Category: Haptics

eHealth · Haptics · Medical Records Online · Multimodality · Pedagogy

Publications from the first half of my assistant professorship at Örebro University

Jonas MollLeave a comment

In my previous three blog posts I have written about my research on 1) eHealth services for patients, 2) accessible digital collaborative learning environments and 3) teaching in higher education. This blog post collects the publications I have worked on in these areas during the last two years. Most of the articles are published with the open access option, meaning that you can read the entire articles by following the links in the lists below.

eHealth services for patients

Most of the publications from my first two years at Örebro University have focused on eHealth services for patients. The patient accessible electronic health record solution in Sweden, Journalen, has been the primary focus. These are the published journal articles that I have worked with in this area:

  • Huvila, I., Cajander, Å., Moll, J., Enwald, H., Eriksson-Backa, K., and Rexhepi, H. (2021). Technological and informational frames: explaining age-related variation in the use of patient accessible electronic health records as technology and information. Information Technology & People. DOI: 10.1108/ITP-08-2020-0566. [Link to open access publication]. This article is one of many articles that is based on a national patient survey where patients were asked questions about their attitudes towards and use of Journalen. See this blog post for more info on this publication.
  • Moll, J., and Cajander, Å. (2020). Oncology health-care professionals’ perceived effects of patient accessible electronic health records 6 years after launch: A survey study at a major university hospital in Sweden. Health Informatics Journal (Vol 26, No 2). pp: 1392-1403. [Link to open access publication]. This article was also based on a survey, but this time around the respondents were physicians and nurses with a specialization in oncology. See this blog post for more info on this publication.
  • Nurgalieva, L., Cajander, Å., Moll, J., Åhlfeldt, R-M., Huvila, I., and Marchese, M. (2020). ‘I do not share it with others. No, it’s for me, it’s my care’: On sharing of patient accessible electronic health records. Health Informatics Journal. DOI: 10.1177/1460458220912559. [Link to open access publication]. This article was also based on the national patient survey, as well as interviews with cancer patients. I realize now that I never wrote any blog post about this specific publication. I will write such a post later on during this autumn.
  • Rexhepi, H., Moll, J., and Huvila, I. (2020). Online electronic healthcare records: Comparing the views of cancer patients and others. Health Informatics Journal. DOI: 1460458220944727. [Link to open access publication]. In this article, which was also based on results from the national patient survey, we looked specifically at differences between answers from cancer patients and the other respondents. See this blog post for more info on this publication.

The following conference papers were also produced during the period:

  • Moll, J., and Cajander, Å. (2020). On Patient Accessible Electronic Health Records and the Experienced Effect on the Work Environment of Nurses. Studies in Health Technology and Inforamtics (Vol. 270). pp. 1021-1025. [Link to open access publication]. This paper is based on preliminary results from a large interview study with oncology healthcare professionals. I have not written any blog post about this publication, but I will do that later on this autumn.
  • Moll, J., and Rexhepi, H. (2020). The Effect of Patient Accessible Electronic Health Records on Communication and Involvement in Care-A National Patient Survey in Sweden. Studies in Health Technology and Informatics (Vol. 270). pp. 1056-1060. [Link to open access publication]. This paper is also based on the results from the national patient survey. Even in this case, I will write a separate blog post later during the autumn.
  • Rexhepi, H., Moll, J., Huvila, I., and Åhlfeldt, RM. (2020). Do you want to receive bad news through your patient accessible electronic health record? A national survey on receiving bad news in an era of digital health. Proceedings of the Eighteenth International Symposium for Health Information Management Research (Kalmar, Sweden, September 17-18). pp. 169-178. This one is also based on results from the national patient survey and was among the highest rated papers after the review rounds. As a result, we were provided the possibility to get our contribution published in a special issue of Health Informatics Journal. I will write a separate blog post about that article, which was published last week.

