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In the context of e-learning, it is challenging to incorporate emerging technologies, such as alternate reality games or Virtual Reality (VR), within current learning trends. Microlearning is such a current trend. It divides large and complex chunks of content into small and elementary learning nuggets. These single self-contained nuggets are then composed to overarching lessons or courses. The concept of VR nuggets dovetails this educational trend. VR nuggets are standalone, self-contained, and rather short VR experiences that can be combined with other learning nuggets. By using initial implementations of VR nuggets, they can be used to let authors create VR earning content, for example, to let learners experience alternate realities. In this paper, we further investigate the VR nugget authoring concept and extent it. We introduce two novel authoring toolkits that rely on VR nuggets – one based on context-related module interaction (CoNMoD) and one based on visual scripting (ViNS Tiles). In two separate user studies, we examine the acceptance of the toolkits and compare them to existing authoring environments that also rely on VR nuggets but utilize different interface techniques. These studies' results emphasize the importance of exchanging content between different established tools and indicate the acceptance of our tools regarding their hedonic and pragmatic qualities, also compared to existing tools from related work. As a conclusion, we propose an exchange format for VR nuggets that supports their reusability. It enables authors that use different toolkits to work together. They can utilize VR nuggets created with other toolkits and still use their own preferred toolkit. By means of an expert survey, we draw conclusions on technical aspects and a suitable platform to make VR nuggets available to the community. This survey indicates that potential authors would use such an exchange-approach for creating and presenting VR content and that they are willing to share their work and to contribute in a VR nugget authoring community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A thriving body of literature has identified student voice as being vital to education and literacy development. However, the understanding of multimodal student voice representation is still modest in literacy-based pedagogical practices. Thus, this article presents a study that examined the development of students' multimodal authoring through the inclusion of multiliteracies in the higher education foreign language curriculum based on design analysis (Kalantzis et al., 2016) and the protocol Voice and Choice (Sheya, 2018) as a way to aid student voice representation. Specifically, the article describes the qualitative analysis of the design choices resulting from the collaborative work of three students during an online course project (CP) implemented in an intermediate intensive L2 Spanish undergraduate hybrid course. The CP was based on the tenets of (1) multiliteracies and (2) digital storytelling in combination with (3) a protocol that guides students to look into the voices and perspectives of specific content. The results showed that participants described the elements of digital storytelling design in depth, monomodally, and multimodally. Also, when creating their digital story, they expanded their authorial choices, honed their sensitivity in selecting fitting voices and perspectives to express an intentional message, and reflected on whose voices were missing from the content. This investigation offers insight into and advances understanding of the existing body of literature on multiliteracies, multimodal authoring, and student voice representation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Augmented Reality (AR) has shown great potential for improving human performance in Maintenance, Repair, and Overhaul (MRO) operations. Whilst most studies are currently being carried out at an academic level, the research is still in its infancy due to limitations in three main aspects: limited hardware capabilities, the robustness of object recognition, and content-related issues. This article focuses on the last point, by proposing a new geometry-based method for creating a step-by-step AR procedure for maintenance activities. The Fast Augmented Reality Authoring (FARA) method assumes that AR can recognise and track all the objects in a maintenance environment when CAD models are available, to knowledge transfer to a non-expert maintainer. The novelty here lies in the fact that FARA is a human-centric method for authoring animation-based procedures with minimal programming skills and the manual effort required. FARA has been demonstrated, as a software unit, in an AR system composed of commercially available solutions and tested with over 30 participants. The results show an average time saving of 34.7% (min 24.7%; max 55.3%) and an error reduction of 68.6% when compared to the utilisation of traditional hard-copy manuals. Comparisons are also drawn from performances of similar AR applications to illustrate the benefits of procedures created utilising FARA.

