determining location
1.3 Types of location service
There are also two main approaches to
determining position, which can be described as continuousand intermittent.
In a continuous location service, a user’s position is known at all times as they move through the space covered by the location service. The service is transparent to the user – that is, they do not need to be concerned with how it is done or provide any input into the system. A good example of this type of tracking is the Ekahau (2005) positioning engine, which uses the signal strengths received by mobile devices on a wireless local area network (WLAN) to calculate their position. The advantage of this kind of system is that it is unobtrusive and provides more information to a context-aware system, enabling it to offer a wider range of services. A continuous service would probably return
absolute position information, varying in accuracy according to the system being used.
In an intermittent service, the user must actively provide the system with information about their position; for example, by passing an RFID reader over a tag, or perhaps lining up their device with an infrared (IR) beacon. This type of system is more suited to an ‘object-based’ scenario like a gallery or museum, in which individual objects can be identified or tagged. The system has no knowledge of a user’s location until they (or their device) interact with a tagged object and in effect, are explicitly requesting information about that item. In this case, the location service is more obtrusive. This type of service might typically provide proximity location information, although it could also provide an absolute position.
The testbed will include location sensing of both types.
2
Using location information effectively
In general, a continuous service can provide more information to a context-aware system, enabling it to offer a wider range of services or build a more complete history of the user’s movements. For example, a user in our art gallery scenario might use their device to read an RFID tag, notifying an intermittent service that they are in front of a painting by Botticelli, and the context-aware system could then provide
appropriate content for that picture. But with information from a continuous location service, the system could also point out works by other artists that may be of interest when the user passes them as he or she moves through the gallery.
However, the more obtrusive intermittent approach to finding location does have a significant advantage: we know a user is interested in an object or service. A continuous, unobtrusive service can tell us that a user is near an object, but this does not necessarily mean that they are interested in it or in any associated services or content.
3
Aims of the research
Several methods and systems for location sensing will be explored and assessed through user trials, with regard to three main criteria:
p
the ability to deliver accurate and reliable location information to the context awareness systemp
the impact on the user’s experience as they move through the galleryp
the need for the user’s device to have other capabilities beyond wireless network access.In addition, we will explore other issues arising from the use of location-aware systems, in particular:
p
how to distinguish interest from simple proximityp
how to incorporate a ‘location history’ into contextp
how to infer a change of position in the contextual sense from changes in physical location reported by a location servicep
how location-driven changes to content or services can best be presented to a mobile user.Our testbed aims to simulate a visit to an art gallery; however, most of these points will be applicable to other context-aware services and scenarios.
44 Mobile learning anytime everywhere
References
Bauer M, Becker C and Rothermel K (2001).
Location models from the perspective of context-aware applications and mobile ad hoc networks. In Proceedings of the Workshop on Location Modelling for Ubiquitous Computing, Atlanta, Georgia, 35–40.
Ekahau (2005). Website. At www.ekahau.com Jones GJF and Brown PJ (2002). Challenges and opportunities for context-aware retrieval on mobile devices. In Proceedings of the SIGIR Workshop on Mobile Personal Information Retrieval, Tampere, Finland, 47–56.
Lonsdale P, Baber C, Sharples M and Arvanitis T (2003). A context-awareness architecture for facilitating mobile learning. In Proceedings of the MLEARN Conference, London, 19–20 May.
London: Learning Skills and Development Agency, 36–37.
Small J, Smailagic A and Siewiorek D (2000).
Determining user location for context aware computing through the use of a wireless LAN infrastructure. Pittsburgh, PA: Institute for Complex Engineered Systems, Carnegie Mellon University.
Byrne Lonsdale Sharples Baber Arvanitis Brundell Beale 45
Abstract
In the HISS (Hospital Information System for Students) project, run by the Campus
Bio-Medico, a university in Rome, students of medicine, nursing and dietetics practising in the wards were trained to use handheld devices connected through a wireless local area network (WLAN) to record patients’ data. Besides learning this new technology and applying it to access freely teaching resources from any place on the campus, the students were able to design new user interfaces for accomplishing daily tasks. The work done by dietetics students was a good basis for the development and implementation of a real-life solution at the University Hospital.
Keywords
mobile training, ubiquitous computing, adaptive user interface, impact of innovation
1
Introduction
Learning on the job has always been considered a fundamental approach for medical-related professions. An important part of the teaching is accomplished on the wards, while visiting patients. The typical way of memorising what is said or done by the teachers, nurses or physicians is to take a written note in an exercise book. This leads to unstructured data and makes it difficult to access specific information quickly. Further work is usually needed to reorganise the notes in a practical way for easy recovery of any part of it.
At the Campus Bio-Medico, a university in Rome, we introduced wireless networks and portable devices at the beginning of 2003, starting a number of projects for assessing the use of this technology. One of them emphasises the use of handheld computers (Palmtop and Tablet PCs) for training students of
medicine, nursing and dietetics. The project was financed by an HP Applied Mobile Technology Solutions in Learning Environments grant.
The impact of innovation in medical and nursing
training: a Hospital Information System for Students (HISS) accessible through mobile devices
This was the only Italian project in a list of 40 projects funded worldwide. It was presented at the HP Labs in Palo Alto, California in
September 2003 to all the other institutions that received a grant.
We installed wireless devices so that from every room of every ward a connection could be made to a separate LAN – different, for security reasons, from the HISS wireless local area network (WLAN). Each student participating in the project was equipped during training sessions with a WLAN-enabled HP iPAQ 5500 capable of fingerprint authentication. Some of them, especially the teachers (nurses and physicians), used an HP Tablet PC.
Attention was paid to feedback: a system was set up for collecting comments, bug notices, proposals and other information from the users.
Experienced tutors closely followed the monitoring activity so that quantitative data was integrated with qualitative evaluations directly gathered from observation of student and teacher activity.
We had many goals: first of all, we wanted to teach our students the new technologies they will encounter in the future while working in hospitals. We also wanted to give them a better tool for learning the medical topics they were dealing with on the wards. We also wanted them to define the user interface for medical
applications on handheld computers. This proved popular with students and medical staff. Instead of involving in the interface design actual nurses and doctors, whose time is expensive and who are always busy in their daily tasks, we used feedback from the students to develop an actual Hospital Information System (HIS) accessible through mobile devices.
From the learning point of view, we were interested in examining whether the students using handheld computers were achieving better results in their examinations than those taking notes in the traditional way.
Cacace Cinque Crudele Iannello Venditti 47
Filippo Cacace Maria Cinque Michele Crudele Giulio Iannello Marco Venditti
Campus Bio-Medico Via E Longoni 83 00155 Roma Italy
http://research.unicampus.it/HISS [email protected]
[email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected]
We soon realised, however, that this last goal was too complex to accomplish because too many factors are involved in the learning phase, and comparing groups with and without handhelds requires many students and an enormous amount of data.
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