Accessible digital collaborative learning environments

This heading is listed here mostly for completeness. The Vinnova project I have written about many times before has led to many interesting ideas for publications, and work has started on some of them. We are still on the manuscript stages, so none of these have been published yet. An article based on a project from my last year at the Royal Institute of Technology was however published during autumn 2019 (no learning environment in focus, but combinations of visual, haptic and audio feedback still played important roles):

  • Frid, E., Moll, J., Bresin, R., & Pysander, E. L. S. (2019). Haptic feedback combined with movement sonification using a friction sound improves task performance in a virtual throwing task. Journal on Multimodal User Interfaces, 13(4), 279-290. [Link to open access publication].

Teaching in higher education

I still don’t have any journal articles related to this area, but I do have some conference papers. Quite a few journal articles related to this area of research are however planned for the second half of my assistant professorship. Some of the conference contributions were published during these last two years:

  • Moll, J., and Josefsson, P. (2020). Communication patterns among students and teachers when using Facebook in a university course. Proceedings of the 14th annual International Technology, Education and Development Conference (INTED 2020) (Valencia, Spain, March 2020). This full paper is based on an analysis of the interaction among students and between students and teachers in a teacher-administrated Facebook group that I used in my course in interaction design at Uppsala University. See this blog post for more info on this publication.
  • Wistrand, K., Moll, J., Hatakka, M. and Andersson, A. (2020). Improving Writing Skills Among Information Systems Students: Guidelines for Incorporating Communication Components in Higher Education. Proceedings of the 2020 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE 2020), (Uppsala, Sweden, October 21-24), IEEE. This full paper is based on an analysis of two different ways of introducing scientific writing components in higher education. This one will also get a dedicated blog post during the autumn.
Grant application · Group work · Haptics

Looking back at the first two years of research at Örebro University, part 2: accessible digital collaborative learning environments

Jonas Moll2 Comments

This research area is related to my first success when it comes to research grant applications. As I have mentioned in an earlier blog post I drafted a Vinnova application for their call “Digital tools” during my first weeks at Örebro University. The first sentences on that application were actually written during my very first day at the university! The application was entitled “Virtual environments supporting group work between sighted and visually impaired pupils” and focused on designing and evaluating new digital learning environments partly based on the results from observations and interviews with both pupils and teachers during the first part of the project.

This is a perfect continuation of my earlier work within the area – my entire doctoral project was focused on designing and evaluating collaborative virtual environments based on combinations of visual, haptic and auditory feedback. You could say that my research career started here. This article summarizes my earlier work in this area, which included design and evaluation of new learning environments in which sighted and visually impaired pupils could work together to solve tasks related to geometry and the concepts of area and volume. The new learning environments were then evaluated in different elementary schools. You can read more about this earlier study in this blog post. When working with this study I also came into contact with the concept of haptic feedback for the first time and since then I have developed and evaluated several haptic applications that provide feedback to your sense of touch through special hardware. You can read more in my blog series on haptic interaction design.

The Vinnova application was handed in around a month after I started at Örebro University and after a few months of waiting, Vinnova sent us the accept message! I wrote this blog post, where I introduced the project partners, shortly after Vinnova made their decision public. I have really enjoyed working in this project, which is the result of my first ever accepted research grant application (co-applicant). As I write in this blog post we have experienced some problems due to the pandemic (e.g. observations in schools could not be carried out and all interviews needed to be carried out online), but the project was mostly a success. The blog image above actually shows my work set-up at my country side, where I was carrying out all my parts of the project.

My main responsibility in the project was to design and implement one of the project’s new digital collaborative learning environments. My application focused on the coordinate system concept and should be used to teach pupils about for example points and the equation of straight lines. The visual part was not that hard, but the haptic implementation was a real challenge. Let’s take the straight line as an example – how would you design the line so that it is clearly felt and possible to follow while at the same time making sure that it does not interfere too much with the exploration of the coordinate system? Keep in mind that severely visually impaired pupils should be able to use the application. It took several iterations before I ended up with the slightly magnetic line that was used in the final application. I will write more about the many interesting technical aspects in a later blog post, where I will also write about how I worked remotely with my KTH colleague Kjetil Falkenberg to synchronize his sound model with my visual and haptic model. I wasn’t the only one developing applications in the project – my former KTH colleague Jonas Forsslund (now Forsslund Systems AB and Haptikfabriken AB) developed another application based on exploration of maps. Also based on this application we had many interesting design-related discussions about the haptic and audio designs. I will come back to some of those later on as well.

