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This work explores how comic-based digital storytelling can support children and teachers in combining foreign language and content teaching in the Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) framework. In particular, we focus on investigating three specific aspects: (1) the use of digital storytelling in terms of collaboration, engagement and ease of use, (2) the adoption of comic-based digital storytelling in the CLIL framework, and (3) the benefits and limitations in using digital storytelling in comparison to a paper-based version. In order to investigate these aspects, we develop a case study in a primary school in Italy. A class of 18 children and 2 teachers used a digital tool, named ComicsCLIL, with the aim of creating digital narratives in the CLIL framework. The results provide some evidences that comic-based digital storytelling can be a beneficial educational tool for approaching CLIL lessons. It emerged, in fact, that digital storytelling, as supported by ComicsCLIL, can facilitate this practice by being engaging, easy to use, fully educational while considering the collaborative aspect.

This study examined the effectiveness of a school-based, collaborative technology intervention combined with cognitive behavioral therapy to teach the concepts of social collaboration and social conversation to children with high-functioning autism spectrum disorders ("n" = 22) as well as to enhance their actual social engagement behaviors (collaboration and social conversation) with peers. Two computer programs were included in the intervention: "Join-In" to teach collaboration and "No-Problem" to teach conversation. Assessment in the socio-cognitive area included concept perception measures, problem solving, Theory of Mind, and a dyadic drawing collaborative task to examine change in children's social engagement. Results demonstrated improvement in the socio-cognitive area with children providing more active social solutions to social problems and revealing more appropriate understanding of collaboration and social conversation after intervention, with some improvement in Theory of Mind. Improvement in actual social engagement was more scattered. (Contains 5 tables and 5 figures.)

Discussion of information exploration and software design in computer-based educational systems focuses on the integration of hypermedia and natural language dialog. AlFRESCO is described, an interactive natural language-centered multimodal system that was developed for users interested in frescoes and paintings. (LRW)

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Joint narratives are often used in the context of reconciliation interventions for people in social conflict situations, which arise, for example, due to ethnic or religious differences. The interventions aim to encourage a change in attitudes of the participants towards each other. Typically, a human mediator is fundamental for achieving a successful intervention. In this work, we present an automated approach to support remote interactions between pairs of participants as they contribute to a shared story in their own language. A key component is an automated cognitive tutor that guides the participants through a controlled escalation/de-escalation process during the development of a joint narrative. We performed a controlled study comparing a trained human mediator to the automated mediator. The results demonstrate that an automated mediator, although simple at this stage, effectively supports interactions and helps to achieve positive outcomes comparable to those attained by the trained human mediator. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

New forms of socializing care that leverage community networks and are based on alternative social arrangements are being experimented with in different grassroots contexts. They are being framed as innovative practices to facilitate the integration of professional and caring responsibilities. In this changing landscape, the private sector might benefit from new forms of welfare policies and familyfriendly practices that are based on the co-participation of employees, and encouraged by public policies targeting workplace solutions for childcare. This paper intends to contribute to the ongoing debate on socio-technical innovation in management by exploring how collaborative childcare services might be deployed in workplace settings. At the same time, it investigates the role of digital technology in facilitating employees' engagement and participation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social media are implemented by organisations to enhance productivity and knowledge sharing among employees, but they can also support group deliberation and employee voice. This paper presents a case study of an online deliberation initiative involving the discussion of a contentious internal policy within an organisation of around 550 knowledge workers. The deliberation process lasted 5 weeks and actively involved 167 employees. Different sources of information (user interaction logs, activity patterns, questionnaire responses) were analysed to investigate the impact of participation, or non‐participation, on the level of satisfaction with the deliberation, and on the understanding of the issue discussed. The findings suggest that (1) interest is a driver for participation, but it does not explain active participation, (2) participation, either active or passive, positively influences the understanding of the issue and (3) satisfaction with the outcome is not related to participation, but it may support participation in future initiatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Young adults with autism spectrum disorders often face substantial difficulty finding and retaining paid employment. This study aimed at evaluating the usability of Ready, Set, Work!, a video modeling application for use by adolescents with and without autism spectrum disorders, for participation in the vocational world, and to test whether it can discriminate between these two groups in terms of their response to simulated social dilemmas within vocational contexts. Method: Twenty adolescents