Descriptions of pilot projects

GROUP 1. Digital story telling / E-entertainment: 

• Digital story telling (Smålands Musikarkiv, Det fria ordets hus, Susanna Nordmark)
  • Overall aim: Create a storytelling application for guidance/information/particulars, etc. for everyone visiting and living in the Växjö region. 
  • Questions and issues that arrived were:
    • Assumed/anticipated/wanted participants, i.e. the storytellers: Musik i Syd, Kulturparken Småland / Smålands Museum, Fria Ordets Hus, Turistbyrån, Växjö stadsbibliotek etc. 
    • Assumed tech advisors, designers and developers: Linnaeus University, Dep. of Media Technology.
  • Start with Musik i Syd as a pilot case
• Ringsberg in Växjö and Archaeological site Sandby borg and its digital life (Bodil Petersson, Kalmar County Museum, Växjö Kommun, Media Technology)
  • Link to leaflet
• Gamification of English pedagogy and digital consumerism among children (Soniya Billore, conducted with the Department of Languages, LNU)
  • This project aims to explore the attitudes formed among schoolchildren towards the modern digital pedagogical tools. It aims to investigate how children interact with the new style of pedagogy and various agents that influence their consumption in the gamification phenomenon. Understanding the behavior of children as ‘consumers of the digital pedagogical tools’ can provide unique, interesting and valuable insights into the sense and meaning making process of this young and naïve consumer segment. This study will investigate the use of digital pedagogy and its impact on the consumerism of school children for the subject of English. English is a language that today's children and young people continually encounter in their spare time, especially in the internet, but what role does information technology play in the classroom? In language learning, the use of digital media, CALL, Computer-Aided Language Learning, (Svensson 2008) offers great opportunities.
  • This pilot study will attempt to capture the factors affecting language learning in the process of digital learning resources in Germany, Sweden and India and seek the attitude of school children in the sample. Children from different cultures might come up with different emotions, motivation and different learning experiences. This will assist to understand the influence of the gaming as a pedagogy tool for learning languages. We see a future collaboration between researchers in language learning/ language acquisition and producers of digital learning materials.
  • Although Sweden is far ahead in the use of computers in education, teachers' lack of training in the use of digital media has been reported (Fredriksson, 2011). A survey conducted in an interdisciplinary collaboration between the Departments for Languages and Business Economics will no doubt help to better understand what digital pedagogy actually means for the ultimate consumer of this tool and will help to map the motivating and demotivating factors in the consumption process.
  • Important to us is a new press release from the Swedish school authorities (Skolverket), 05.04.2016, where they suggest a new national strategy to better exploit the potential of IT in schools:http://www.skolverket.se/om-skolverket/press/pressmeddelanden/2016/pressmeddelanden-2016-1.244816/ny-nationell-strategi-for-att-battre-ta-tillvara-mojligheterna-med-it-i-skolan-1.24873
  • These strategies aim to help teachers and pupils to develop the digital competence they need. This will make teaching more efficient and school results better.  This goes ”hand in hand” with our research project.

GROUP 2. Interactive visualisation / Social network analysis:

• Visualisation of information in humanities from DIVA and social media analysis (University Library, Ilir Jusufi, Andreas Kerren)
  • This pilot project is on the visualisation of data provided by DIVA together with social media analysis results. First, we will define the tasks and design requirements of such an approach as well as potential user groups and their needs. Next, potential funding possibilities will be analyzed to support the project aims. Then to a later stage, existing visualization and text mining technologies are applied to develop demonstrator tools depending on the funding and interests of the project partners.
• Analysis of social and traditional media messages of hate and stigmatization in Tunisia (Tunisia Broadcasting Authority, Renaude de la Brosse, Kristoffer Holt, Ilir Jusufi, Andreas Kerren)

• The main objective is to gain new knowledge about media's (”new” and ”old”) role in a country’s transition to democracy – especially focusing on the challenges and dilemmas related to hate-speech and stigmatization as a threat to the process in the context of a media ecology where social and alternative media is becoming more and more important. Expected outcomes include (not limited to) guidance for future processes of transition to democracy.

  The work done in StaViCTA might fit into certain parts of the project « Analysis of social and traditional media messages of hate and stigmatization in Tunisia ». This idea certainly needs a further investigation in order to find out if and how this tool can be adapted for blog visualization and allow an initial exploration implement. Considering the few available resources at stake for the moment, one must be realistic in that it can only be useful for initial analysis of news sources or social media content such as tweets - but so far it should not be considered as a full fledge social media analytics tool.

  Furthermore, one is aware of the fact that challenging problems have to be dealt with, especially with respect to text analysis and visualization, and a possible application of some technologies that are developed in the StaViCTA project. One first step would then consist in investigating the operationability of these.

• The Department of Media Technology (MT) will adapt its existing tool for analysis of blogs so that it is capable of visualizing social media (twitter) content. The tool should be able to give insight into the historical social media content. Additionally, MT will explore the feasibility to design small demonstrator prototypes that tackle specific challenges with the scope of the project.
• Interactive library catalogue interfaces for children (Biblioteksutveckling Blekinge Kronoberg, Växjö Public Library, Koraljka Golub)
  • Public library interface for school children
  • Analysis of requirements based on interviews / focus groups with school children
• Digitising a dozen interviews with African functionaries on freedom of speech (Helena Carlsson Juhlin at the University Library; Renaud de la Brosse)
  • To be defined, 'born' after the project started 

GROUP 3. Humanities Data Curation

• Participatory and ethical aspects on journalistic use and adoption of big data (Annelie Ekelin, Anette Forsberg)
  • A pilot exploring participatory and ethical aspects on journalism and big data analysis as an innovative application area which could inform development of basic digital humanities. Concepts and techniques on participation in data creation from an ethical perspective.

  • We will investigate:

    1)    Changes in participatory and ethical practices in regional press;

    2)    Adoption of big data analyses in regional press.

    3)    Tentative research question: In what way does digital working methods imply problems and consequences such as;

    Equating availability of data sets with participation

    Changes in ethical practices in regional press

    Adoption of big data analysis

    Method: Qualitative case studies including interviews. 

• Data curation needs and use cases (Växjö Kommun, Koraljka Golub)
  • Through a survey of staff at LNU, it will be determined what use cases there are for Växjö Kommun´s open data portal, in order to help them plan for best access
• Research data curation needs and use cases (University Library, Koraljka Golub)
  • Interviews of 5 researchers in humanities are planned to better understand the needs for their research data curation