Presentation at RoCHI 2013.

1. Re-Conceptualizing the
E-Textbook for
Ubiquitous Interactions
Ilya Shmorgun, David Lamas
Estonian Higher Education and Research- and Development Activities
in Information and Communications Technology State Program 2011 – 2015.

2. Changing Practices

3. Digitization of Learning
Materials• There is an increased effort from academic
publishers in the recent years to digitize
existing learning materials.
• This process often results in the creation of
PDF documents providing a synthesis of
knowledge and meant to be read from
beginning to end.
• The outcome does not facilitate interaction
with available devices, people, and
environments.

4. A Shift in
Expectations
• Owning different devices becomes more
commonplace.
• Users expect to be able to access their
information from any device, which is
close to hand.
• Schools are experimenting with different
approaches, such as providing students
with devices or BYOD strategies.

12. Shortcomings of
Existing Approaches
• Digital learning materials often directly mimic
the physical ones.
• There is not much support offered to students
to take their individual learning paths and to
better collaborate with teachers and fellow
students.
• Design approaches such as Mobile First and
Responsive Design offer solutions on the level
of the user interface, not addressing much of
the different ways of interacting with devices.

13. Ubiquitous E-
Textbook

14. Ubiquitous Interaction
• Interaction with ubiquitous services, that
offer valuable information to the user.
• Information is expected to move freely
among the digital artifacts people use.
• Information is available right there and
right now for supporting a specific
activity the user is engaged in.

15. Goals
• Enhancing learning experiences through the use
of new technological solutions.
• Designing and evaluating a proof-of-concept e-
textbook solution, created for the ubiquitous
interaction context and conceived as an
aggregation of professional and user-contributed
content.
• Advancing interaction design and evaluation
approaches by understanding how humans
interact with and through ecologies of artifacts
when pursuing their activities.

16. Analytical Tools
• Ecology of artifacts
• Human-Artifact Model

17. Research Questions
• How to design ubiquitous interactions in the
context of educational activities at schools?
• How can the educational activity be described
with the help of the selected analytical tools?
• Is there something that needs to be modified
in the analytical selected tools?
• Does the proposed proof-of-concept e-
textbook solution work in a real-world school
context?

18. Activities
• Exploring the context through an
ethnographic study by investigating how
students, teachers, and publishers relate to
their artifact ecologies.
• Iterating the emerging e-textbook concept
through design as well as conducting
evaluation through field tests.
• Developing a range of digital artifacts to be
used by learners, teachers, and content
authors to facilitate the re-conceptualized e-
textbook.

19. Foreseen Outcomes
• An understanding of what ubiquitous
interactions are.
• An updated frame of reference to
analyze ubiquitous interactions based
on an overview and comparison of
selected analytical tools.
• A theoretically informed framework for
designing ubiquitous interactions.

20. Conclusion

21. Rethinking the E-
Textbook• We aim to provide a better understanding
of how ubiquitous interactions are already
taking place in schools and how an e-
textbook can be designed as an
aggregation of professional and user-
contributed content.
• There is a need to rethink what the e-
textbook of the future is by considering
the adoption of digital artifacts and
ongoing digitization of learning materials.