Sherry Y. Chen

• Chair at National Central University

This study proposed a three-tier test to help students learn English grammar. To reduce students' anxiety, game-based learning was incorporated into the three-tier test, where personalization was also implemented to accommodate students' different needs. More specifically, we developed a Personalized Entertaining Three-Tier Test (PET3), which consi...

Task-based learning can be used to promote language learning. On the other hand, scaffolding instruction can help students without sufficient abilities to undertake tasks. Accordingly, we developed the Scaffolding Task-based English Logic Learning (S-TELL) by incorporating scaffolding instruction into Task-based Learning. The S-TELL was applied to...

Online tests offer many advantages but they still belong to assessment, which may make learners have anxiety. Thus, students may experience certain emotion. Academic emotion is a branch of emotion and has great effects on student learning. Such effects can be associated with individual differences, especially prior knowledge. To this end, this stud...

Learning materials are integrated into digital games in digital game-based learning (DGBL). There are two types of contexts to present such integration, i.e., tightly coupling context (TCC) and loosely coupling context (LCC). These two types of contexts have different strengths and weaknesses. On the other hand, prior abilities have great effects o...

Individual differences exist among learners. Among various individual differences, cognitive styles can strongly predict learners’ learning behavior. Therefore, cognitive styles are essential for the design of online learning. There are a variety of cognitive style dimensions and overlaps exist among these dimensions. In particular, Witkin’s field...

Digital game-based learning (DGBL) includes various features. On the other hand, diversities exist among learners. Accordingly, each learner may appreciate different game features. Thus, there is a need to examine how individual differences affect learners' reactions to DGBL. Among various individual differences, the levels of gaming experience, wh...

Drug abuse causes serious problems around the world. Thus, anti-drug material has been increasingly developed and used. However, conventional anti-drug material has until today shown insufficient effects on preventing drug abuse, especially for drug-addicted users. To this end, this study proposes a game-based anti-drug material and examines how dr...

Game-based learning is popular with learners because it includes various game elements. Among various game elements, background music may have great effects, which may be associated with the preferences of information processing. On the other hand, cognitive styles pertain to the ways of information processing. In this vein, we conducted two empiri...

Two empirical studies, i.e., preliminary study and main study, were included in this research. In the preliminary study, we developed a prototyped animated e-book system (PAES) that incorporated animation films into an e-book and examined how females and males reacted to design features provided by the PAES. The results from the preliminary study s...

Self-regulated learning (SRL) is helpful to students. On the other hand, prior knowledge has great effects on students’ self-regulation and learning performance. To this end, this study aimed to examine how high prior knowledge students (HPKs) and low prior knowledge students (LPKs) behaved differently when interacting with a SRL environment. To ac...

Among a variety of disabilities, persons with achondroplasia, i.e., little people, have relatively minor symptoms though they have small bodies. Thus, they can learn how to lead an independent life. This paper presents a study on the development of a multimedia encyclopedia for little people and their families. Due to their different roles, this st...

Mobile devices (MDs) change the way of teaching and learning. However, not every student can appreciate the value of MDs. Thus, it is necessary to consider individual differences. Among various individual differences, cognitive styles particularly affect student learning because they refer to individuals’ information processing habits. In this vein...

The effects of video gaming have been explored extensively in many learning-related fields. However, limited research has investigated whether the frequencies of exposing to gaming environments influence students' Chinese reading comprehension, arithmetic word problem test, spatial recognition, and graphical patterns recognition. To address this is...

In recent years, customization and personalization were widely applied to accommodate the needs of different cognitive style groups. Such two approaches have different advantages and disadvantages but there is a lack of studies to compare these two approaches from the perspective of game-based learning, which is currently popular in educational set...

The authors defined optimal experience as a functional state of a relatively high level of concentration, time distortion, satisfaction, and enjoyment (Csikszentmihalyi, 1992 Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1992). The flow experience and its significance for human psychology. In M. C. I. S. Csikszentmihalyi (Ed.), Optimal experience: Psychological studies of...

Existing peer response approaches majorly take place in traditional educational contexts, where students may not be highly motivated. On the other hand, game-based learning takes a joyful way to enhance students’ motivation. Accordingly, we proposed a joyful peer response (JPR), where game-based learning and peer response were integrated together....

Handheld devices are widely applied to support open and distributed learning, where students are diverse. On the other hand, customization and personalization can be applied to accommodate students’ diversities. However, paucity of research compares the effects of customization and personalization in the context of handheld devices. To this end, we...

Peer response is useful to improve student writing. However, traditional peer response takes a single mode, which has some problems, such as effort for preparation of documents or ambiguous feedback. To address these problems, this study presents two peer response approaches, that is, an integrative approach and a game-based integrative approach. A...

