NordiCHI 2000 — Workshop 2

Workshop on Developing Educational Material for HCI

An IFIP WG13.1 Workshop

Sunday 22 October 10.00 - 17.00
in conjunction with the
NordiCHI2000conference
in Stockholm, Sweden

We cordially invite interested participants to submit position papers tothis workshop on education in HCI, stating their teaching experience andposition with respect to HCI education both in academic and industrialsettings. We especially would like to encourage the statements to relate tothe workshop topic, as described in the following.

Workshop Description

During an HCI education workshop held at the INTERACT 1999 Conference inEdinburgh (Cox, Oestreicher, Quinn, Rauterberg and Stolze 1999), thediscussions revealed several interesting issues in Human-ComputerInteraction (HCI) education, and some of them have been documented in thereport that resulted from the workshop (Oestreicher 2000). Among theinteresting things that were discussed was the relative lack of goodtextbooks and teaching resources in the area.

The books that are commonly used were considered too wide, too unspecific,or not solely suitable for a complete course in HCI. The workshop alsoemphasised the need for material that supported the forming of an HCImindset in the students, something that traditional textbooks do not do.The rationale for this workshop is to investigate the possibilities toprovide the HCI community with a qualitative source of educational material,which is useful, easily accessible, and affordable. This is especiallyimportant from an international perspective, where the material can, forexample, act as an affordable or cheap (money-wise, not quality-wise) sourceof instructional material for countries where the HCI community is smallerand where teachers experience a lack of both teaching material. This kind ofmaterial might be difficult to publish in journals, and is also in manycases too small to be published in book form, whereas a more openpublication possibility could be to release smaller education packages inthe form of booklets.

The proposed material can be of different types, for example:

1. Lecture suggestions, i.e. suggestions for how to teach a specific topic for some specified group of students.
2. Theoretical issues on education in HCI, didactic discussions, and inspirational material with a theoretical base.
3. Lecture material that has been tested with success, including assignments, examples, working examination procedures, etc.

Material may be written in small sections, which are too small to bepublished as separate books, but combined would form a source of usefulinformation. The most interesting of these types of materials wouldprobably be the set of annotated material envisaged in category 3 above.Interested participants are expected to submit a position paper statingaffiliation, teaching experience, and position with respect to HCI educationboth in academic and industrial settings.

In order to see what kind of material we hope to produce, the draft reportfrom the previous workshop can be downloaded from the URL:

http://www.dis.uu.se/~larsoe/eduworkshop/

Workshop Organisation

The workshop will be organised as a one-day workshop where the first halfwill be devoted to the discussion of suitable types of materials to bepublished in this way, based on the statements in the position papers.In the second half of the workshop we propose to work in two groups,focussing on what criteria might be placed on the material, essentiallycreating a template for contributions to this database, and on how toimplement the results practically.

Workshop Contributions

In addition to the requested statements (see above) we encourage theparticipants to submit samples of practical mind-shaking material that havebeen used or planned in education. The information in the workshopcontributions shall be used as sample material for the workshop discussions.Position papers and other submissions should not exceed 6 pages together,but in case of extensive materials, www-links may be included in the papers.The workshop material, including sample materials will be made available onthe website prior to the conference. Results from the workshop will bepresented as a poster during the conference, as well as in a report, whichwill be published on the Web, afterwards.

Joining The Workshop

To join the workshop the interested participants are requested to send inthe position paper (and other material of interest) as stated above as anrtf-file (following the NordiCHI paper format, see below) or as a plain textemail message to:

larsoe@dis.uu.se

not later than the 1 September 2000. You may also write to this address incase you have any questions or other suggestions for the workshop.

The registration fee for the workshop is 500 SEK in addition to theregistration for the NordiCHI conference, and should be paid to theconference organisation, upon notification of acceptance for participation.

We will limit the number of workshop attendants to 15 in order to havemanageable groups.

Web Sources

Workshop information, including this call for papers will be posted on theweb-address:

http://www.dis.uu.se/~larsoe/eduworkshop/

More information about the NordiCHI conference is available at:

http://www.stimdi.se/konf/nordichi2000/

The NordiCHI Publication format is available at:

http://www.stimdi.se/konf/nordichi2000/call_for_papers.html

Workshop Organisers

Lars Oestreicher, Ph. L., Lecturer in HCI at the Department of InformationScience at Uppsala University since 1988, teaching subjects varying fromBasic HCI Courses, over courses in Task Analysis and Usability testing tocourses in Cognitive Science on Graduate levels. He is also giving an annualteaching module on task analysis at the Technical University in Eindhoven,Holland.
http://www.dis.uu.se/~larsoe/

Paula Kotzé, PhD, Professor and Head of Department, Department of ComputerScience and Information Systems, University of South Africa. She has vastexperience in teaching and research, including a variety of topics in HCI,formal software specification, databases, as well as educational issues. Shehas developed courseware for all levels of tertiary education and hassupervised a large number of graduate students.