Can constrained relevance feedback and display strategies help users retrieve items on mobile devices?

Searching online information resources using mobile devices is affected by small screens which can display only a fraction of ranked search results. In this paper we investigate whether the search effort can be reduced by means of a simple user feedback: for a screenful of search results the user is encouraged to indicate a single most relevant document. In our approach we exploit the fact that, for small display sizes and limited user actions, we can construct a user decision tree representing all possible outcomes of the user interaction with the system. Examining the trees we can compute an upper limit on relevance feedback performance. In this study we consider three standard feedback algorithms: Rocchio, Robertson/Sparck-Jones (RSJ) and a Bayesian algorithm. We evaluate them in conjunction with two strategies for presenting search results: a document ranking that attempts to maximize information gain from the user’s choices and the top-D ranked documents. Experimental results indicate that for RSJ feedback which involves an explicit feature selection policy, the greedy top-D display is more appropriate. For the other two algorithms, the exploratory display that maximizes information gain produces better results. We conducted a user study to compare the performance of the relevance feedback methods with real users and compare the results with the findings from the tree analysis. This comparison between the simulations and real user behaviour indicates that the Bayesian algorithm, coupled with the sampled display, is the most effective. Extended version of “Evaluating Relevance Feedback Algorithms for Searching on Small Displays, ” Vishwa Vinay, Ingemar J. Cox, Natasa Milic-Frayling, Ken Wood published in the proceedings of ECIR 2005, David E. Losada, Juan M. Fernández-Luna (Eds.), Springer 2005, ISBN 3-540-25295-9     

Context-Sensitive Instructional Design Models: A Response to Design Research,Studies, and Criticism

Instructional design, as it is traditionally conceptualized, is being challenged on several fronts, through surveys of design practice, cross-disciplinary studies of design practice, and practical criticism focusing on issues of design models' flexibility and efficiency. Collectively these challenges raise questions about the viability of the instructional design enterprise. This paper reviews these challenges and attempts to respond by offering alternative approaches to instructional design.     

Read-Think-Aloud Protocols: A New Data-Source for Formative Evaluation

Traditional approaches to formative evaluation include one-to-one trials which provide some information about revisions that are needed in instructional materials, but typically fail to provide sufficient information about the learner's cognitive processing problems while studying the materials. Read-think-aloud methods are a viable alternative to traditional one-to-ones and provide valuable information about the learner's cognitive processing while reading instructional text. In this paper we describe the read-think-aloud method of formative evaluation and offer suggestions for its use.     

Zooming in Time—Exploring Students’ Interpretations of a Dynamic Tree of Life

Journal of Science Education and Technology - Central to evolution is the concept of a common ancestry from which all life has emerged over immense time scales, but learning and teaching temporal...     

Overcoming resistance to formal instructional development processes

The instructional development (id) process sometimes is perceived as being too time-intensive and as delaying instructional materials development. Course writers holding these perceptions may resist following a formalid process or give only cursory attention to early stages in the process. Such a situation can create conflict between course writers and instructional designers responsible for implementing a particularid model. This article describes a way instructional designers can overcome some of the resistance to following theid process.     

Special‐education Research in Sweden 1956‐1996

The articles in this section cover special education, and education and professional expertise, which each represent one special research field within education, but cover research during the last few decades from only one of the Nordic countries. The special‐education article reviews research in Sweden, and from three periods, 1956‐1969, 1970‐1979, and 1980 and later. In selecting the studies referred to the author chose to concentrate on educational aspects within the research domain, rather than differentiated from more handicap‐research‐dominated studies. The author argues that the review cannot, therefore, be seen as a complete, rather it should be understood as a summary of some evident trends of during the periods covered. The extensive presentation ends with remarks on some of the most important theoretical and normative perspectives and aspects. The second article examines, from an educational viewpoint, the acquisition of professional expertise and it outlines emerging approaches to such research, particularly in Finland. The first part of the article briefly reviews how expertise has been conceptualized in recent research. The next section deals with the role of higher education in developing expertise from the constructivist perspective in research on learning, and the article that lines current challenges and alternatives for further educational research.