on a parti...

The ability of taking responsible decisions concerning eating depends on the eating context. This paper considers users of university canteen environments. It outlines the GAPH project and system for informing canteen users about their eating choices, and the effects of choices on their diet. The main component of the system is a tangible solution:...

The paper presents exploratory steps of the design of interactive tangible objects for the scaffolding of algorithmic thinking of 9–13 years old school classes, and specifically graph algorithmic thinking. By following a participatory design process, such tangibles are rapidly designed and used in studies with their intended users–learners and thei...

To increase digital fluency in adult population, efforts have included offering e-learning initiatives and MOOCs, and more efforts should be undertaken in order to facilitate MOOC implementation and to widen MOOC participation. Along this line, this paper presents the first findings toward the automated assessment of bash scripting exercises, to be...

Education researchers voice the need of technology that can aid in the scaffolding of socio-emotional learning of primary-school children. In particular supporting norms for conversing with peers can enhance children’s engagement in school activities, which can positively impact on their academic achievements in turn. This paper reports on a partic...

This paper advances the idea of tangible gamified probes for cooperative learning processes, which require synchronous in-presence and in-situ interactions. The paper focuses on gamified probes for promoting a sense of progression and control, as well as social relations in a cooperative learning process in classroom. It reports a case study in a p...

The diffusion of ICT products in everyday life is bringing into the realm of technological artifacts new users and their demands, which translate into novel design/research issues, like in the case of children-oriented Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) systems. In this paper we report our experience within the framework of the EU project TERENCE,...

URL to online version: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1071581917 The paper presents an empirical study centred on a participatory game design activity with 8–10 years old primary-school children, split in different sessions. The study assesses how children perform in game design and whether they are engaged in design tasks. To t...

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-workshop proceedings of the First International Symposium, SETE 2016, held in conjunction with ICWL 2016, Rome, Italy, in October 2016. The 81 revised papers, 59 full and 22 short ones, were carefully reviewed and selected from 139 submission. They cover latest findings in various areas, such as em...

Recent research in the area of deafness stresses that communication difficulties may severely impact the social and emotional development of deaf or hard-of-hearing learners. Education researchers voice the need of an integrated intervention for social and emotional learning at school, which considers deaf or hard-of-hearing learners' communication...

The analysis of time helps in extracting knowledge from web contents. In order to analyze massive amounts of data, current natural language processing systems rely mainly on supervised approaches: machine learning algorithms that learn how to classify data based on corpora, annotated with the TimeML mark-up language or one of its derivatives. The q...

Erratum to: M. Caporuscio et al. (eds.), Methodologies and Intelligent Systems for Technology Enhanced Learning, Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-40165-2In the original version, the volume editor’s name, and affiliation address were missing in the copyright page.Ricardo Azambuja-Silveira, Department of Computer S...

Education is the cornerstone of any society and it serves as one of the foundations for many of its social values and characteristics. Knowledge societies offer significant opportunities for novel ICT tools and applications, especially in the fields of education and learning. In such a context, the role of intelligent systems, rooted in artificial...

Interest in early game design approaches, that include children's ideas into the game design process, is increasing. This paper outlines emerging trends in participatory game design, then presents thematic guidelines for practitioners, teachers and researchers, willing to conduct participatory early game design with primary school children.

This paper advances the idea of gamified probes for scaffolding chil-dren's computational thinking, and specifically algorithmic thinking. The paper presents the making of such a probe for a sorting algorithm. The making of the probe was alternated with its evaluation, and realized in the MakerSpace of the University of Bozen-Bolzano through a coll...

Though temporal reasoning is a key factor for text comprehension, existing proposals for visualizing temporal information and temporal connectives proves to be inadequate for children, not only for their levels of abstraction and detail, but also because they rely on pre-existing mental models of time and temporal connectives, while in the case of...

This paper reports on the development of game design ideas by children. These were specified in structured informal documents and low-fidelity paper prototypes. University students were challenged to develop children's informal specifications of games into high-fidelity interactive prototypes, and to have these tested with children. What issues did...

Game design is recently conducted at school for eliciting children's design ideas about games for them. However, game design is a complex interaction design task, requiring rather mature cognitive skills. This paper reflects on it, reporting a gamified game design experience with groups of children in primary schools.

The PALX workshop aimed at discussing the equation "learner as player", which researchers face when they design for a learner and player experience. This editorial presents how the workshop was organized for sharing ideas and issues, it analyzes envisioned and emerged research themes, and it concludes by reflecting on the outcomes of PALX.

Co-design with children comes with methods and techniques for creating technological products with children, such as video-game prototypes. When co-design takes place in schools, learners' involvement and enjoyment of co-design become crucial concerns for researchers. But how to measure emotions, more in general, and involvement in a co-design stud...

Paper available for download at: http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2788681.2736699&coll=DL&dl=ACM&CFID=525275774&CFTOKEN=48183649 Annotation mistakes with temporal relations are rather widespread and present also in gold standards. Current methods for controlling the quality of annotations are limited: they usually check the local context of the...

Abstract Extreme apprenticeship, a recent learning methodology, was used in a blended fashion for teaching a technical subject: Bash scripting for operating systems. Online learning was supported with the Moodle platform, in particular, for managing Bash programming exercises. How did students behave? Were the exercises equally difficult for them?...

Extreme apprenticeship, an emerging learning methodology, has been used in a blended fashion for teaching a technical subject: bash scripting for operating systems. Online learning was first supported with the Moodle platform, and then enhanced with playful videos. How did students perceive learning in such a manner? This paper reports on the desig...

This volume presents recent research on Methodologies and Intelligent Systems for Technology Enhanced Learning. It contains the contributions of MIS4TEL 2015, which took place in Salamanca, Spain,. On June 3rd to 5th 2015. Like the previous edition, this proceedings and the conference is an open forum for discussing intelligent systems for Technolo...

This paper presents a game design experience in primary schools, with children creating game design ideas and prototypes. Children were organized in cooperative groups. Game design tasks were organized following gamification principles, with ad-hoc gamified material. Cooperative learning and gamification served to elicit emotions and social inclusi...

Co-design is an ideal approach to design with users. It allows designers to create products, such as games, with their intended users and in their natural environment, e.g., children and their teachers in their school. Nowadays school contexts, however, pose their own requirements to co-design, which can affect its success. For instance, school con...

Children universities see universities hosting activities for exposing children to research findings. However, universities are not per-se designed for children. This paper advances the idea of gamifying university contexts for children in order to provide them with a positive engaging experience. The reported qualitative study serves as proof-of-c...