Online tests have been identified as a core learning activity in higher education. Unlike conventional online tests, which cannot completely reflect students' learning status, two-tier tests not only consider students' answers, but also take into account reasons for their answers. Due to such significance, research into the two-tier tests had mushr...

This study aims to investigate how cognitive styles and the levels of prior abilities influence frustration tolerance and learning achievement in an interactive group-based videogame named "Multiple-Choice Practice Island." In the aspect of cognitive styles, differences between field dependent and field independent students were explored. The resul...

Purpose – This paper aims to examine how gender differences influence students’ reactions to the use of the annotatable multimedia e-reader (AME). To reach this aim, we develop an AME where various annotation tools are provided to help students learn English in-class and after-class. Design/methodology/approach – An empirical study was conducted w...

Game-based learning systems are popular in educational settings. Using a lot of game elements can increase visual effects but interface might become more complex so that learners may have negative perceptions. Therefore, we conducted an empirical study, where experts and novices use Nielsen's heuristics to evaluate the interface of a game-based lea...

Concept maps can be used as a cognitive tool to assist learners' knowledge construction. However, in a concept map-based online discussion environment, studies that take into consideration learners' manipulative actions of composing concept maps, cognitive process among learners' discussion, and social knowledge construction at the same time are st...

Recently, programming skills have become a core competence. Many teaching strategies were developed to improve programming skills. Among them, online tests were widely applied to enhance students learning. Nonetheless, they may not be able to engage students in deep thinking and reflections. Thus, a two-tier test strategy was proposed to address th...

There is an increasing growth of Social Network Services (SNSs). A variety of SNSs are applied in online interpersonal platforms. Among them, asynchronous and synchronous discussions are widely examined. However, there is a lack of research into the effects of integrated discussion services that combines asynchronous and synchronous discussions. Th...

Both individual learning (IL) and collaborative learning (CL) provide students with different benefits. However, previous research indicates that cognitive styles affect students’ learning preferences. Thus, it is necessary to examine how cognitive styles influence students’ reactions to IL and CL. Among various cognitive styles, Pask’s Holist/Seri...

In this study, we proposed a game-based peer response to enhance student writing. In addition, we also examined how students with different levels of ability react to the game-based peer response. The results revealed that such a game-based peer response could enhance students' writing quality and narrow the gap between the high-ability students an...

Cognitive styles have been regarded as a crucial factor that affects the effectiveness of web-based learning (WBL). Previous research indicated that educational settings that match with students' cognitive styles can enhance students' learning performance, which is, however, linked to their emotion. Various physiological signals can be applied to m...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine how different cognitive style groups use electronic journals via mobile devices, with an emphasis on the use of search mechanisms, the approaches to judge the relevance and to refine the results, the use of horizontal screens, and on the influence of negative emotions. Design/methodology/approach –...

The study proposed a mix-mode peer response, the E-Peer Response (EPR), to overcome the bias of a single mode, and examined how students with different levels of ability react to the EPR. Two classes participated in this study. One was the experimental group (EG) with the EPR; the other was the control group (CG) with a teacher-centered writing app...

Many students possess low confidence toward learning mathematics, which, in turn, may lead them to give up pursuing more mathematics knowledge. Recently, game-based learning (GBL) is regarded as a potential means in improving students' confidence. Thus, this study tried to promote students' confidence toward mathematics by using GBL. In addition, t...

E-assessment learning, which combines the advantages of e-assessment and learning, was proposed in educational settings. However, it still makes most of learners feel anxious. Thus, this study develops a Joyful Assessment-based Learning System (JALS), which incorporates game-based learning into e-assessment learning. In order to get a complete unde...

The design of educational agents increasingly attracts researchers’ attention recently. One of major reasons is that educational agents could enhance student learning in various aspects. Although research in this area has mushroomed, such research mainly emphasizes on students in higher education. It is still unclear how educational agents influenc...

In the past decade, a number of personalized learning systems have been developed and they mainly focus on learners' prior knowledge. On the other hand, previous research suggested that gender differences and cognitive styles have great effects on student learning. To this end, this study examines how human factors, especially gender differences an...

Competition is useful in game-based learning, although it can also generate negative influences. To expand the potential for competition models in game-based learning, this study proposes the notion of surrogate competition, which eliminates direct competition between students. Such surrogates could be employed as buffers so that the competition be...

Game-based learning provides many benefits, such as enhancing the interaction with students and stimulating their learning motivation. Thus, it is popular to learners who have diverse characteristics. To this end, individual differences play an essential role. Among various individual differences, previous studies demonstrated that prior knowledge...