Augmented reality (AR) technology allows users to view and interact in real-time with virtual information layered on top of the physical environment. Interaction technique development is based on the AR application context. In some cases, using an AR basic interaction technique is unsuitable as it only allows translation and rotation of the virtual object. For example, kitchen design requires various manipulation functions, especially in changing the features of a virtual kitchen cabinet. Existing AR tangible interaction techniques specified to the kitchen design context enable alteration of the features of virtual furniture despite requiring extra input and output devices, such as a stylus, head-mounted displays (HMDs), and projectors. Such devices are not suitable for AR as they are rarely accessible in daily life. Therefore, this study aimed to develop an AR tangible interaction technique on a mobile platform with authoring capabilities for the kitchen design process. The technique uses a cube and a card as the physical medium and features manipulation functions, such as virtual object placement, position changing, deletion, and changing kitchen cabinet features. The tangible interaction technique recorded a faster mean task completion time than the AR basic interaction technique. The tangible interaction technique also recorded higher usability than the basic interaction technique. Younger and experienced users performed better. Gender did not impact the interaction technique. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mobile Augmented Reality (AR) is a promising technology for educational purposes. It allows for interactive, engaging, and spatially independent learning. While the didactic benefits of AR have been well studied in recent years and commodity smartphones already come with AR capabilities, concepts and tools for a scalable deployment of AR are still missing. The proposed solution TrainAR combines an interaction concept, a didactic framework and an authoring tool for procedural AR training applications for smartphones. The contribution of this paper is the open-source visual scripting-based authoring tool of TrainAR in the form of a Unity Editor extension. With this approach, TrainAR allows non-programmer domain experts to create ("author") their own procedural AR trainings by offering a customized editor, while at any time programmers may decide to utilize Unity's full capabilities. Furthermore, utility and usability evaluations of several already developed TrainAR trainings (combined n = 317) show that TrainAR trainings provide utility in several contexts and are usable by the target groups. A systematic usability evaluation of the TrainAR Authoring Tool (n = 30) shows that it would be usable by non-programmer domain experts, though the learning curve depends on the media competency of the authors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper builds on theoretical developments that view entrepreneurship as emancipation, i.e., entrepreneurial activities as generators of change and pursuit of freedom from perceived constraints. Using a representative data set of 1095 SMEs owned by Indigenous entrepreneurs in Canada, the authors investigate how pursuit of this freedom affects (i) the way entrepreneurs enact several aspects of their ventures and (ii) the performance outcomes achieved. Findings reveal how the initial motivations of entrepreneurs (seeking change for the social collective of which they are a part versus seeking autonomy for themselves) lead to distinct business practices, which in turn impact differentially entrepreneurial outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The use of virtual reality (VR) for industrial training helps minimize risks and costs by allowing more frequent and varied use of experiential learning activities, leading to active and improved learning. However, creating VR training experiences is costly and time-consuming, requiring software development experts. Additionally, current authoring tools lack integration with existing data and are desktop-oriented, which detach the pedagogic process of creating the immersive experience from experiencing it in a situated context. In this article, we present a novel interactive approach for immersive authoring of VR-based experiential training by the trainers themselves, from inside the virtual environment and without the support of development experts. The design includes identifying interactable elements, such as 3-D models, equipment, tools, settings, and environment. The trainer also specifies by demonstration the actions to be performed by trainees, as a virtual choreography. During course execution, trainees’ activities are also registered as virtual choreographies and matched to those specified by the trainer. Thus, trainer and trainee are culturally situated within their area semantics and social discourse, rather than adopting concepts of the VR system for the learning content. We conducted a usability case study with professionals from an international wind energy company, using detailed models of wind turbines and real-world procedures. Trainers set up a training course using the immersive authoring tool, and trainees executed the course. The learning experience and usability were analyzed, and the training was certified by comparing real-world task completion between a user who had undergone virtual training and a user who did not. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The use of Augmented Reality (AR) has the potential to make everyday experiences exciting and educational. For example, AR can augment exhibits in museums with animated and interactive content. The creation of this content, however, is still facing challenges. To meet these, we employ reusable, pattern-based building blocks called AR nuggets. An AR nugget implements one application pattern in a small and self-contained piece of software to provide a complete solution for recurrent AR-based experiences. For example, in the application context of museums and exhibitions, we identify superimposition or visualization of echolocation as general patterns for AR use cases. AR nuggets encapsulate AR-specific knowledge and sophisticated functionalities to support authors and reduce the authoring task to tweaking existing templates to individual exhibits. To connect AR nuggets used in different exhibition rooms, we present novel AR nuggets that encapsulate the functionalities needed for creating a path between the exhibits. Additionally, we provide examples of AR nuggets that implement a virtual character that guides visitors to exhibits of interest. With this new set of AR nuggets, spatial connections can be authored, e.g., in the form of a guided tour with interactive narration. For this authoring task, we introduce an AR nugget manager that supports authors in creating and adapting multiple non-linear AR experiences. We illustrate our approach with the creation of an everyday AR application for a museum of natural history, share our experiences and discuss to what extent our approach can mitigate authoring challenges for everyday AR applications from a museum’s point of view. This work contributes to the field of everyday AR with 1) a pattern-based authoring concept to create complex everyday AR experiences based on self-contained building blocks, 2) a set of patterns that allows for spatial connections of these to create non-linear AR content, 3) means for supporting this authoring process in the form of an AR nugget manager, 4) lessons learned in applying our authoring concept in a real application case in a museum, 5) our observation of hurdles that still prevent more widespread use of AR in everyday applications during the realization of this application case. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On the basis of cover art and advertising development at the beginning of the twentieth century, at a key time of periodics publishing History in Argentina (in terms of the offer of growth and diversification), this work analyzes the uses of writer's portrait in Los Pensadores between 1922 and 1924, the booklet with which Antonio Zamora (1896-1976) launched Claridad publishing house. On one hand, the analysis of this peri odics covers, as well as other composition decisions, allows to compare the strategies of both periodical press and cheap book publishers in the 1920 publishing field. On the other hand, different material features such as the choice of images or graphical and editorial decisions lead to give an account of their taking part in the process of author's figure fixing on the book artefact. By this way, they also give empiricity to author's function, under media regime and in the context of mass culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the proliferation of the Internet in the early nineties and mobile technology in the early noughties, reading and authoring have become networked, intersubjective practices that take place across multimedia storyworlds that are open-ended and connected. Taking the fantasy genre as a case study, this article shows that in the digital age readers do not simply replay or subvert fixed codes of meaning-making established by authors and publishing/production houses. Rather, they engage with metaleptic strategies of reading. They use transliteracy skills to produce creative interpretations of the storyworld. The result of this deeper engagement shifts the cultural function of reading back to a performative and social one. It also obliges authors and publishers to consider processes normally associated with production and curation as integral to their work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present ANISMA, a software and hardware toolkit to prototype on-skin haptic devices that generate skin deformation stimuli like pressure, stretch, and motion using shape-memory alloys (SMAs). Our toolkit embeds expert knowledge that makes SMA spring actuators more accessible to human-computer interaction (HCI) researchers. Using our software tool, users can design different actuator layouts, program their spatiotemporal actuation and preview the resulting deformation behavior to verify a design at an early stage. Our toolkit allows exporting the actuator layout and 3D printing it directly on skin adhesive. To test different actuation sequences on the skin, a user can connect the SMA actuators to our customized driver board and reprogram them using our visual programming interface. We report a technical analysis, verify the perceptibility of essential ANISMA skin deformation devices with 8 participants, and evaluate ANISMA regarding its usability and supported creativity with 12 HCI researchers in a creative design task. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This work investigates the possibility of using a novel "minimal AR" authoring approach to optimize the visual assets used in augmented reality (AR) interfaces to convey work instructions in manufacturing. In the literature, there are no widely supported guidelines for the optimal choice of visual assets (e.g., CAD models, drawings, and videos). Therefore, to avoid the risk of having AR technical documentation based only on the author's preference, our work proposes a novel authoring approach that enforces the minimal amount of information to accomplish a task. Minimal AR was tested through a simulated AR LEGO-based assembly task. The performance (completion time, mental workload, errors) of 40 users was evaluated with 4 combinations of visual assets in 4 tasks with an increasing amount of information needed. The main result is that visual assets with an excess of information do not significantly increase performance. Therefore, the location of a specified object should be "minimally" authored by an auxiliary model (e.g., a circle and an arrow). For identifying an object within a couple, color coding is preferred to using additional visual assets. If more than two objects must be identified, a drawing visual asset is also needed. Only when the orientation of a selected object must be conveyed, animated product models are required. These insights could be helpful for an optimal design of AR work instructions in a wide range of industrial fields. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Creating Augmented Reality (AR) applications can be an arduous process. With most current authoring tools, authors must complete multiple authoring steps in a time-consuming process before they can try their AR application and get a first impression of it. Especially for laypersons, complex workflows set a high barrier to getting started with creating AR applications. This work presents a novel authoring approach for creating mobile AR applications. Our idea is to provide authors with small, ready-to-use AR applications that can be executed and tested directly as a starting point. Authors can then focus on customizing these AR applications to their needs without programming knowledge. We propose to use patterns from application domains to further facilitate the authoring process. Our idea is based on the learning nugget approach from the educational sciences, where a nugget is a small and self-contained learning unit. We transfer this approach to the field of AR authoring and introduce an AR nugget authoring tool. The authoring tool provides pattern-based self-contained AR applications, called AR nuggets. AR nuggets use simple geometric objects to give authors an impression of the AR application. By replacing these objects and further adaptions, authors can realize their AR applications. Our authoring tool draws from non-immersive desktop computers and AR devices. It synchronizes all changes to an AR nugget both to an AR device and a non-immersive device. This enables authors to use both devices, e.g., a desktop computer to type text and an AR device to place virtual objects in the 3D environment. We evaluate our proposed authoring approach and tool in a user study with 48 participants. Our users installed the AR nugget authoring tool on their own devices, worked with it for 3 weeks, and filled out a questionnaire. They were able to create AR applications and found the AR nugget approach supportive. The users mainly used the desktop computer for the authoring tasks but found the synchronization to the AR device helpful to experience the AR nuggets at any time. However, the users had difficulties with some interactions and rated the AR nugget authoring tool in a neutral field.

