Proof of Concept activity shows, that not only ASD-pupils are unique – so are ASD-teachers!

Better late than never!

In the middle of a busy June(to be exact: June 8th) I planned, arranged and carried through a Paper prototype test with three teachers from Egebakken as a HANDS Proof of Concept activity. Unfortunately have I not had time to analyse the data from the experiment, but I have a strong personal need to tell about the immediate results from the experiment.

I believe, that my working hours will be dedicated to writing the HANDS proposal.

The main conclusions of the test are in the bottom of this post.

The motivation for this Proof of Concept activities was a need to prove – theoretically – the benefit of the HANDS concept.

The experiment setup was:

• Nice and for the testteachers familiar surroundings – in a classroom at Egebakken
• Three teachers who each was given 3 real world pedagogical problems, which they had to consider thinking aloud one after the other. All teachers were from Egebakken: Susan Gulstad, Kristian Wolling and Søren Madsen.
• They could solve the problem by taking or sketching solutions.
• I was testleader asking them positive yes questions and possibly suggesting to them computertools to be a part of the solution.
• Each realworld problem case was elaborated in approximately 15 minutes.
• The datacollection methods were videorecording of the whole test and written a report.
  Special thanks to Anne-Katrine Kjaer Christensen and Julie Leth Jespersen, students at Aalborg University, Institute of Communication.

The immediate impression of the test was overwhelming. Very. While the test took place, Anne-Katrine, Julie and I was overwhelmed by knowledge, considerations, interesting perspectives and much, much more. This made it nice to end the session so that I did not get any more new information, even though that I knew, I had to continue and get as many data out of the experiment as possible.

The test in other words was well functioning. The real world problems were relevant and the teachers were more than willing to think-aloud. They did not by themselves suggest solutions the problem by using Pdas.

Main test conclusion are

• Teachers are different. The three teachers did not have the same methodology to solve the same problems.
• They were open towards solution with pdas, but they did not suggest it themselves.

• Internal motivation of the pupil was always considered.

• They referred to a common set of methods, which they wanted to apply in different situations.

• One method – Simple Safe Success – seems very valuable to put into a pda.

The fact that the three teachers seemed to have differentways of elaborating a real world problem seems troublesome. Unique teachers’ hers personalities. Uak! But they had several things in common the most valuable, they had methods in common. Most profound was the use of SSS, Simple Safe Success’. A method which can easily be formalized and turned into a computerprogram.

In general methods are formalizations of everyday pedagogical work and these methods should be integrated into the pda.

If I had time to analyze the video and testreport several other very interesting testresults will appear.

The HANDS project aims to integrate the teachers' professional intuition and this experiment was the first study in the field.

An interestering and valuable experiment.

HANDS-whole-day-seminar in July - valuable and chearfull day

July 31th was selected to be a HANDS-whole-day-seminar at Aalborg University.

The invited partners was the core group in Aalborg: Aalborg University(Persuasive Design group), Egebakken – school for children with ASD and Wirtek(Romania)

9 persons participated in a valuable, interesting and cheerful day together.

In the seminar the first real version of the proposal(version 1) was published and critized.

The mainresult of the seminar was

Establishment of the writing group: Henrik Sand, Lars Moltsen(Wirtek), Susan Gulstad(Egebakken), Miklos Gyori(Budapest), Tia Hansen(AAU) and Morten Aagaard(AAU)

Establishment of The marketanalysisgroup: Morten Aagaard(AAU), Søren Madsen(Egebakken)

Establishment of The usecasescenario group: Morten Aagaard(AAU) and Kristian Wolling(Egebakken)

Agrement, that a HANDS meeting for all partners of HANDS is a good idea. Should be placed primo September.

Several participants had each an item on the agenda, which they had to resume. The resumes differ a lot.

The agenda was

HANDS soft roles

1. Presentation of the participants and the agenda
2. A personal introduction /Morten Aagaard – the slides, the resume.
   I gave a talk about core projectvalues of HANDS. In headlines it is: HANDS have some valuable European perspectives for the partners in Aalborg, user participartory design, an interdisciplinary design project demands openness towards other peoples ideas and the acronym HANDS is an oppurtunity to have fun together and create an open projectatmosphere.
   
   
3. Some perspectives on Persuasive Design/ Professor Per Hasle, AAU The resume
   Unfortunately had Per Hasle become ill and the Anne-Katrine Kjaer Christensen(Elite-student at Aalborg University) managed to be plan B. She had participated(May 2007) in the conference “Persuasive Technology 2007” at Stanford and told us, what state of the art in Persuasive Technology. A clear trend is mobile persuasion. Much work within the area is dedicated to experiments using the terms identified in B.J. Foggs book,”Persuasive Technology”. But to call research.. Anne-Katrine Kjaer Christensen was not sure. She was sure, that HANDS would be valuable to present at the next Persuasive Technology conference in Oulu 2008.
   
   
4. Why does progress in the teaching and caretaking of individuals with ASD have wider perspectives and how domight it interest professionals in other pedagogical areas? / Michael Sørensen, Manager of Egebakken, Vodskov – the slides the resume
   Michael presented the problem of being an individual with an autismdiagnosis. Lack of communication skills, social abilities and lack theory of mind. And he told about Egebakkens value of using pdas: to structure a chaotic everyday for the children with autism diagnosis.
   