Poetry is a creative language which enhances imagination and self-reflection. However, the ambiguity of poetry increased the difficulty in interpretation, which builds students' negative perception because they consider that reading poetry is joyless and hard-understanding. Furthermore, the negative perception demotivates most students to read poet...

A computer-vision-based method is widely employed to support the development of a variety of applications. In this vein, this study uses a computer-vision-based method to develop a playful learning system, which is a robot-based learning companion named RobotTell. Unlike existing playful learning systems, a user-centered design (UCD) approach is ap...

Recently online discussion forums have become alternative information resources for student learning. This paper investigated the influences of the quality of online discussion forums on students' discussion behaviors and learning performance. The statistical results revealed that students would have better learning performance and more discussion...

The aim of this study is to investigate the relationship between online gaming behavior and special underlying social group structures through the use of player information of a certain MMORPG. Data were collected from the logs of an MMORPG in 2011, recording five types of gaming behaviors, player gender, avatar gender and avatar occupation types t...

Recently, multimedia-based learning is widespread in educational settings. A number of studies investigate how to develop effective techniques to manage a huge volume of video sources, such as summarization and recommendation. However, few studies examine how these techniques affect learners' perceptions in multimedia learning systems. This article...

Synchronous discussion and asynchronous discussion have different advantages and disadvantages. However, it is unclear how students react to these two models. Thus, we developed a learning environment that combines these two models, and then examined how students selected them. The findings show that students selected different models at different...

Disorientation problems influence student learning. To address this issue, this study uses an integrative approach to investigate the causes and consequences of disorientation problems so that a complete understanding can be obtained. Unlike previous empirical studies, which use statistical techniques, this study attempts to expose unexpected relat...

Many studies have identified gender differences in communication related to spatial navigation in real and virtual worlds. Most of this research has focused on single-party communication (monologs), such as the way in which individuals either give or follow route instructions. However, very little work has been reported on spatial navigation dialog...

Enhancing students' problem-solving abilities has been recognized as an important and challenging issue for technology-enhanced learning. Thus, previous research has attempted to address this issue by developing various mechanisms, among which a cognitive apprenticeship model can particularly enhance students' abilities. However, it is not clear wh...

Due to the increasing use of digital medical images, a need exists to develop an approach for automatic image annotation, which provides textual labels for images. Thus added labels can be used to access images using textual queries. Automatic image annotation can be separated into two individual tasks: feature extraction and image classification....

The purpose of this study was to find out whether users should be involved in the design stage of a Digital Library (DL). Hence an experiment has been undertaken to find out the level of user satisfaction with a user-centred DL (UDL) compared to a non-user-centred DL (NDL). In this experiment, the UDL prototype has been compared with the NDL protot...

A lot of musical toys (e.g., toy guitars, toy drums and percussion) can provide a good introduction to musical instruments and give children high entertainment. Via playing an instrument toy, children can sense and practice what kinds of physical movements (e.g., fingers and/or mouths) they need to play its corresponding actual instrument to produc...

Investigating how learners’ individual differences affect their navigation behavior can help us understand learners’ preferences and can be used to develop the Web-based learning system that can meet learners’ needs. Among various individual differences, learners’ cognitive styles need to be considered because it is concerned how users process info...

Web-based learning systems (WBLSs) allow learners to choose any learning topics according to their own needs and progress. This may be the reason why the WBLS is a popular learning tool in educational settings. Thus, it is necessary to investigate how to help learners effectively obtain their desired results. To this end, the usability evaluation o...

This study examines the effects of matching and mismatching on web-based learning with a human-centered approach. In particular, we emphasize on how prior knowledge and gender differences affect students' reactions to a matching/mismatching environment. In general, the results demonstrate that learners in a matching condition perform better than th...

Social media on the World Wide Web, such as Wiki, are increasingly applied to support collaborative learning for students to conduct a project together. However, recent studies indicated that students, learning in the collaborative project, may not actively contribute to the collaborative work and are involved only in a limited level of positive in...

In the past decade, a number of adaptive hypermedia learning systems have been developed. However, most of these systems tailor presentation content and navigational support solely according to students’ prior knowledge. On the other hand, previous research suggested that cognitive styles significantly affect student learning because they refer to...

Wrapper feature selection approaches are widely used to choose a small subset of relevant features from a dataset. However, Wrappers suffer from the fact that they only use a single classifier. The downside to this is that each classifier will have its own biases and will therefore select very different features. To overcome the biases of individua...