Virtual Reality (VR) systems and VR content are complex, and their creation can mainly be conducted by experts in VR and related areas. That makes the use of VR challenging for experts from other domains, such as educators. In this paper, we build up on existing work and investigate the VR nugget concept—small self-contained VR systems that are built from educational design patterns. Particularly, we extend this concept and introduce structured authoring processes based on VR nuggets that show how standalone, combinable, and reusable VR software can serve as a meta-level guide for various VR applications and involve educators as domain experts. We conduct a user study with VR Forge, a VR-nugget-based authoring software tool, to draw conclusions on how pattern-based VR authoring tools should be designed to support domain experts. We compare our results with those of a related study of the VR nugget tool IN Tiles. Based on the comparative results of usability and hedonic quality measures, both anecdotal evidence and statistically significant results support the concept’s potential for VR authoring conducted by practitioners who are not experts in VR. We derive the recommendation that the design of a VR-nugget-based authoring environment will benefit from using both immersive and desktop user interface (UI) technologies and that the authoring workflow will need authors to frequently alternate between the technologies. We state findings and lessons learned from the development and the studies. We contribute insights in developing reusable and use-case-specific VR content and tools and propose authoring processes that focus on the tasks and goals of domain experts as the primary authoring role within educational VR development. Finally, the relevance of VR-nugget-based authoring is supported by anecdotal evidence gathered from over 3 years of investigating and applying it within three educational institutions and a company providing education services.

Charts go hand in hand with text to communicate complex data and are widely adopted in news articles, online blogs, and academic papers. They provide graphical summaries of the data, while text explains the message and context. However, synthesizing information across text and charts is difficult; it requires readers to frequently shift their attention. We investigated ways to support the tight coupling of text and charts in data documents. To understand their interplay, we analyzed the design space of chart-text references through news articles and scientific papers. Informed by the analysis, we developed a mixed-initiative interface enabling users to construct interactive references between text and charts. It leverages natural language processing to automatically suggest references as well as allows users to manually construct other references effortlessly. A user study complemented with algorithmic evaluation of the system suggests that the interface provides an effective way to compose interactive data documents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Procedural crowd simulation to ease authoring large virtual environments. • A procedural framework to bridge the gap between city generation and crowd behavior. • Authoring populated virtual cities in a flexible and efficient manner with the possibility of reusing and combining previously defined behaviors through rule files. • Procedural generation of dynamic agendas to achieve consistency in the simulation whereabouts of a virtual crowd. [Display omitted] Authoring meaningful crowds to populate a virtual city can be a cumbersome, time-consuming and an error-prone task. In this work, we present a new framework for authoring populated environments in an easier and faster way, by relying on the use of procedural techniques. Our framework consists of the procedural generation of semantically-augmented virtual cities to drive the procedural generation and simulation of crowds. The main novelty lies in the generation of agendas for each individual inhabitant (alone or as part of a family) by using a rule-based grammar that combines city semantics with the autonomous persons' characteristics. A new population or city can be authored by editing rule files with the flexibility of reusing, combining or extending the rules of previous populations. The results show how logical and consistent sequences of whereabouts can be easily generated for a crowd providing a good starting point to bring virtual cities to life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]