Op donderdag 15 oktober 2009 zijn bij Saxion in Enschede de lectoren Henk van Leeuwen, Piet Griffioen en Wouter Teeuw officieel geïnstalleerd. Met zijn drieën vormen zij het lectoraat ‘ambient intelligence’ van het Saxion Kenniscentrum Design en Technologie. In hun lectorale rede ter ere van deze installatie gaan zij in op ontwikkelingen en toepassingen van ambient intelligence. Met de term ambient intelligence wordt een toekomstvisie aangeduid. In deze visie zijn omgevingen zich bewust van de aanwezigheid van personen, hun gedrag of zelfs hun intenties. Slimme omgevingen kunnen daarop reageren. Denk bijvoorbeeld aan spiegels waarop tijdens het tanden poetsen de file informatie van die dag verschijnt. Of een tapijt dat beweging kan registreren, bijvoorbeeld om patiënten te monitoren in een verzorgingstehuis. In hun rede geeft het drietal lectoren antwoord op stellingen en vragen over de mogelijkheden van ambient intelligence. Kunnen we systemen bedenken die anticiperen op wat mensen willen en ons zo beter ondersteunen in onze activiteiten? Kan een omgeving slim worden en als het ware weten wat er speelt en daarop zo te reageren dat dit door ‘ons’ als gebruiker als natuurlijk wordt ervaren? De lectoren werken voor het lectoraat ambient intelligence binnen het Kenniscentrum Design en Technologie van Saxion. Het lectoraat richt zich op de werkomgeving met aandacht voor veilig, plezierig en gezond werken.
MULTIFILE
As part of my PhD research, I investigate the factors of student success and the influence of the use of social media by first year students in higher education. For this I use the insights provided by the highly influential and leading integration theory of Tinto and diminished the amount of variables by only using the best predictive ones. Hereby, avoiding the capitalization of chance and establishing a more easy to use model for teachers and management. Furthermore, I enriched the model with the use of social media, in particular Facebook, to better suit students’ contemporary society in the developed world. Principal component analysis on Facebook usage provided different integration/engagement components, which I coined peer-engagement and knowledge engagement. Both consisted of various purposes of Facebook use (information, education, social and leisure) and the use of different pages amongst students. To uncover if these latent variables play a significant role in student success or if Facebook is a multi-distracting platform, two models were compared using structural equation modeling with SPSS AMOS; one with and one without the peer-, and knowledge engagement variables. The fit of both models are compared using the normed fit index (NFI), the comparative fit index (CFI), the Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI) and the root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA). In addition, the direct influence and indirect influence of all variables are compared to provide a better insight into what kind of influence social media can have upon student success.
While live event experiences have become increasingly mediatized, the prevalence of ephemeral content and diverse forms of (semi)private communication in social media platforms have complicated the study of these mediatized experiences as an outsider. This article proposes an ethnographic approach to studying mediatized event experiences from the inside, carrying out participatory fieldwork in online and offline festival environments. I argue that this approach both stimulates ethical research behavior and provides unique insights into mediatized practices. To develop this argument, I apply the proposed methodology to examine how festival-goers perceive differences between public and private, permanent and ephemeral when sharing their live event experiences through social media platforms. Drawing on a substantial dataset containing online and offline participant observations, media diaries, and (short in situ and longer in-depth) interviews with 379 event-goers, this article demonstrates the value of an ethnographic approach for creating thick descriptions of mediatized behavior in digital platforms.
A world where technology is ubiquitous and embedded in our daily lives is becoming increasingly likely. To prepare our students to live and work in such a future, we propose to turn Saxion’s Epy-Drost building into a living lab environment. This will entail setting up and drafting the proper infrastructure and agreements to collect people’s location and building data (e.g. temperature, humidity) in Epy-Drost, and making the data appropriately available to student and research projects within Saxion. With regards to this project’s effect on education, we envision the proposal of several derived student projects which will provide students the opportunity to work with huge amounts of data and state-of-the-art natural interaction interfaces. Through these projects, students will acquire skills and knowledge that are necessary in the current and future labor-market, as well as get experience in working with topics of great importance now and in the near future. This is not only aligned with the Creative Media and Game Technologies (CMGT) study program’s new vision and focus on interactive technology, but also with many other education programs within Saxion. In terms of research, the candidate Postdoc will study if and how the data, together with the building’s infrastructure, can be leveraged to promote healthy behavior through playful strategies. In other words, whether we can persuade people in the building to be more physically active and engage more in social interactions through data-based gamification and building actuation. This fits very well with the Ambient Intelligence (AmI) research group’s agenda in Augmented Interaction, and CMGT’s User Experience line. Overall, this project will help spark and solidify lasting collaboration links between AmI and CMGT, give body to AmI’s new Augmented Interaction line, and increase Saxion’s level of education through the dissemination of knowledge between researchers, teachers and students.