with autism spectrum disorders and 20 typically developing adolescents, aged 16-21 years, were trained to use the application, followed by completion of two usability tools: the Intrinsic Motivation Scale and a relevance questionnaire. Result: Both groups found the application to be useful and relevant as a job readiness tool. The autism spectrum disorders group had significantly greater difficulty in identifying adaptive and maladaptive responses (Z=-2.74, p⩽0.05) and found the application to be more relevant compared to the control group (Z=-1.69, p⩽0.05). Conclusion: Ready, Set, Work! appears to have good usability and social validity, suggesting the potential of this computerized video modeling tool to provide support for the acquisition and improvement of social vocational skills in adolescents in general and specifically in those with autism spectrum disorders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on concepts from theories on persuasion, social psychology, and philosophy of language, this article presents the design of an ambient persuasive system that acts as an automatic facilitator by supporting a balanced flow of communication in group conversational activity. The system includes two main components: (a) a context-awareness system that monitors group member non-verbal behavior, and (b) a visualization component that promotes balanced participation, providing targeted directives to participants through peripheral displays. In two empirical studies, a strategy for influencing participant social dynamics based on subtle directives in the form of aesthetically pleasant visual animations was assessed. The findings provide insight on the effect, the acceptability, and the perceived influence of subtle peripheral persuasive messages for ambient displays. The studies indicate that when the participants understand the message intention, the subtle directives have a positive influence on group behavior, and are considered more appealing and less intrusive than overt, language-based messages. Furthermore, it was found that personality traits influenced attitudes towards the system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aims. Children with high-functioning Autism Spectrum Disorder (HFASD) have major difficulties in social communication skills, which may impact their performance and participation in everyday life. The goal of this study was to examine whether the StoryTable, an intervention paradigm based on a collaborative narrative, multitouch tabletop interface, enhanced social interaction for children with HFASD, and to determine whether the acquired abilities were transferred to behaviors during other tasks.Methods. Fourteen boys with HFASD, aged 7–12 years, participated in a 3-week, 11-session intervention. Social interactions during two nonintervention tasks were videotaped at three points in time, one prior to the intervention (pre), a second immediately following the intervention (post) and a third three weeks after the intervention (follow-up). The video-recorded files were coded using the Friendship Observation Scale to ascertain the frequencies of positive and negative social interactions and collaborative play. Differences in these behaviors were tested for significance using nonparametric statistical tests.Results. There were significantly higher rates of positive social interactions and collaborative play, and lower rates of negative social interactions following the intervention suggesting generalization of the social skills learned during the intervention. Improvement was maintained when tested three weeks later.Conclusion. These findings provide support for the use of collaborative technology-based interventions within educational settings to enhance social interaction of children with HFASD. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper summarises the work carried out in the EU project meSch and presented at the 2nd Digital Heritage Expo held in Granada in 2015. meSch, Material EncounterS with digital Cultural Heritage, bridges the gap between visitors' cultural heritage experience on-site and on-line by providing a platform for the creation of tangible smart exhibits, that will enable heritage professionals to compose and realise physical artefacts enriched by digital content without the need for specialised technical knowledge. The platform includes an authoring toolkit for the composition of physical/digital narratives that map on interactive artefacts, and an embedded multi-sensor digital system platform for the construction of ad-hoc physical smart exhibits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses an approach to monitoring the level of engagement of video game players based on the theory of flow in the gaming experience. Starting from the flow framework, we developed a non-obtrusive system that estimates the player's state of engagement by analysing non-verbal behavioral cues that are easily detected with simple hardware, such as a webcam and a traditional keyboard and mouse setup. We present the design and the results of an empirical study aimed at gathering data and model the player's engagement. Facial expressions, head movements, keyboard and mouse activities were recorded while participants played a first-person shooter video game. We used an adapted version of the Experience Sampling Methodology to gather the ground truth and trained a Support Vector Machine classifier that recognizes the affective states, reaching an accuracy of 73%. The results showed that the level of engagement is reasonably predicted by considering the head movements and facial expressions only. The findings could aid in developing digital games able to use the information about the player's affective state to adapt their content and support the game experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A multi-user tabletop interface was designed to support reconciliation of a conflict aimed at shifting hostile attitudes and achieving a greater understanding of another viewpoint. The interface provided a setting for face-to-face shared narration and support for the management of disagreements. The interface allows for escalation and de-escalation of the conflict emerging in the