After several iterations of development and user testing with users we ended up with two applications that I think we should be very happy with, especially since the whole idea with the Vinnova call was to develop prototypes and/or proof-of-concepts (not applications that are ready for implementation). I will describe the applications more thoroughly when the first results are about to be published. One risk with Vinnova projects is that they are often a lot more focused on development than on research, but in this case we have plenty of material from the design process and the interviews that we can publish and/or use as a basis for future research. This concerns for example interesting design dilemmas, the overall design process and support for collaboration between visually impaired and sighted pupils in general. All project partners are very interested in continuing to collaborate and I’m quite sure that this Vinnova project will not be the last externally funded project we will be engaged in. This time around, we did not include any colleagues from Örebro University, but I have every intention to include more of my colleagues in future projects in this area.

As I have written earlier, I recently bought new haptic devices to be used in research at my department. I’m still at my countryside due to the pandemic, but as soon as I get back to my office it is time to start discussions on how we can make use of the haptic dimension in our future research!  🙂

Distance work · DOME · eHealth · Grant application · Haptics · NORDeHEALTH

Just reached half-time of my assistant professorship at Örebro University!

Jonas Moll2 Comments

In the beginning of August 2019 I started off my work as an assistant professor in Informatics at Örebro University. The assistant professorship is a four year position, and towards the end you will, in most cases, be promoted to a senior lecturer or associate professor after an application procedure. Since I have now reached half-time, I think it’s reasonable to summarize what I have done this far and discuss what lies ahead.

Overall, I’m very happy with how the first two years played out when it comes to both research (~80%) and teaching (~20%), even though the pandemic posed some difficult challenges in both areas. I have gotten the opportunity to participate in some very interesting research collaborations. The funded Vinnova project I drafted the application for during the first weeks at the university ended just before summer 2021 and the collaboration that was built with the involved stakeholders was really fruitful. Representatives from both The Swedish Association of the Visually Impaired and The National Agency for Special Needs Education and Schools (SPSM) want to continue the collaborations and we are already looking for new funding opportunities in the area of accessible digital collaborative learning environments. The national and international collaborations in the NordForsk project NORDeHEALTH, which started up formally in January 2021, have also been fruitful and I look forward to another two years of research on personal eHealth services in the Nordic countries. Aside from working in externally funded projects, I also started up some internal collaborations, mostly related to pedagogical research. I will write more about the first two years of research, and the publications published, in my second and third posts about the first half of the assistant professorship.

The teaching has been more of a challenge than I expected when I stared working as an assistant professor two years ago. I know the courses, but being thrown into digital teaching mode made the teaching more difficult than ever before, especially since I have been course responsible for the courses I have been involved in (Interaction design and System development theory). Despite this, the courses worked really well and the students seemed to be happy with them. I will write more about these courses, and the challenges associated with digital teaching and examination, in my fourth and last blog post about the first two years of my assistant professorship.

I really hope, and also believe, that the second half will be just as rewarding as the first one. Hopefully, I will be able to start even more internal research collaborations, especially now when I have made sure that we have two brand new haptic devices at the department – this should open up several new research opportunities within, for example, the areas of digital learning environments and multimodal data exploration and analysis!

Grant application · Group work · Haptics

Finally working with haptic interaction design again!

Jonas Moll1 Comment

As I previously mentioned in this post I am co-applicant of the Vinnova-funded application “Virtual environments supporting group work between sighted and visually impaired pupils”, which officially started in late autumn 2019 and will go on until summer 2021. I’m really happy about this project for several reasons. Most and foremost, the project makes it possible for me to really engage in haptic interaction design again (I have not done research in that area during the last couple of years) and the application was also the first one for which I managed to attract external funding (hence, a very important milestone in my academic carrier).

The project consists of a couple of main phases:

  1. A pre-study where we investigate the situation that visually impaired pupils face in school today, especially in collaborative situations. One of the important focus points here has been to find out which school subjects we should focus on.
  2. Iterative prototype development, focusing on haptic and audio technology, where we follow a user-centered design approach.
  3. Evaluations in schools, where groups of pupils will solve some prepared school assignments with the developed application.
  4. Development of guidelines for designing, evaluating and using virtual learning environments that support group work between sighted and visually impaired pupils.

