HYPERMEDIA LABORATORY (HLab)
Hypermedia laboratory
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e-Services and Tools

At the other end of the research spectrum, Hypermedia Laboratory is involved in the development of many e-services and tools. Development is done in close co-operation with the customer, especially in the definition stage, when the goals and user groups are initially defined.

Projects:

Futurex - Future Experts

Duration: 2011-2013
Project type: National
Financier: ESF - European Social Fund
Web pages: http://futurex.utu.fi/english.php
More information: researcher Anne-Maritta Tervakari

Description: During the Futurex project Hypermedia Laboratory is going to develop Digital Skills Passport – a web-based service that supports experts to make their skills, knowledge and competences visible, helps them to find training opportunities to ensure their professional development and recognize their future career opportunities. Hypermedia Laboratory is also responsible for the development of digital knowledge database that includes collectively defined information about future competences needed by university graduates in the world of work. Essential part of development work of these web-based solutions are knowledge modeling and visualization. Interactive visualizations are developed, for example, for displaying information about users skills and competences.

The main aims of Futurex project are

  1. to find essential areas of competence of the near future and recognize lines of businesses where higher education level competence is needed
  2. to find the most applicable alternative models of development to suit post-experience education (education, networks, workplace learning, etc.)
  3. to study how field specific competence areas can be defined within the innovation networks of working life and higher education institutions
  4. to study how organizations can benefit from the collectively defined knowledge (digital knowledge database) in their knowledge management and how experts can make visible their know-how, gathered along their career paths (digital skills passport).
  5. to develop the educational quality system.

Project partners: The project is coordinated by the Brahea Centre for Training and Development of the University of Turku. Project partners include the Centre for Learning Research, Turku School of Economics/Executive Development (TSE exe), Finland Futures Research Centre and the Unit for Evaluation and Development of Education at the University of Turku, as well as HAAGA-HELIA University of Applied Sciences, University of Helsinki/Department of Education, Palmenia Centre for Continuing Education, Aalto University/School of Science, Metropolia University of Applied Sciences,  Sibelius-Academy/Continuing Education, HAMK University of Applied Sciences and Tampere University of Technology/ Hypermedia Laboratory.

Project funding: Futurex belongs to the European Social Fund (ESF) programme projects and it is funded by the Pirkanmaa Centre for Economic Development, Transport and the Environment.

Vipuvoimaa EU:ltaEU lippu

Campus Conexus II

Duration: 2011-2013
Project type: National
Financier: European Social Fund
Web pages: www.campusconexus.fi,www.tut.fi/piiri

Campus Conexus II aims to enhance the educational effectiveness of students and the social interaction within different formal and informal communities at universities. The goal is to aid universities in strengthening the participation of their students and faculty.

The role of Hypermedia Laboratory is the creation of new operations models for different communities in universities, through the use of social media. User centred design becomes important in this development process. The social media site TUT Circle (http://www.tut.fi/piiri) is set up to consist of modules, where each new feature has its own module. This design enables each university to adopt an easy and personalized implementation by choosing campus-specific social media sites from the relevant modules implemented in this and former projects.

Another important part of the project is the production of tools that allow visualization of social networks in ways that help in resource planning in different formal and informal communities. These tools are based directly on research into social network analysis using different visualization methods.

Campus Conexus

Duration: 2009-2012
Project type: National
Financier: European Social Fund
Web pages: www.campusconexus.fi,www.tut.fi/piiri
More information: researcher Thumas Miilumäki

Description:

The central objective of this project is the establishment of practices that promote student engagement with the expert community and that support studying, learning and the process of development of expertise. The overall goal is to prevent educational exclusion of university students.

In this project, Hypermedia Laboratory (HLab) develops informal tutorials (a mathematics clinic) that support basic studies in university mathematics. In addition, by involving the social networking site, TUT Circle (http://www.tut.fi/piiri), HLab has shown that social media can be used to promote the engagement of the students with the expert community. A second aim has been to develop the TUT Circle to serve in multiprofessional collaboration and to promote working in peer learning groups.

TUT Circle

Duration: 2009
Project type: National
Financier: Virtual University
Web pages: www.tut.fi/piiri
More information: researcher Thumas Miilumäki

Description:

A social network, TUT Circle, has been created for students attending the Tampere University of Technology. The service was implemented in fall 2009.

A network for the students
The aim of the project is to help freshmen at TUT meet with other students. TUT Circle serves particularly as a supportive social site for those TUT students who are completing basic mathematics studies.

