Ateneo Laboratory for the Learning Sciences

The Grand Challenges in Computing (GCC), held on July 27-28, 2018 at the University of the Immaculate Conception, Texas St./Bonifacio St., Davao City, is an annual conference organized annually by the CSP-SPICE. This year, in partnership with the Computing Society of the Philippines-Special Interest Group on Information and Computing Education (CSP-SPICE), the University of the Immaculate Conception had hosted GCC. The two day conference featured special lectures from prominent researchers and educators in the information and communications technology and contributed research papers on computing and ICT.

ALLS representatives, Dr. Maria Mercedes Rodrigo, Cesar Alipiz Tecson, and Michelle Banawan, were included among the panel of reactors.

The theme was “Science-based Transformations for Sustainability and Resiliency” at the 40th Annual Scientific Meeting organized by the National Academy of Science and Technology of the Philippines on July 17 – 21. The gathering seeks to help ventilate, discuss, clarify and expound science and technology issues and to use the results to formulate policies and other functions. According to the institution, the event also serves to provide analyses and science-based solutions and policy recommendations to the government, the private sector and society at large.

ALLS, represented by Joal Rose Lin, Jose Isidro Beraquit, Japeth Samaco, and Nicole Bugayong, was part of the Ateneo contingent.  We showed the Igpaw: Intramuros, Igpaw: Loyola, and reADMU.txt.

The 26th Conference on User Modelling, Adaptation, and Personalization (UMAP) was held last July 8-11 at the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. UMAP is the premier international conference for researchers and practitioners working on systems that adapt to individual users, to groups of users, and that collect, represent, and model user information. It is the successor to the biennial User Modeling (UM) and Adaptive Hypermedia and Adaptive Web-based Systems (AH) conferences that were merged in 2009. It is sponsored by ACM SIGCHI and SIGWEB, and organized with User Modeling Inc. as the Steering Committee. The proceedings are published by ACM and will be part of the ACM Digital Library.

The following papers were presented during the conference:
1.) Identifying Students’ Persistence Profiles in Problem Solving Task — Cristina Dumdumaya, Michelle Banawan, Maria Mercedes Rodrigo [PDF]
2.) Modeling Student Persistence in a Learning-By-Teaching Environment — Cristina Dumdumaya [PDF]
3.) Predicting Successful Collaboration in a Pair ProgrammingEye Tracking Experiment — Maureen Villamor, Ma. Mercedes Rodrigo [PDF]

On June 16, 2018, students of the SOSE Camp Integrated Science Technology and Engineering played Igpaw: Loyola. Approximately 25 students, all from Philippine Science High School, went to various landmarks within the Loyola Schools to trigger in-game events. They battled the aran, spoke to the young Jose Rizal, and sought advice from Fr. Dela Costa. The application was warmly received by the students. Most of them liked how the themes of Philippine history, mythology, and the Ateneo history were incorporated in the application.

Luigi Lim, Jan Santos, and Jose Beraquit of the Ateneo Laboratory for the Learning Sciences exhibited ALLS’s two augmented reality games, Igpaw: Intramuros and Igpaw: Loyola at Komura book fair on June 16, 2018 at Warehouse 8 in Makati. Komura was an opportunity to raise awareness about these games.  People who tried them out expressed excitement at the use of augmented reality for storytelling. One visitor said that her children would like it and they would play Igpaw: Intramuros when they visited Intramuros. Another expressed interest because she herself wanted to make AR games.