Category Archives: Child-Computer Interaction

Online K-12

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A slightly late post this week, because I was working on CSCW revisions #blameclifflampe

There’s is big hullabaloo nowadays about higher education becoming increasings based on distance learning and online education and moving away from a more traditional model  (e.g., UVA thing). Regardless of anybody’s personal opinion about it, online learning is a trend that is gaining momentum and it’s not going away anytime soon. But, I haven’t really heard people talk much about the K–12 model moving online, so that is the subject of my blog this week.

Specifically, I’m talking about the K12 Online School program, which is available as a supplement for home schooling and individual learning (nothing new there), but also as a free replacement for public school in many locations. Is this a good solution for some students in America’s struggling schools? You can learn the basic bits about K12 Online on the website, but I had some specific questions so, I requested more info and called one of their representatives. Here are some selected answers that I got (mostly paraphrased, I didn’t record the phone conversation):

  • What is the difference between public and private versions of the program?

The public version is free but not available everywhere. In NJ (for example), the public version is only available for Newark high school students. In the public version of the program, students are required to log into the system for 5-6 hours a day, but the private version is much more controlled by the parent.

  • What is the typical week like for a student?

There is a lot of flexibility and variety (especially in the private version), but generally, the teachers assigns homework and quizzes on Monday and the child has until Sunday night to finish all the work (it’s up to the parent/child how the work is divided). There are “live” instructional lessons where the teacher uses video and a digital whiteboard to explain a lesson. The number of these varies, but for example, an 8th grader would likely get 1 or 2 60-minute lessons per week per subject. Teachers also hold office hours over videochat, phone, or instant messaging (channel decided by student, teacher is available over all of these media) and are available basically 24-hour for questions over phone or email. The courses incude online (e.g., sample lesson) and offline (textbooks, workbooks, lab exercises) components and the school sends you everything you need (including things like a microscope for a biology lab). The curriculum (in the private version) is decided by the parent with the help of an academic advisor.

  • What is the parent’s role in the day-to-day?

For K–8 students, the parent is advised to spend 3-5 hours a day assisting students with learning. This isn’t about teaching them, but more about motivating and mentoring the child in using the resources made available to them through K12 Online Academy. The parent has to be at home with the child to do this, but you might be able to make an arrangement with your school where the child does the K12 curriculum independently in the school.

  • What happens when the child is struggling? Is there a style of learner that doesn’t do well with this system?

When the child is struggling, they can get extra attention from a teacher or an academic advisor, but much of responsibility falls to the parent. According to the person I spoke to, they have rarely seen somebody really struggle, usually “Kid that just don’t apply themselves. They don’t do as well” [this is a direct quote].

You may be surprised that I didn’t ask about socialization in an online school program. Actually, I’m less worried about that. The way kids socialize while home-schooled seems to be more similar to the way adults have to look for social contact — they join clubs, take some classes in classrooms, volunteer, go to organized events, become active in a church, etc. I’m not that worried about that part. You can read more about socialization in an online program here.

My main worry is that this approach will introduce greater division and stratification:

  • Parents now have a lot more control over the child’s social circle. They may only want the child to socialize with people who go to the same church, for example. And, there’s not much the child can do about it. This means less mixing of diverse people.
  • Parents now have a lot more control over what the child learns. They can select a curriculum that excludes foreign languages or evolutionary biology, for example. This means less exposure to diverse ideas.
  • Parents now have a lot more responsibility over how the child learns, because they are the ones that motivate the learning. If the child’s parents are not that great at this or if they don’t know how to deal with specific learning or motivational problems, the child is stuck. There are fewer diverse sources of support to get help. This will increase the strength of the effect that educated parents tend to have educated students. Rich get richer.
  • Even if this program is indeed awesome for a certain type of student, it may still be unavailable to them if (1) their state doesn’t have a public K12 online program and they can’t afford private and (2) if both of their parents work and cannot supervise them during the day. This may decrease opportunities available to families that cannot make ends meet without 2 working parents or single-parent families.

Do you think that an online school is a good option for K–12? What do you think are the big problems that need to be addressed for this to become a viable solution?

 

Setting Up Automated Video Recording for Evaluating Your System in the Field

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I designed a communication system for families as part of my thesis project (it’s called the ShareTable). During the deployment, I found that it was incredibly valuable to supplement weekly interviews and diaries with automated video recordings of system use. For example, through the diary and interview, I was able to gather that on a particular day the mom and daughter talked to the son using the ShareTable and that the topic of conversation was that he wasn’t feeling well. Interesting as a data point, but not particularly exciting. But, here’s what the same data point looked like when I transcribed the video of this session:

Mom: What’s going on, baby?
Son (age 11): Well, my throat is acting up…
Mom: Awww, well take care of yourself … what else is wrong, sweetheart? … You look like you’re really sad, honey!
Son: I just don’t feel good.
Mom: All right, well listen. I love you … Do you see my hand, holding on to your hand? [Strokes his projected hand]
Son: Yes, I do.
Mom: I love you, baby.
Son: I love you too, mom.
Daughter (age 7): Hey, Bubba. [Also puts her hand on the table]
Mom: There’s my hand. Keep your hand in there, we’re going to do a family handshake, okay? [All three move their hands on the table together]

Much more interesting! And, the video clued me in to the fact that the families were leveraging the camera-projector system provided for the table for creating a sense of metaphorical touch.

Obviously, there are a lot of trust issues in recording video of system use in private settings like the home. It comes down to developing a good protocol with your IRB, developing a trusting relationship with your participant, and answering any of their questions and concerns. In my study, I discussed the issue frankly with the families, stored recorded videos on the machine in their home (not remotely), and let them mark any video session for deletion before the researcher watched it. All in all, it is a bit of a hassle and some participants may never agree to this intrusion, but it was totally worth it for the richness and detail of data I got in the end.