Personalization has been widely used in Web-based instruction (WBI). To deliver effective personalization, there is a need to understand different preferences of each student. Cognitive style has been identified as one of the most pertinent factors that affect students' learning preferences. Therefore, it is essential to investigate how learners wi...

Web-based instruction programs are used by learners with diverse knowledge, skills and needs. These differences determine their preferences for the design of Web-based instruction programs and ultimately influence learners' success in using them. Cognitive style has been found to significantly affect learners' preferences of web-based instruction p...

Most Adaptive Hypermedia Learning Systems (AHLSs) tailor presentation content and navigational support based on prior knowledge or cognitive styles of students separately. There is, however, a need to explore how the two individual difference characteristics could be combined in adaptive hypermedia learning systems in order to maximize learning and...

Spatial ability is a critical skill in geometric learning. Several studies investigate how to use digital games to improve spatial abilities. However, not every learner favors this kind of support. To this end, there is a need to examine how human factors affect learners’ reactions to the use of a digital game to support geometric learning. In this...

Concept-based information retrieval and knowledge representation are in need of a theory of concepts and semantic relations. Guidelines for the construction and maintenance of knowledge organization systems (KOS) (such as ANSI-NISO Z39.19-2005 in the ...

With the rapid development of information technology, the World Wide Web has been widely used in various applications, such as search engines, online learning and electronic commerce. These applications are used by a diverse population of users with heterogeneous backgrounds, in terms of their knowledge, skills, and needs. Therefore, human factors...

Enormous numbers of digital mammograms have been produced in hospitals and breast screening centers. To exploit those valuable resources in aiding diagnoses and research, content-based mammogram retrieval systems are required to effectively access the mammogram databases. This paper presents a content-based mammogram retrieval system, which allows...

Purpose Exploratory learning is regarded as an important ability for developing knowledge from open environments. During the exploration, learners not only need to acquire new information based on their current interests, but also they need to form new perspectives by incorporating new knowledge into their previous knowledge. This paper seeks to ad...

Purpose – Cognitive style has been identified to be significantly influential in deciding users' preferences of search engines. In particular, Witkin's field dependence/independence has been widely studied in the area of web searching. It has been suggested that this cognitive style has conceptual links with the holism/serialism. This study aims to...

The editorial section of ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction deals with data mining for understanding user needs. Data mining is the process of extracting valuable information from large amounts of data. It identifies hidden relationships, patterns, and interdependencies without leading to a priori hypotheses so predictive rules can be g...

The purpose of this study was to find out whether users should be involved in the design stage of a Digital Library DL. Hence an experiment has been undertaken to find out the level of user satisfaction with a user-centred DL UDL compared to a non-user-centred DL NDL. In this experiment, the UDL prototype has been compared with the NDL prototype. T...

Due to the increasing use of digital medical images, a need exists to develop an approach for automatic image annotation, which provides textual labels for images. Thus added labels can be used to access images using textual queries. Automatic image annotation can be separated into two individual tasks: feature extraction and image classification....

Storytelling is a joyful and educational activity for most of children. Storytelling has powerful effects on improving children's skills in language expression (e.g., listening, reading, and comprehension). In this paper, we present a robot-based learning companion to accompany children for storytelling. We hope this system can promote children's i...

As Web-based instruction (WBI) becomes increasingly popular, designers are faced with the challenge of identifying the varying preferences of learners and accommodating them in WBI programs. Cognitive style has been shown to have a significant effect on users' preferences for WBI. In particular, Witkin's field dependent/independent has been widely...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the credibility of internet shopping. Credibility, which refers to the believability of information, is an important consideration of internet shopping. Design/methodology/approach – The evaluation is conducted by incorporating Fogg's 10 Stanford Guidelines for Web Credibility into Nielsen's heuris...

Electronic government is increasing worldwide; however there are still some problems which influence users’ interaction with them. One of these problems is trustworthiness, which appears to be affected by whether e-government websites demonstrate their credibility. This study uses an empirical approach to evaluate credibility of e-government websit...

With advances in information and communication technology, interactive multimedia learning systems are widely used to support teaching and learning. However, as human factors vary across users, they may prefer the design of interactive multimedia learning systems differently. To have a deep understanding of the influences of human factors, we apply...

Remote experimentation is an effective e-learning paradigm for supporting hands-on education using laboratory equipment at distance. The current trend is to enable remote experimentation in mobile and ubiquitous learning. In such a context, the remote ...

There has been a proliferation of web-based learning programs (WBLPs). Unlike traditional computer-based learning programs, WBLPs are used by a population of learners who have diverse background. How different learners access the WBLPs has been investigated by several studies, which indicate that cognitive style is an important factor that influenc...

