Location: Edinburgh, Scotland

The A B C (Appropriateness, Benefits and Costs) of D-E-F- (Distributed, Electronic and Face-to-Face) Learning HCI

Monday March 31^st / Tuesday April 1st 2003

Napier University, Edinburgh UK

Workshop Themes (Outline)

There will four main sessions devoted to the following themes, which have been identified as being of particular relevance and interest:

·         The HCI Domain

·         Accessibility

·         Graphic Design and Interface Design

·         Current Issues in Teaching, Learning and Training for HCI

Each session will start with presentations from invited speakers. These will then be followed by an interactive session in which three short papers will be presented followed by questions and discussion. Workshop posters will further enhance our consideration of these themes.

Your Contribution

Proposals for papers and posters should be submitted by sending a short description of the proposed content (maximum 400 words) by e-mail to Programme Chair (Sandra Cairncross s.cairncross@napier.ac.uk). There is no particular format for proposals. The file medium should be plain text, Rich Text Format (rtf), Microsoft Word (doc), or Adobe Acrobat (pdf) format. Preference will be given to proposals related to one of the above themes.

Following review by the programme committee, authors of successful proposals will be asked to develop their submission into either a short paper (maximum of 4 pages) to be presented at an interactive session or a poster (maximum size A2) with accompanying overview (2 page summary). Posters will be displayed during the workshop.

The short papers and poster overviews will be included in the workshop proceedings.

Workshop Themes (Detail)

The HCI Domain

This session will focus on the scope and boundaries of HCI, in the context of what appears to be an ever-expanding body of relevant theory and diversity of application domains, ranging from usability engineering to interaction design, from interacting with computers to interacting through computers, and from work-based to home and leisure-based applications.

Invited speaker: Professor David Benyon, Chair HCI Research Group, Napier University

Accessibility

How can we best design applications and devices that meet the needs of all users? How can we help make our learners and trainees aware of these issues? What assistive technologies can we use to help users with special needs? How can we make our curriculum more accessible?

Invited speakers: Professor Alan Newell, Head of the Applied Computing Department, University of Dundee; Dr Alison Crerar, Chair, Edinburgh Branch BCS, Organiser for Scotland of IT-CAN-HELP a network of IT professionals helping disabled people with technology:

Graphic Design and Interface Design

Interface design: an engineering discipline or an art? How can graphic design influence interface design? Do learners need graphic design principles?

Invited speaker: Professor Brent MacGregor, Head, School of Visual Communication, Edinburgh School of Art.

Current Issues in Teaching, Learning and Training for HCI

What should we be teaching and why?  How should we be teaching it and why? What learning pedagogies are appropriate for HCI?   How can new learning technologies best be used to support our teaching and learning? What is industry looking for in our graduates? What is industry teaching our graduates?

Invited Speaker: Dr Janet Finlay, Chair Education and Practice Working Group, British HCI Group

In addition to presentations by the invited speakers we are also looking for contributions to allow us to explore and discuss these themes further. We are keen to encourage contributions from trainers and other practioners from industry. 

Workshop Outcomes

By participating in the workshop, delegates will

·         develop a greater awareness of key topics issues facing HCI educators and trainers;

·         exchange best practice with colleagues from other institutions;

·         identify new ideas to inform their own teaching practice thereby enhancing the learning of their students.

All delegates will receive a set of workshop proceedings and it is planned to disseminate outcomes in external publications.

Key Dates

·         Monday 17^th February  – Deadline for Submissions

·         Friday 28th February – Notification

·         Friday March 14^th  – Deadline for early bird registration (cost £85*)

·         Monday March 17^th  – Deadline for final camera-ready or electronic copy of all presented papers and posters overviews.

·         Wednesday March 26^th  – Deadline for late registration (cost £100*)

·         Monday March 31^st – Conference starts

Other Information

There will be time to relax – there will be a whisky tasting on the Monday evening followed by the workshop dinner.

Accommodation details can be provided on request.

*Registration costs will cover the two days of the workshop, coffee and lunches, while the social programme will cost an additional £45. Registration is open to all those with an interest in the workshop themes and is not restricted to those presenting papers or posters. 

Registration forms are available from http://www.ics.ltsn.ac.uk/events/hci2003/register.html with further details are available at  www.hcie2003.org.

If you have any questions then please feel free to contact us at s.cairncross@napier.ac.uk.

We look forward to welcoming you to Edinburgh in the spring.

Sandra Cairncross and Alison Varey, Workshop  co-chairs

Notes:

The British HCI Group’s Educators’ workshop has run annually since 1998, attracting around 40 of the UK’s top HCI lecturers and professors each year:

2002 Department of Information Systems, University of Portsmouth http://www.tech.port.ac.uk/staffweb/rosbottj/hciWS2002/

2001 Department of Computing and Electrical Engineering, Heriot-Watt University 2002 http://www.cee.hw.ac.uk/events/HCI2001/

2000 School of Computing, South Bank University  http://www.ics.ltsn.ac.uk/events/hci2000/

1999 School of Computing, South Bank University  http://www.ulst.ac.uk/cticomp/hci99.html