Mathematics profile
The development group responsible for advances in mathematics teaching at TUT conducted research work to explore different learning types. One result of this research was an idea to include a questionnaire for the TUT Circle. By answering these questions, the user establishes his or her own profile that indicates how he or she performs as a mathematics student. Users with different profiles are then matched with appropriate communities and other learning environments; this match-up then ensures that each user is able to study as effectively as possible. Inclusion in study groups that correspond to users’ styles of learning enables them to use all of the studying potential they have to meet their goals.

Drupal CMF
TUT Circle uses an open source CMF (Content Management Framework) Drupal that provides basic tools for content management and editing. Drupal is based on modules and its flexible construction makes it possible to define and create a multidimensional construction. Different functions can be performed by utilizing existing modules or by creating newly tailored solutions. Most of the basic functions needed in the social network are already present. Solutions that are needed to support mathematics teaching at TUT have been added as their own modules to the TUT Circle.

Funding for TUT Circle was provided by the TUT Virtual University. TUT Circle represents a collaboration between the TUT Department of Mathematics and Hypermedia Laboratory.

UCL Urban Computing Lab

Duration: 2009
Project type: National
Financier: Virtual University
Web pages: http://hlab.ee.tut.fi/ucl/
More information: researcher Jaakko Salonen

Description: The Urban Computing Lab (UCL) is a web-based service developed for mobile collection of a large amount of rich, structured information about quality experiences in real-life situations and contexts where people use web-based services for various purposes.

The quality experience of a web-based service is a multilevel and multidimensional phenomenon that is affected by emotional, contextual and situational dimensions. The UCL service provides information, for example, about the context of use, the user’s actions and the user’s feelings. It also allows easy collection of descriptions of the social situation and physical environment at the time when a web-based service is used, even if accessed by mobile means.

By offering different visualisations of collected data sets, the UCL service supports researchers and students who wish to gain a better understanding of the dimensions of quality experiences and their interrelationships.

Erimenu.fi - a web-based service for people with special dietary requirements (the Aatu project)

Duration: 2006 - 2008
Type: National
Partners: Allergy and Asthma Association of Pirkanmaa region and Finnish Coeliac Society
Sponsors: Finland’s Slot Machine Association
Web pages: -
Further information: Development Manager Kirsi Silius

Description:
For the Aatu project, Hypermedia Laboratory developed the Erimenu.fi web-based service for people with food allergies and other special dietary requirements. Erimenu.fi offers information about food products, providing more detailed ingredient lists than are required by the European food legislation, and it supplies recipes expressly developed for specific diets. Users can enter their specified diets into the service, and Erimenu.fi will output suitable products and recipes. The service is also a simple social networking service that allows the users to share information with other users about their favourite products and recipes. In addition, the users are able to share information about the products and recipes on Facebook and with other social media in general.

New age eServices of Insurance (eInsurance)

Duration: 2005 - 2007
Type: National
Partners: University of Tampere, VTT, Consumer Research Centre and Federation of Insurance Companies
Sponsors: National Technology Agency Tekes
Further information: Senior Researcher Ossi Nykänen
The aim of the project is to develop an eInsurance service environment that takes a comprehensive account of the life cycle of customership at an insurance service.

Hypermedia Laboratory, together with University of Tampere, is responsible for the service business and usability of the eInsurance service.

Tre@Validia Assistant Portal

Duration: 2004 - 2007, 2008 - 2011
Type: National
Partners: Finnish Association of People with Mobility Disabilities
Sponsors: Finland’s Slot Machine Association
Web pages: www.avustajaportti.fi
Further information: Development Manager Kirsi Silius

Description: The Tre@Validia assistant portal is a project of the Finnish Association of People with Mobility Disabilities (FMD). Hypermedia Laboratory is responsible for the project’s technical specifications and implementation.

The project is a web-based information and agency service of personal assistants for seriously disabled people. The portal also serves people who are caring for their disabled close relatives, those willing to work as personal assistants, handicap service offices of regional municipalities, associations that provide peer support and voluntary workers.

The assistant portal is a Web-based application that can be accessed by various user groups, not only to search for information, but also to publish their own information, such as calendar events, to help in allocation of assistance resources. The main functions are implemented based on features of PDAs. Part of the portal’s functions can also be accessed using text messages.

The portal content is produced and maintained in the form of structured documents. Different views can be accessed according to the features of the terminal equipment.

The portal’s data model is based on the RDF (Resource Description Framework) standards of the Semantic Web. The publication process is based on the methods and tools of the XML (Extensible Markup Language) standard family. The Web material is published in XHTML format (Extensible Markup Language). The implementation of user interfaces takes into account the guidelines on accessibility and the system reaches the A level of WAI’s (Web Accessibility Initiative) recommendation for Web content accessibility.