So, if you’re interested in setting up automated video logging for your deployment, here is a simple arrangement that I found worked with minimal need for reinventing the wheel:

  1. Set up a standard webcam in the home, pointing to the area of interest that you would like to have recorded when your system is in use. I just used a Logitech USB camera, but you may find that you need a wireless solution like the Ai Ball.
  2. Download and install Flash Media Live Encoder on the machine that will store the video logs. You will need to know the location of FMLEcmd once it’s installed. If you have a modern operating system, you can just search for it.
  3. Run the FMLE GUI interface. Here you can select, where videos will save (or

    Don’t forget to change the CPU usage if you’re doing anything else with the machine that you’re using for recording.

    stream, if your participants are cool with that) and general features of the video and audio. Now, click on the wrench icon next to the format (see left). I found it really important to set the CPU usage to “Very Low” (it’s “Dedicated” by default), otherwise the recording was actually messing with the other things the system was doing. You may find that there are other settings here that you need to tweak.

  4. Now, in your program, you just need to do a system call to FMLE when you’re ready to start recording. Find and kill the FMLE process when you’re ready to stop. These are common instructions in any language, so you should be able to find out how to do it from your program. Here are quick code bits for doing it in C#:
To Start Recording:
this.fmleProcess = Process.Start(@”<wherever your FMLEcmd is>”);
int hWnd = this.fmleProcess.Handle.ToInt32();
ShowWindow(hWnd, SW_SHOWMINIMIZED);
To Stop Recording:
this.fmleProcess.CloseMainWindow();
this.fmleProcess.Close();

Okay, that’s it! All of the recordings should be saved according to the settings that you set up in the FMLE GUI. With my participants, I asked them to mark any sessions that they wanted deleted, I could identify those recordings by their creation date and time, and delete those without watching.

Hope this helps somebody out there. I’d love to hear about clever way that you record or log system use during field deployment (beyond text system logs).

Addiction to Games: Is It Serious?

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Breaking rules and lying to play more is a sign of addiction.

Addiction to games like Everquest and World of Warcraft has serious consequences for some young people. More recently, serious consequences of addiction has been noted even among players of casual online games such as FarmVille. Though behavioral addiction (e.g., pathological gambling) are being included in the DSM, online addiction and addiction to games are not formally included yet.

I was curious about this and since I’ve been looking at the players of one casual gaming website for kids, Neopets, I just went ahead and asked some questions. I want to emphasize that this is just me being curious, not publishable research, because I did not have any sort of IRB here. I made a single post on the public Neopets forums asking: “I’ve been seeing a few people talking about being ‘addicted’ to Neopets. How do you know if you’re addicted?” I’ll highlight some of the responses here clustered using the Internet Safety Project questions for Online Game Addiction:

  • Do you play compulsively?

I always have neopets open in a tab when I’m online_ I can spend hours playing. I’ve also tried to quit and never been successful. I also tend to spend a lot on money for neocash or plushies for keyquest. :/

  • Do you play for long periods of time (often longer than you had planned)?

Signs of Addiction: You want to go to sleep but your laptop is right beside you with the neopets main page. YOu go on it for another “10 minutes”(What I’m doing right now XD) You go on neopets for 5 hours a day or more(Hmm…. might be me XD)

  • Once online, do you have difficulty stopping?

Lol I’ve tried quitting and cutting down. I spend nearly half my day on neopets everyday. I haven’t missed a day since….. Uh….. oh! Two days in June because I was on vacation and didn’t have net access. And before that.. er.. I can’t remember lol.

  • Do you play as often as you can?

I am on here every day. Sometimes I am on here for sixteen plus hours and other times I am only on here for a couple of hours.

  • Do you sneak or violate family rules in order to play?

Im not “addicted” I just spend at least 4 hours a day on Neo if I can, usually more. Im very involved in the site however I have taken very very long hiatus which was horrible since I missed so much! I told my family the other day that I would have to run away if they ever “compromised” my account.

  • Do you sacrifice real-world things for your online world?

I would wake up and tune out my family and just exist on Neopets. Neopets was negatively affecting my life. My family and I had a small hitch in our lives because of my time spent on Neopets.  At some point though, I changed. Probably when I got iced a few years ago and never could get my account back. I avoided Neopets for awhile, because it upset me so much. But I had taken things too far. I finally came back, and got caught up in the NC stuff there for awhile, and I seriously wasted a LOT of money. I can’t say at some point I won’t go through this same thing again, but I hope now that I’ve been through it, I will recognize it if it begins to happen and pull myself away.

  • Is your school or work suffering because of the time and energy you spend gaming?

Now the problem is that when I can’t handle the pressure of real life (like day before an exam), I rather escape it instead of trying to fix things.

  • Have your sleep patterns changed since you became involved with online gaming? Are you staying up extremely late or getting up in the middle of the night to play?

When you need a 5 hour energy shot the next day because you stayed up all night playing neopets and only got a couple hours of sleep. *drinks 5 hour energy shot*

If you’d like to read more, more anonymized answers are available here. Again, these are all folks who are currently playing the game, none of these people have managed to quit yet. The tendency in these situations is to blame the player for lacking willpower to stop or just being silly. Nobody ever talks about the game designer bearing any responsibility (e.g., this). Yet, games are getting more and more sophisticated at leveraging psychology and the chemistry of addiction to get people to play more. Are we expecting too much of kids and young people to be able to avoid these pitfalls? What can we do to help people find a way out if they become trapped in the cycle of addiction? Who should be responsible for providing these services?

One last thing, I hate to end on a hopeless note. If you or a loved one are facing online or gaming addiction, there are some resources available here. You do not have to be alone!