The mission of the Open University of the Netherlands is twofold: to offer students an alternative form of higher education by means of guided independent study, and to encourage innovation in higher education. Such innovation demands expertise of a specific kind. At the Open University of the Netherlands, that expertise is channeled through the Educational Technology Expertise Centre (OTEC). The Educational Technology Expertise Centre wants to be a leading party, nationally and internationally, in the field of educational technology. OTEC research is focused on educational innovation and technology. Our projects are directed towards competency-based learning in higher education, using educational technology.

One of OTEC’s research facilities is the Multimedia Lab. This page presents a few overviews and close-ups of equipment regularly used for usability testing in the Multimedia Lab.  

 

 

 

 

Overview of the Computer Lab Control Area in the main Observation Room.  

 

 

 

 

 

Close-up of the video mixer in the main Observation Room.

 

 

 

 

Overview of the Eye-Tracking Control Area in the main Observation room.

 

 

 

 

Close-up of the Remote Eye-Tracking equipment in the Eye-Tracking lab.

In the Multimedia lab we use The Observer software for data collection. As an example we can refer to a recent experiment in the Multimedia Lab conducted by Ph.D. student P.J. Beers, who studied group negotiation processes in multidisciplinary teams. In his experiment, Beers assigned multidisciplinary triads the task of solving a complex problem. The group collaboration was videotaped, event logging took place afterwards based on the videotapes in MPEG-1 format. Data was coded in the Multimedia lab with The Observer, using a coding scheme for content and function of utterances in conversation. The coding scheme aimed to distinguish between explicit and implicit acts of group negotiation. The resulting data files were exported to SPSS for hypothesis analysis. The results have been published in: Beers, P.J.; Boshuizen, H.P.A.; Kirschner, P.A. (2003). Negotiating shared understanding in collaborative problem solving. In S. Järvela & F. Fischer (Chairs), Awareness and Shared Understanding of Distributed Collaboration: Analysis and Facilitation,  10th EARLI Conference (Padova, Italy, August 2003). 

Open University of the Netherlands
Educational Technology Expertise Centre (OTEC)
P.O. Box 2960
6401 DL Heerlen
The Netherlands
URL: http://www.ou.nl/eCache/DEF/22/853.html