I will take part in all project phases, but will devote most of my project time to the iterative prototype development and the development of the final guidelines. Unfortunately, Covid-19 has caused quite a lot of trouble for us especially in the first project phase where we had to make adjustments. I was really looking forward to the planned observation activity, where I, together with some other project members, should visit some selected schools to observe group work between visually impaired and sighted pupils. This type of activity is one of the most valuable when it comes to understanding the users and their environment. But we had to let go of this activity altogether. All interviews with e.g. pupils and teachers will also be conducted online, which is of course far from ideal.

This being said, the most important thing is that we still have a way to interact with pupils and teachers. We also have a very good collaboration between the project members representing academia and the project members representing Axess Lab (a company division focusing on digital accessibility from numerous perspectives), The Swedish Association of the Visually Impaired and The National Agency for Special Needs Education and Schools (SPSM), so I’m absolutely sure we will be successful in the end.

Currently, I’m working on the first prototype of our virtual learning environment and I’m really enjoying it. The setup is not exactly as I planned, though, also as a consequence of Covid-19. Since I take immune suppressive medication it’s not a very good idea for me to go to Örebro University or to live in towns like Stockholm for long periods of time, so I have been living at my countryside, at Gräsö, since beginning of March. Since prototype development had to start, we made the decision to move all equipment (including haptic devices and the new project computer – all prepared by my colleague Jonas Forsslund) to my countryside! You can see an example setup in the blog image above.

It’s maybe not the best setup, but it definitely works and I’m making progress. I will of course write more about the prototype development and the other phases of the project later on. So stay tuned  🙂

DOME · eHealth · Grant application · Haptics · Medical Records Online · Pedagogical development · Teaching

Looking back at my first year as assistant professor, part 1: research

Jonas Moll1 Comment

I started my work as an assistant professor in Informatics at Örebro University August 1st 2019, and I’m now taking this opportunity to shortly summarize the first year. Usually, I link to earlier blog posts when I write summaries, but this very special spring term with online teaching and 100% distance work actually made me forget to use the blog.  😦

This post will be about research activities (excluding publications, which will be covered in the next summary post).

When it comes to research, quite a lot has happened during this first year. Those who have been following this blog for a while have probably seen that I have been trying to get research funding from different sources, sometimes as main applicant and sometimes as co-applicant, since I started as a postdoc at Uppsala University. After several rejects during the period 2015-2019 I finally managed to get some external funding from Vinnova! I write about the project, which focuses on developing digital learning tools for collaboration between visually impaired and sighted pupils in school, in this and this blog post. My next blog post after the summary posts will also be about this project (I know I haven’t written that much about it yet).

As it turned out, the Vinnova application was not the only project grant application (where I was one of the co-applicants) that got funded during this last year! Together with several of my colleagues in the DOME consortium, as well as partners focusing on eHealth in Norway, Finland, Estonia and the USA, I worked on a NordForsk application during Autumn 2019 and early spring 2020. One of my colleagues from Uppsala University, Maria Hägglund led the work. In May we got a confirmation from NordForsk that the project will be funded. The project title is “Nordic eHealth for Patients: Benchmarking and Developing for the Future” and it will start in January 2021. I’m really looking forward to this important research which will go on for three years!

I have also worked on some applications that came to be rejected. One of them (a draft) was submitted to Forte (Swedish Research Council for Health, Working Life and Welfare) and one was submitted to AFA Försäkringar. Both focused on eHealth solutions for patients. Actually, two drafts were submitted to Forte and one of them, for which Maria Hägglund led the work, was accepted. Since this means that a complete application could be submitted just before summer we don’t know yet if we will get funding or not.

Aside from working with grant applications and the above mentioned Vinnova-funded project, I have also worked on some internal projects at the Informatics department. One of those projects focuses on eHealth and more specifically the introduction of video visits in primary care in Region Örebro. My colleague Gunnar Klein leads the research which is currently not funded (although, we will try to fix that issue soon). A first research task – a survey distributed to healthcare professionals – has already been carried out and several other activities, involving both patients and healthcare professionals, have also been planned.

