Calendars as user context providers in learning environments

1. Calendars as user context providers in learning environments Master thesis spring 2010 - Anders Gimmestad Gule

2. Context in a Learning environment Web courses are often neglected by the students/participants and not prioritized, other tasks are put first. Context-aware systems tries to read a context (situation), and act accordingly. With a known context (past, present or future) a context-aware LMS could plan/suggest course modules to the student. Master thesis spring 2010 - Anders Gimmestad Gule

3. Context «Context is any information that can be used to characterize the situation of an entity. An entity is a person, place or object that is considered relevant to the interaction between a user and a application, including the user and applications themselves.» Anind K. Dey, 2001 - «Understanding and using context» Attributes Location - where Time - when People - who Resources - what sound, light, pressure, movement etc. Master thesis spring 2010 - Anders Gimmestad Gule

4. Calendar «a schedule that define what an action an entity is undertaking (, has undertaken or planned) in a given set of time.» Anind K. Dey, 2001 - «Understanding and using context» Calendar as a sensor Potentially, a calendar can describe an entity’s (who) location (where) and it’s resources (what) in a time set (when). A calendar could form a reliable and stable source for context data. Master thesis spring 2010 - Anders Gimmestad Gule

5. What is the problem? Context is inconstant - it always changes. - hard to capture correctly. Calendars are made by people - people are lazy. - content and details are user dependent. - can calendars be used to capture context? How do we adapt to user-context? - rules/algorithm? - automatic or semi-automatic? Master thesis spring 2010 - Anders Gimmestad Gule

6. How to study this? • Stage One • Future work • User calendar habits - interviews/survey: • - why are some users «lazy»? • - what motivates them? • - why are they motivated/not motivated? • - do they experience calendars as reliable? • - how accurate/detailed are they? • - can the users be taught/trained to utilize their calendars? • Calendars - analyze calendar samples: • - how many entries exist in in a calendar? • - how detailed/precise are they? • - how distributed are they across a week? • - what context can be extracted? Master thesis spring 2010 - Anders Gimmestad Gule

7. How to study this? (cont.) • Stage Two • Scenario: «course + user context» • - adapt a course to a calendar. • - what are the minimum content requirements for a calendar? • - identify missing attributes/data in a calendar. • - identify context meta-data for a course. • - produce an algorithm based on the observations. • Prototype: • - implement the algorithm. • - run the algorithm on real-world calendars. • - analyze the results. Master thesis spring 2010 - Anders Gimmestad Gule

8. Planned Contributions - Assessment of calendars abilities as context providers. - Suggest an algorithm for planning a module based course according to a calendar-based context . Master thesis spring 2010 - Anders Gimmestad Gule