   
5. How is the HANDS userexperience?/Morten Aagaard – the slide
   The seminar did not manage the time to hear this item. But the slides are available..
   
   
6. Preevaluation of the HANDS proposal/ Tommi Nielsen og Lone Grøndahl Kristensen, AAU fundraising office - the resume
   Tommy and Lone gave a razor sharp and very critical walkthrough of the proposal. They pointed out several very important problems in the proposal. Simple technical errors but also very many big mistakes was evident. The most important one was, that the objectives were not understandable. Furthermore, we asked Lone and Tommi, who they would recommend as the Head of HANDS. They did not doubt a second and pted at Peter Øhrstrøm.
7. Management structure, Ressource control and Risk management is needed too!/ Henrik Sand, Fundrasing & project manager, Institut for Kommunikation, AAU - the resume
   Henrik Sand talked about the importance of writing a good proposal and the core of a good proposal is to have objectives, which respond to the challenge.
   Furthermore Henrik stressed the importance of partners, who are familiar with each know the objectives well. He suggested(strongly supported by Lars Moltsen from Wirtek) that we should arranged an meeting in September for all partners. The participants agreed.
   
   

The meeting decided to make decisions instead of receiving new input.

The decisions were
Establishment of the writing group: Henrik Sand, Lars Moltsen(Wirtek), Susan Gulstad(Egebakken), Miklos Gyori(Budapest), Tia Hansen(AAU) and Morten Aagaard(AAU)

Establishment of The marketanalysisgroup: Morten Aagaard(AAU), Søren Madsen(Egebakken)

Establishment of The usecasescenario group: Morten Aagaard(AAU) and Kristian Wolling(Egebakken)

Agrement, that a HANDS meeting for all partners of HANDS is a good idea. Should be set for September.

8. Ethical concerns and WorkPackages. How to share Workpackage responsibility? / Morten Aagaard
   The seminar did not manage the time to hear this item.
9. Gift to particpants and establishment of the HANDS proposal in the EU’ EEPS proposal database.
   The seminar did not manage the time to hear this item.
10. Eventually
    The seminar did not manage the time to hear this item.

All in all a good seminar which pushed the HANDS proposal further.

Proof of Concept activity – Talk and debate on Institute of Communication/AAU

I made a personal walkthrough of the HANDS project objective and organzational challenges. It was positively but critically debated by an audience primarily from Aalborg University. But there where a couple of participators from HANDS partners.
The debate about HANDS was orientated towards
a) how to incorporate ethics in the design process
b) What type of testing and how to use the empirical data and
c) The main objective should be measurable.
Many valuable comments where given. Thank you to all participants of the meeting. The summary was written by Julie Leth. Thank you. My slides is here.

My motivation for this Proof of Concept meeting was the expectation, that the HANDS proposal will not be evaluated by qualified proposal-evaluators. Either will the evaluator have a Computer Science background, a cognitive psychology background or they will have an Human Computer Interaction background. Persuasive Technology is far new too the proposal evaluators.

In other words is this Proof of Concept activity my own desire to make a critical and Persuasive Technology competent review of the HANDS project.

In reality there where two obstacles to make succeed: first I had change from being in “Selling-mode” to an academic critical mode. Localize and explain the weak issues in HANDS and tell it to an audience which could be very critical. Second I had to explain the actual status of the design of HANDS within one hour.

The first obstacle was managed during the preparation of the talk. But it was initially difficult. To be open and to hope for critical comments. Unfortunately was the audience very positive and eager to make the project “come true” and wanted to contribute very constructively. It was a nice feeling but somehow too easy.

The second obstacle, introducing HANDS within one hour, was difficult. Even though the audience was knowledgeable about Persuasive Technology it wasn’t enough. Introducing HANDS software components demands that you describe the persuasive aims, you describe how you can achieve credibility and then you can explain the use of the functional triad. And when you talk about social actors things really become “scientific” or spectacular. Even a knowledgeable audience isnot familiar with the design choices. It takes a while to explain and it takes even more to digest.

Despite these reservations the meeting was valuable. It was not a complete walkthrough of the objectives of HANDS and all the challenges. But several vital HANDS issues were debated.

I will mention three issues here

1. Ethical issues.
The design of the social actor may introduce ethical problems. If the user gets too dependent of the social actor and too involved - how do you handle that? Ethical issues should (in a Scandinavian Persuasive tradition) be involved in the design process, not afterwards or at milestones, but a part of the systemdevelopment process.

b) What type of testing and how to use the empirical data.

Due to the fact that many research fields and traditions are included in the HANDS project it is not known how the empirical experiment should be designed. Very very true. Furthermore 1) the dataset size will be small(100<) 2) single individual with ASD have similarities with other individuals with ASD. And differs too. 3) The testsites will have to adapt the experiment to the single individuals which requireso not one experiment but many experiments.

c) The main objective should be measurable.

The meeting had a debate on the main objective of the proposal. The experienced EU-participators stressed explicitly, that it is very important to make the objective measureable. The same with all WorkPackages. EU needs projects which are not a risky business. The research design of HANDS makes it worthwhile to consider this very much. Quantitative research is far more easy to measure and HANDS will be a research
project primarily based on qualitative data.

There where other valuable comments. All valuable comments that will be integrated in the proposal. Thank you to the contributors.