The other internal project I am involved in focuses on education and more specifically on the changes made in our courses in Informatics as a consequence of the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic. In March it was decided that all teaching should move online (including all examinations) – a transition that was far from easy. I was lucky enough to get around 1.5 months to prepare for my course in interaction design, but some of my colleagues had to transform ongoing courses from campus based to online! I will write more about my course in interaction design in a later summary post. This internal project, which will focus on e.g. different courses, examination types and levels of educations, and where both teachers and students will be involved, is coordinated by me (although I must say that it has been extremely complicated to coordinate this when we can only meet online!).

The activities mentioned above are the main research activities I have been involved in since I started working at Örebro University. In the next summary post I will write about the publications that have been published and accepted during the last year.

(I took the blog picture above at my countryside a while ago)

Haptics · Human-Computer Interaction · Multimodality · sonification · Thesis defense

Recently attended Emma Frid’s thesis defense at KTH!

Jonas MollLeave a comment

Disputationsbild_Emma

On Friday, January 10, I attended Emma Frid’s thesis defense at KTH. Emma and I collaborated in a research project a few years ago, and one of the major outcomes was this open access article presenting the results of an experiment with a multimodal interface including both haptic feedback and two different sonification models. Emma’s thesis work relates heavily to the research field of Sound and Music Computing (also the name of a sub-group at the department of Media technology and Interaction Design at KTH where I worked for more than a decade), and focuses specifically on (accessible) digital music instruments and interfaces. The main research question is “How can music interfaces be designed for inclusion?”. The thesis “Diverse Sounds – Enabling Inclusive Sonic Interaction” can be found here. The main supervisor was professor Roberto Bresin and co-supervisor was professor Eva-Lotta Sallnäs Pysander. Both of them work at the department of Media technology and Interaction Design at KTH. The opponent was Reader Andrew McPherson from the school of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science at Queen Mary University of London. The examination committee consisted of senior researcher Elaine Chew from the French National Centre for Scientific Research and the Music Representations Team at the Institute for Research and Coordination in Acoustics/Music, professor Rolf Inge Godøy from the Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in Rhythm, Time and Motion at University of Oslo, associate professor Dan Overholt from the department of Architecture, Design and Media Technology at Aalborg University and professor Henrik Frisk from the department of Composition, Conducting and Music Theory at Royal College of Music in Stockholm.

After the introduction by associate professor Madeline Balaam, who chaired the event, the opponent held a presentation about Emma’s thesis for about 45 minutes. It was a very good presentation and it was interesting to listen to his interpretation of the work performed. He concluded his presentation by discussing the nine properties that according to Emma should be considered when designing accessible digital music instruments; expressiveness, playability, longevity, customizability, pleasure, sonic quality, robustness, multimodality and causality (see the thesis for a thorough coverage of these properties and the work that gave rise to them). After a short break the opponent, and later on the members of the committee, asked question that formed a good foundation for interesting discussions about the thesis work.

I think Emma did a really good job answering the questions and discussing her work. She elaborated a lot on the themes that were brought up to discussion and it was very clear that she knows a lot about this research field. She was also calm during the entire process and even helped out when the opponent and committee members e.g. needed headsets and/or microphones. One thing that was special about this defense is that the opponent, as well as all members of the grading committee, began their round of questions by congratulating Emma on the excellent job that she has performed! I have not seen that during other defenses I have attended. The defense was rounded off by a very long applaud – it was almost as if the audience expected some kind of extra performance on stage.  🙂

communication · Grant application · Group work · Haptics · Multimodality

Got funding from Vinnova!