shared narration and requires that participants perform joint actions when a contribution to the story is to be removed from the overall narration. A betweensubjects experiment compared the tabletop interface and a desktop multimedia interface with mixed pairs (male Israeli-Jewish and Palestinian-Arab youth). The results demonstrated that the experience with the tabletop interface appears to be motivating and, most importantly, produces at least a short-term shift of attitude toward the other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tabletop interfaces are a novel class of technologies that are particularly suited to support co-located collaboration. The Collaborative Puzzle Game (CPG) is a tabletop interactive activity developed for fostering collaboration skills in children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD). The CPG features an interaction rule called Enforced Collaboration (EC); in order to be moved, puzzle pieces must be touched and dragged simultaneously by the two players. Two studies were conducted to test the effect of EC on collaboration. In Study I, 70 typically developing boys were tested in pairs to characterise the way they respond to EC; in Study II, 16 boys with ASD were tested in pairs. Results suggest that EC has a generally positive effect on collaboration and is associated with more complex interactions. For children with ASD, the EC interaction rule was effective in triggering behaviours associated with co-ordination of the task and negotiation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study evaluated the effectiveness of a 3-week intervention in which a co-located cooperation enforcing interface, called StoryTable, was used to facilitate collaboration and positive social interaction for six children, aged 8–10 years, with autistic spectrum disorder (ASD). The intervention focused on exposing pairs of children to an enforced collaboration paradigm while they narrated a story. Pre- and post-intervention tasks included a “low technology” version of the storytelling device and a non storytelling play situation using a free construction game. The outcome measure was a structured observation scale of social interaction. Results demonstrated progress in three areas of social behaviors. First, the participants were more likely to initiate positive social interaction with peers after the intervention. Second, the level of shared play of the children increased from the pre-test to the post-test and they all increased the level of collaboration following the intervention. Third, the children with ASD demonstrated lower frequencies of autistic behaviors while using the StoryTable in comparison to the free construction game activity. The implications of these findings are discussed in terms of the effectiveness of this intervention for higher functioning children with ASD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Future intelligent systems will have contextual goals to pursue. As opposed to more traditional scenarios of human computer interaction, intelligent persuasive systems may also aim to induce the user or, in general, the audience, to perform some actions in the real world. Some scenarios of application are dynamic advertisement, preventive medicine, social action, and edutainment. As a step in this direction, a prototype called Promoter was developed for the production of persuasive messages. In modeling persuasion, the cognitive state of the participants (beliefs, desires, and intentions) is taken into account, as well as their social relations, their emotions, and the context of interaction. In this article, a taxonomy of persuasive strategies and the meta-reasoning model that works on this taxonomy is described. The taxonomy is built by taking into consideration studies coming both from social psychology and philosophy, and from the area of natural argumentation. The taxonomy is not domain specific and it helps to bridge persuasion strategies and rhetorical relations, a fundamental element in text planning. The use of this taxonomy also permits reasoning on the basis of emotion expression in accordance with persuasion strategies for multimodal message generation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article introduces the idea of enhancing the audio presentation of a multimedia museum guide by using the PDA screen to travel throughout a fresco and identify the various details in it. During the presentation, a sequence of pictures is synchronized with the audio commentary and the transitions among the pictures are planned according to cinematic techniques. The theoretical background is presented, discussing the language of cinematography and the Rhetorical Structure Theory to analyze dependency relationships inside a text. In building the video clips, a set of strategies similar to those used in documentaries were employed. Two broad classes of strategies have been identified. The first class encompasses constraints, imposed by the grammar of cinematography, while the second deals with conventions normally used in guiding camera movements in the production of documentaries. The results of a user study are also presented and discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we describe an empirical evaluation of the user's perceived usefulness of recommendations for configuration tasks in a smart home scenario. Our results suggest that while overall recommendations help improve the performance in the task, the psychological traits of Self-efficacy and Need for Cognition play an important role in determining the perceived usefulness of the recommendations. These effects are somehow different from those reported in other studies where recommendations are provided for a choice task rather than a constructive task. Thus, our results offer evidence regarding the importance of incorporating the evaluation of personality traits into the design of configuration constructive tasks in order to make informed decisions on whether and how to provide users with recommendations. Additionally, they show that it is crucial to take into account the nature of the task and, where possible, individual competencies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]