The volume of published articles has grown exponentially, making research documentation considerably harder, even within a single archive of a scientific journal or a repository of educational resources. As such, we have developed and present in this paper a toolkit that can effectively process full-text manuscripts starting from their PDFs, extract topics, and provide correlations between manuscripts based on their common topics. The effectiveness of the toolkit is demonstrated by applying it to an extensive text collection, that of the ”Interaction Design and Architecture(s)” (IxD&A) journal’s full-text articles published between 2013 and 2024 (N = 450). Topic modeling was performed using BERTopic and Llama as LLM to generate coherent topics. Introduced as a modern substitute for Latent Dirichlet Allocation, BERTopic effectively identifies topics using Transformerbased models and other clustering and dimensionality reduction methods such as HDBSCAN and UMAP. As a result, we extracted 246 topics from the entire corpus, which were automatically filtered for specificity using Llama-3.1. Indepth visualizations and analyses covering the main topics and their evolution in time following the technological advances, but maintaining a focus on a humancentered, smart learning perspective, are presented. We release our toolkit as open-source on GitHub to enable users to easily apply our method to other journals, repositories of educational materials, and in other relevant contexts. In addition, we have integrated the generated views into the IxD&A journal webpage – https://ixdea.org/background-toi/- to enable the fruition of the outcomes produced by our toolkit to end users – in our case, the readers of IxD&A journal.

Immigrant parents not only face assimilation challenges in a new country, but many also find it difficult to connect their children with their heritage culture. As language plays an important in conveying and practicing culture, the challenges associated with preserving heritage language in immigrant families have not received much attention in the literature. In this paper, we focus on the Bangladeshi community in Canada and interview 20 Bangladeshi immigrant parents to explore the various concerns they have regarding preserving their heritage language and discuss two different approaches to learning through the presentation of language acquisition applications. Based on our study, we report the cultural tensions, economic constraints, and infrastructural challenges the immigrant families face while teaching heritage languages to their children. We also provide a set of design implications to better facilitate heritage language maintenance and associate our findings with some broader concerns in the HCI literature around migration, memory, identity, and learning.

GPS and digital mapping allow unprecedented accuracy, and the precision of digital storage has replaced the vagueness of the cartographer’s pencil. We can dispense with sketch maps for tourism or how-to-get-here instructions instead using proper online maps. But a map is not just a miniature version of a landscape, but an instrument for navigation, education, stories, and experience – not all maps are ‘proper’ maps set on Cartesian grids. This paper discusses several maps of varying levels of propriety to explore the theoretical and practical world of cartography and suggest how digital technology can enable a diverse ecology of improper mapping.

This article presents a study that combines a systematic mapping of the use of gamification in SQL learning with a case study conducted in a database course in higher education. The research addresses the convergence between gamification and SQL learning by evaluating and categorizing existing literature and integrating this review with the analysis of a specific implementation of gamification techniques. Various gamification strategies and approaches used in educational settings to facilitate the understanding and mastery of SQL are examined, highlighting effective practices and areas of opportunity. It also identifies emerging trends, challenges and research gaps, providing a comprehensive overview of gamification in database education. This blend of theoretical analysis and case study aims to inform educators, researchers and practitioners about the current state of gamification in SQL learning, and to encourage critical reflection and innovation to improve pedagogical practice in this specific area.

This article shows the experience through Project Based Learning with STEM approach from the area of technology and computer science in vocational middle school students in the tenth and eleventh grades of a public school in Bogota, Colombia. The main objective is to influence students for a greater professional interest in STEM areas (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics), while enhancing other competencies that occur through the STEM approach, such as critical thinking, creativity, communication, digital literacy, autonomy, collaboration, product design and manufacturing, problem-solving among others, using the Project Based Learning Didactic strategy. The results obtained show some motivation in the areas of Science, Mathematics and Technology.

This article offers the perspectives of adults with intellectual disability on how future trends, particularly in social robotics, but also in collaborative robotics, can be co-designed inclusively. These perspectives are offered through research findings as well as researchers’ reflections from co-design and exploratory projects where the research team has engaged adults with intellectual disability in formal and informal learning activities led by social robots. We propose that future work can adopt the social model of disability and a human-rights approach to inclusive technology design by positioning research in a way that respects people’s unique interests and competencies, understands the role of support networks, and engages with communities that celebrate human connections. We provide practical insights into inclusive research approaches and considerations for protocols that meet the requirements of the Australian National Statement on Ethical Conduct in Human Research.

This study presents a literature review focused on nonverbal communication in human-robot interaction (HRI) that involves service robots with social capabilities. We aim to list the types of robots used and nonverbal communication cues examined in the reviewed studies; and the main research objectives, participant characteristics, data collection methods, and primary findings of these studies. To achieve this, we used the databases of WoS, Scopus and EBSCO to conduct a literature review on utilization of nonverbal cues by both humans and robots during HRI. The results obtained from 39 relevant open access academic papers published from 2006 to 2023 suggest that enhancing the quality of communication between humans and service robots must be improved, while there are several aspects that require more thorough exploring, needed to strengthen robot self-efficacy, trust and trustworthiness in HRI or overcome cultural differences. The results emphasize the importance of nonverbal communication in shaping the dynamics of interactions between humans and service robots.

Sculpture offers a centuries-long tradition of techniques for expressing emotion and movement in a static form. Insights from this field present an opportunity to design robots that express not only through movement, but also via dynamic cues in their static positions. Such cues can suggest motion potential, emotion, and character. This paper presents three principles identified in sculpture techniques that can be applied to robot design: (a) depicting exposure and protection of emotional pivot points in the body, (b) weight distribution, and (c) the revelation of movement mechanisms and tension through flexible skins. We employ the first two of these principles in an interactive design and motion control environment to demonstrate the potential for application to the design of social collaborative robots. We illustrate the third principle via a robot design that uses a flexible fabric skin stretched over rigid and elastic actuation elements. Using insights from sculpture can promote the design of robots from a transdisciplinary perspective by increasing the readability of robot intent and affect even when the robot is not actively moving.

One of the essential tasks of teaching STEAM subjects (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, Mathematics) is to motivate and engage students. This can be achieved through new interactive, experiential teaching methods, such as game-based learning. Minecraft is a multiplatform video game already popular among students and can be successfully used in game-based education. The study presents the application possibilities of Minecraft in integrated education of STEAM fields through the example of teaching a specific topic. The development was tested within the framework of a summer camp, where the 10-16-year-old participants explored the topics of renewable energy sources with Minecraft. Based on the experiences and researchers of the camp, the application of game-based learning with Minecraft was successful in raising students’ interest, increasing their motivation, mastering the knowledge material, productive task solving and cooperation to work on sustainable development goals.

Casual Creative Environments (CCEs), such as coworking spaces, enable new work practices and workspace sharing across different urban places, aiming to foster innovation and new collaborations. However, many CCEs still struggle to fulfil their potential. This article reports on an inductive study examining social, spatial, and temporal insights from two CCEs in Australia with a social innovation focus. Through participant observations and interviews, we explore how these CCEs are designed to facilitate innovation using Lefebvre’s triad of social space. We present design personas representing user archetypes of tribes that form within these CCEs. We characterise these CCEs as skunkworks for their perpetual messiness and organised chaos. Our findings inform policy makers, CCE organisations, and managers seeking to nurture a culture conducive for vernacular creativity and innovation. Additionally, we suggest further research to inform the design of different skunkworks spaces tailored to the needs of a diversity of creative practitioners and innovation communities.