Jonas Moll6 Comments

Vinnova_funded

A few months ago I wrote in this blog post that a funding application, where I represented Örebro University as one of the co-applicants, had been submitted to Vinnova (Sweden’s government agency for innovation). And guess what, the project got funded! The name of the project is “Virtual environments supporting group work between sighted and visually impaired pupils”, and as the name suggests we will work closely with visually impaired and sighted pupils (as well as teachers) to develop new virtual learning environments that support collaboration a lot better than today’s special equipment used by visually impaired pupils in schools. My former supervisor at the Royal Institute of Technology, Eva-Lotta Sallnäs Pysander is the project leader and Örebro University, Axess Lab (a company division focusing on digital accessibility from numerous perspectives), The Swedish Association of the Visually Impaired and The National Agency for Special Needs Education and Schools (SPSM) are the other project partners. I will introduce the other project members and write more about the project as soon as press releases have been published by the Royal Institute of Technology and Örebro University.

This project is very special to me for several reasons. First and foremost, this is the very first time I have been contributing extensively to a project application that has resulted in external funding. Writing these kinds of applications requires a lot of work and collaboration between researchers and other stakeholders and it feels great when the efforts finally pay off! I’m also very happy about that I’m now able to focus more on the research field “IT and learning” again. It was quite a while ago that I worked on multimodal learning environments. The research area is really important and I’m glad that Vinnova has acknowledged that. Another reason why this project is special to me is that I started to work on the application shortly after I had started working as an assistant professor at Örebro University – one of the very first things I did within the scope of my new position actually resulted in external research funding! I think this is a very good start for me and I’m really excited about this new project.

If you want to read a short summary of the project, you can visit this page where Vinnova has published some short descriptions about the purpose, approach and expected results. I will write more in a later blog post as soon as I have some university press releases to link to. So stay tuned!  🙂

 

communication · design · Group work · Haptics · Human-Computer Interaction · Multimodality · sonification

Overview of my research within multimodal interaction

Jonas Moll1 Comment

thesis

In my last blog post I presented an overview about my research within the eHealth domain. In this blog post I will do the same thing, but for my other main research field – multimodal interaction in virtual environments.

 

What have I done related to multimodal interaction?

Even though I have spent the last couple of years focusing mainly on eHealth, I have done a lot of research – especially as a Ph.D. student at the Royal Institute of Technology – related to multimodal interaction. Most of this research has been focused on multimodal learning environments for collaborative task solving between sighted and visually impaired persons. Haptic feedback has played a major part in the collaborative virtual environments that I have designed and evaluated both in lab settings and in the field in e.g. primary schools. Quite a while ago, I wrote a blog series on haptic feedback focusing on the work I performed within the scope of my doctoral studies. Here are the links to those posts:

During my time as a postdoc at Uppsala University, I also performed some activities related to multimodal interaction. Most of this time I devoted to research grant applications and I also wrote a few conference papers. You can read a short summary of these activities here.

In total, my research on multimodal interaction has, up until today, resulted in the following five journal publications (some links lead to open access publications or pre-prints):

and the following 11 conference papers (some links leads to open access publications or pre-prints):

 

My ongoing research within multimodal interaction

Currently, there is not much going on related to this research field (at least not in my own research). The only ongoing activity I’m engaged in is an extensive literature review related to communication in collaborative virtual environments which will lead to a theoretical research article where I will discuss different technical solutions for haptic communication in the light of the research I have performed within the area up until today. I’m collaborating with my former Ph.D. supervisor Eva-Lotta Sallnäs Pysander on this activity. I hope that this research activity will help me in my continued research on collaboration between visually impaired and sighted pupils based on different types of tasks and learning material.

Upcoming research on multimodal interaction

As I wrote in a recent blog post multimodal interaction, with a focus on haptic feedback, seems to be a new research area at the Centre for empirical research on information systems (CERIS) where I just stared my assistant professorship. Thus, this is the research area in which I can contribute with something new to the department. An area that is already represented at the department, however, is “Information Technology and Learning”, which seems to be a perfect fit in this case!

Last year, I also submitted a research grant application focusing on continued work with collaborative multimodal learning environments. Unfortunately, that one was rejected but no one is giving up. I will work somewhat on revising the application during the autumn and submit as soon as a suitable call pops up. Maybe I will also have additional co-applicants from the CERIS department by then.

communication · eHealth · Group work · Haptics · Human-Computer Interaction · Medical Records Online · Multimodality · Social media in higher education

Today I start working at Örebro University as an assistant professor!