Enabling learning for members of geographically isolated communities presents benefits in terms of promoting regional development and cost savings for governments and companies. However, notwithstanding recent advances in e-Learning, from both technological and pedagogical perspectives, there are very few, if any, recognised methodologies for user-...

Personalization can be addressed by adaptability and adaptivity, which have different advantages and disadvantages. This study investigates how digital library (DL) users react to these two techniques. More specifically, we develop a personalized DL to suit the needs of different cognitive styles based on the findings of our previous work [Frias-Ma...

Online Public Library Catalogues (OPACs) are widely used electronic library catalogues giving a wealth of remote access to library information resources. Users should be involved early in the OPAC development cycle process in order to ensure a usable and functional interface, as the integration of user-defined requirements of OPACs, along with the...

Cognitive style is an influential factor in users’ information seeking. The study presented in this paper examines how users’ cognitive styles affect their behavior and perception in digital libraries. Fifty participants took part in this study. Two dimensions of cognitive styles were considered: (a) Field Dependence/Independence; (2) Verbalizer/Im...

This paper presents the results of a study which investigated the impact of cognitive styles on perceptual multimedia quality. More specifically, we examine the different preferences demonstrated by verbalizers and imagers when viewing multimedia content ...

This paper presents the results of a study which investigated the impact of cognitive styles on perceptual multimedia quality. More specifically, we examine the different preferences demonstrated by verbalizers and imagers when viewing multimedia content presented with different quality of service (QoS) levels pertaining to frame rates and color de...

In this chapter, we describe the results of empirical studies which examined the effect of cognitive style on the perceived quality of distributed multimedia. We use two dimensions of Cognitive Style Analysis, Field Dependent/Independent and Verbaliser/Visualiser, and the Quality of Perception metric to characterise the human perceptual experience....

Web-based instruction (WBI) programs, which have been increasingly developed in educational settings, are used by diverse learners. Therefore, individual differences are key factors for the development of WBI programs. Among various dimensions of individual differences, the study presented in this article focuses on cognitive styles. More specifica...

Teaching and learning are no longer limited by place or time. Large numbers of educational institutions are now using course management systems such as WebCT. This study examined students' attitude and achievement in relation to their use of WebCT. Statistical data was gathered weekly from the WebCT tracking system log files. Students' achievement...

Web-based learning is widespread in educational settings. The popularity of Web-based learning is in great measure because of its flexibility. Multiple navigation tools provided some of this flexibility. Different navigation tools offer different functions. Therefore, it is important to understand how the navigation tools are used by learners with...

Wrapper feature selection methods are widely used to select relevant features. However, wrappers only use a single classifier. The downside to this approach is that each classifier will have its own biases and will therefore select very different features. In order to overcome the biases of individual classifiers, this study introduces a new data m...

Wrapper feature selection approaches are widely used to select a small subset of relevant features from a dataset. However, Wrappers suffer from the fact that they only use a single classifier when selecting the features. The downside to this approach is that each classifier will have its own biases and will therefore select very different features...

This chapter reviews some of themost important human dimensions applicable to the design and use of information spaces, with a focus on library applications. The chapter begins with an introduction to the area of information spaces, presenting an established view of human information processing that can be used to understand the way in which users...

This study investigated two dimensions of cognitive style, including Verbalizer/Imager and Field Dependent/Field Independent and their influence on user perceived quality of multimedia video. Perceived user quality was characterised using the Quality of Perception (QoP) metric, which captures the infotainment duality of multimedia presentations. Re...

User Centered Design for Medical Visualization features a comprehensive review of leading advances in medical visualization and human-computer interaction. This book investigates the human roles during a visualization process, specifically motivation-based design, user-based design, and perception-and-cognitive-based design. An essential resource f...

The chapter introduces biomedical image registration as a means of integrating and providing complementary and additional information from multiple medical images simultaneously to facilitate diagnostic decision-making and treatment monitoring. It focuses on the fundamental theories of biomedical image registration, major methodologies and contribu...

Many organisations, nowadays, have developed their own databases, in which a large amount of valuable information, e.g., customers’ personal profiles, is stored. Such information plays an important role in organisations’ development processes as it can help them gain a better understanding of customers’ needs. To effectively extract such informatio...

The use of Web-based instruction is becoming widespread in higher education; however, much remains to be learned about how different learners react to such instructional programs. The study presented in this article evaluates students’ learning performance and their perceptions in a Web-based instructional program, which was applied to teach studen...

Web-based instruction is prevalent in educational settings. However, many issues still remain to be investigated. In particular, it is still open about how human factors influenced learners’ performance and perception in web-based instruction. In this vein, the study presented in this chapter investigates this issue in a web-based instructional pro...