Computer Education Experts Meet at Abertay

27th April 2009

World experts in the field of Human Computer Interaction are gathered in Dundee this week for an educators conference hosted by the University of Abertay Dundee.

Over 40 experts from various countries including Australia, Lithuania, Norway and Sweden will meet in Dundee to discuss such topics as utilising games technologies for education and understanding and supporting technical creativity.

Opening the conference, Abertay University Principal and Vice Chancellor Professor Bernard King CBE said: “It is most fitting that in the year that Abertay became an international centre for excellence for computer games education, educational experts in human computer interaction have come to Abertay from all over the world to attend this educational conference.

“After years of hard work by the computer games industry, demonstrating huge commitment to innovation and generating numerous successful business enterprises, the UK governments are now recognising the full value of the industry to the national economy.  In 2008 the UK games development sector is worth £1 billion and supports 28,000 jobs, and here in Dundee we are right at the heart of this success.

“We at Abertay are very proud of the central role we have played in the development of the industry.  Our unique WhiteSpace centre is hailed as a model of industry-focused and professionally relevant degree courses being delivered among, and in many cases by, genuinely multidisciplinary research teams studying human-computer interaction and the wider application of games technology to more and more real-world issues.  We are delighted to host this important conference which will advance knowledge in so many ways.”

The theme of the conference, which takes place over three days, is PLAY – education through play and play through education.  The conference was organised by Dr Colin Cartwright and Dr Jacqui Archibald, who lecture in Abertay’s School of Computing and Creative Technologies. Dr Cartwright said “Key opportunities for people to learn about and interact with their world come through play. When children play with blocks, they stack them, knock them over, sort them by colour, and they learn through playing. When people learn new software on a computer, they lose this tangible interface, but learn to use a keyboard and mouse with representations of real world objects (folders, desk-tops, photo albums, etc). HCI is concerned with developing better interfaces to the virtual world that mimic the tangible benefits of physical artefacts, and creating effective opportunities to play and to learn through play in both the real and virtual worlds is the goal of this conference.’

Programme Chair for the conference, Professor Lachlan MacKinnon, added that the conference will also look at University linkages with industry for teaching and research. “We will be discussing the development of new interfaces and software tools to open up the computer for wider and more innovative use, moving away from the constraints imposed by the keyboard and the mouse.

“Many exciting projects are already under way with this technology, allowing people to connect to their computer to fabric, skin, lights, instruments, fruit, and every other imaginable physical tangible object. However, we are also concerned to ensure the widest possible access to these projects, developing interfaces to ensure that the inexperienced, those with different levels of abilities, the fearful, and the experienced computer users can all benefit from these technological developments.” Professor MacKinnon said.

Share this Article:

• Delicious
• Digg
• reddit
• Facebook
• StumbleUpon