Jonas Moll1 Comment

Fjäll7

Today I can finally take the next step on the academic ladder, since I’m starting up my new job as assistant professor in Informatics at the centre for empirical research on information systems at Örebro University! In November 2018 I applied for the position and in the middle of the spring 2019 I was called to an interview. A few months later I was offered the position. I’m very excited about this great opportunity and I of course intend to make the most out of it. After a very long blog break (mostly due to health issues and the fact that my research efforts during the spring has been rather minor), this also seems like a good opportunity to start posting again.

The assistant professorship is the first step on the so called tenure track. It is an academic position limited to four years, but the intention is often (as in my case) to promote the assistant professor to an associate professor towards the end – a position which is not limited in time. My job includes 70% research and 30% teaching, which is quite common for assistant professorships. I’m not sure yet where e.g. service and communication (like administration, blogging and interviews) fits in.

The job as assistant professor in Informatics is a very good fit for me, since I will be able to continue to work with all my main research interests (the main theme is computer supported communication):

  • eHealth
    – I will continue looking at how patient accessible electronic health records (PAEHR) affect the communication between patients and care professionals. One thing I’m particularly curious about, and that is actually the focus of a project grant application currently in review, is how one can incorporate the PAEHR as a communication mediator curing doctor-patient meetings. Another application in review is about the effects and implementation of psychiatry records online.
  • Multimodal interaction
    – I will also continue looking at how multimodal feedback (especially haptics and sound) can be used to promote collaboration between sighted and visually impaired pupils/students in group work. Most of today’s assistive technologies that are used in school settings are not adapted for collaboration and this is highly problematic when it comes to inclusion of visually impaired pupils/students in group work settings.
  • Social media in higher education
    – My intention is also to continue investigating how social media like Twitter and Facebook can be used as supplementary communication channels in higher education courses.

When it comes to the areas of eHealth and social media in higher education, research is already being conducted by my new colleagues at Örebro University. Multimodal interaction would however be a new research theme for the department. I will elaborate on the different themes listed above in later blog posts as work is progressing. Other research themes from the department (like computer security and ICT for development) could also be added.

I have not heard anything yet regarding the teaching, but given the department’s focus I guess I could be involved in master’s thesis supervision, human-computer interaction project courses and programming courses. I will write more about the teaching part when I know more.

The blog image that I used for this post is one of my own – I took it a few weeks ago during a week I spent in Abisko in northern Sweden.

Grant application · Group work · Haptics

Recently submitted a project proposal to this year’s Forte junior research grant!

Jonas MollLeave a comment

Tordmule

A few weeks ago I wrote a blog post about the spring of opportunities, which basically contained lists of possible research grant and job opportunities that were open or should open during the spring term. Just before lunch today, I submitted the first of my planned project proposals! This one went to Forte and their grants for junior researchers.

The proposed project relates to work that I performed while I was still working at KTH as a Ph.D. student and the content was also inspired by the application that I sent to VR last year (see this blog post). The project is based on the fact that today’s assistive technologies that visually impaired pupils use in the classroom are not really designed for collaborative situations – the technology could sometimes be a hindrance when doing group work with sighted peers. Our hope is that the planned activities will really shed light on the problems this is causing and show how one can make use of modern technology, based on haptic and audio feedback, to find ways ahead. I have already done a few studies in this area which you e.g. can read about in this article (note that this is a pre-print version). I will write more about this when I get an answer from Forte about the draft later on in April.

My co-applicant is Eva-Lotta Sallnäs Pysander from KTH, who was also my main supervisor there. If we get the grant, we will hopefully be able to add a Ph.D. student to the research team as well.

I must say that it’s nice to have this proposal submitted. I really believe in the ideas in it and I also think that the project could make a real difference. Since I’m generally very interested in multimodal interaction and learning, this is also one of the areas I really want to focus on in my research in the future. The other area is eHealth and as I have written before there are quite a few funding opportunities in that area as well during this spring. But right now I’m just enjoying that I have one application out there, just as the razorbill in the image above probably enjoys sitting on a cliff looking out over the ocean…