Emma Sharkey
The University of Auckland, New Zealand
Eshark@slingshot.co.nz

John Paynter
The University of Auckland, New Zealand
j.paynter@auckland.ac.nz

Sharkey,E. & Paynter, P. (2004, November), Computer human interaction education in New Zealand. Bulletin of Applied Computing and Information Technology Vol. 2, Issue 3. ISSN 1176-4120. Retrieved from

ABSTRACT

The status of Computer Human Interface (CHI) education in the eight Universities in New Zealand is examined. A two-fold approach is used. We analyse the offering of CHI-related courses and survey academics  and students as to their perceptions of the topics to be studied. All eight New Zealand Universities teach 14 courses in all that explicitly contain CHI or its equivalent in the course name. Content analysis of the course descriptions is used to determine the most frequently cited topics in the discipline. The use of design tools is by far the most common topic.  At the time of the conducting of this study, the University of Auckland did not offer a CHI course, but has since included one. 30 people from the SIGCHI community responded to the survey. The most common topic that should be covered was task analysis.  50 students responded to a similar survey. The most common topic selected was Voice Telephony Interaction (VTI). Overall both academics and students placed a high level of importance on CHI education in terms of students overall computing education and industry needs.

Keywords

Computer human interaction, HCI, education, New Zealand.

1. INTRODUCTION

This paper explores the current status of Computer Human Interface (CHI, also termed HCI) education within New Zealand Universities.  At the time of writing of this paper, no CHI courses were available to Computer Science or Information Systems students at the University of Auckland.  However, in 2004, the Computer Science department launched a CHI course, available to stage three Computer Science majors.  Such a course is unavailable to Information Systems students, unless they have completed the appropriate Computer Science pre-requisite papers.  The objectives of the study are to determine the need for such a course and to decide on its coverage.

Two research methods are employed. Content analysis was conducted on all courses offered at New Zealand Universities that offer CHI. The second involved survey research. Two separate surveys were conducted on CHI academics and third year computing students.  A third was prepared for the surveying of CHI practitioners, but results were not available for the writing of this paper.  The attitudes of academics and computing students will be examined with the purpose of ascertaining the appropriate topics to be incorporated into such courses.

2. BACKGROUND

In this section, the current CHI course offerings by New Zealand Universities and relevant literature are examined.

2.1  Content Analysis

Michael & Lewis (1994) as cited by Yusop et al (2003) describe content analysis as a technique that is used with the goal of deriving valid inferences from text.  The texts used in this instance are the prescriptions obtained for all the identified CHI courses.  At the time this study was conducted a total of 13 CHI course offerings were discovered. 

Initially, the CHI terminology utilised within both surveys was used as a basis for conducting such analysis.  This in turn was based on coverage in some CHI texts (e.g. Preece et al, 1994), plus observations on the need for CHI in different types of applications in New Zealand (e.g. ATMs, VTI). After closer examination of relevant course prescriptions, additional CHI terms were incorporated.   Table 1 illustrates the coverage of identified CHI topics at New Zealand Universities. 

The topic most commonly included in CHI courses was that of ‘the use of design tools’, included in 77% of CHI courses, with ‘task analysis’ being included in 46% of CHI courses.

Table 1. Topics included in HCI courses

2.2  Literature Review

A number of studies have been conducted on the status of CHI education.  Such studies include a study of CHI education in Sweden (Oestreicher & Gulliksen, 2000), and Southern Africa (Kotze, 2002).  The authors have been unable to locate similar publications that study CHI education in a New Zealand context. 

Greenberg (1996) indicated that one of the expectations of new computing graduates is that they have the ability to develop user interfaces that have a high degree of usability.  However, in general, such students lack the skill and knowledge to effectively design such interfaces and thus are unprepared for such a task.  Tscheligi & Giller (1995) indicate that the inclusion of topics in CHI is considered vital within any computing related degree. 

Perlman et al (1994) indicate that a wide variety of skills are required in order to facilitate the development of a user interface that is considered to be highly usable.  The progression of skills development within the CHI field is viewed as being key to the development of the field as a whole.  Such a statement is indicative of the importance of CHI education to the field as a whole. 

There are a number of viewpoints as to what should be taught within an ‘ideal’ CHI course.  For example, Oestreicher & Gulliksen (2000) conducted a study with regard to what Swedish CHI academics and practitioners perceived should be incorporated into an ideal CHI course.   The CHI topics that the respondents considered had the most value to the student and industry as a whole were design principles and processes, cognitive psychology, interaction techniques, usability and task analysis

2.3  CHI Research Opportunities

In addition to offering CHI courses, some New Zealand Universities also offer CHI research opportunities to students.  Such offerings include the HitLabNZ, hosted by the University of Canterbury that offers summer studentships.  AUT and the University of Waikato have usability laboratories that offer CHI research opportunities to students. 

3. METHODOLOGY

The purpose of this section is to discuss the methods used in this research.  This section will be divided into two subsections, with each subsection representing each of the two surveys. 

3.1 CHI Academic Survey

The purpose of this survey was to ascertain the importance that academics placed on a number of pre-defined CHI topics, and the importance placed on CHI education.  The survey was administered using the Internet based survey tool Informis.  The url was http://www.informis.co.nz/survey.asp?qnid=84 .  A survey link was emailed out to all members of SIGCHI-NZ, and a link was placed on their website.   A total of 30 responses to this questionnaire were received.  The size of the sample population is not known, but an approximation to this can be made to the number of SIGCHI attendees (response rate of 33%). 

3.2 Student CHI Survey

The purpose of the student CHI questionnaire was to ascertain the level of interest students had in CHI courses and topics.  The survey was administered to the students of an Information Systems paper at the University of Auckland.   While it is unlikely that many, if any of the students had previously undertaken a course in CHI, the students would have had familiarity with the terms utilised in the survey.   Questions such as the level of interest a student had in undertaking a course in CHI, as well as interest in predefined CHI topics were posed

A total of 50 students completed the survey out of the 166 who wee enrolled over the four semester period the survey was run (30% response rate).

4. RESULTS

In this section, the results obtained from the two surveys conducted will be presented. 

4.1 Survey Results: Inclusion of CHI Topics

Table 2. Survey results – topic inclusion

The percentage of respondents who indicated that a specified topic had been included in the CHI course with which they were familiar is shown in Table 2.  The topic ‘active user participation design tools’ was the most popular inclusion.  The topic ‘voice telephony interaction’ was considered the least popular inclusion in CHI courses.

4.2 Survey Results: Importance of CHI Topics

Academic respondents rated the importance of CHI topics.  The results are illustrated in Table 3.

Table 3. Survey results – academic topic importance

The topic of ‘task analysis’ was considered the most important by academic respondents with 76% citing it as being important.  The topic considered least important was ‘voice telephony interaction’, with 15.3% citing it as being important. 

4.3 Survey Results: Student Interest in CHI Topics

Student respondents rated the level of interest they had in the predefined CHI topics.  The results are shown in Table 4.

Table 4: Survey rsults – student topic interest

The topic with the greatest interest was ‘Voice Telephony Interaction’ (63.3% citing interest).  The topic that had least interest was ‘formative/summative usability testing’ (21.4% citing interest). 

4.4 Survey Results: Importance of CHI to Computing Education

Academic and student respondents indicated the importance they placed on CHI with regards to overall computing education  The results are illustrated in Figure 1.

Figure 1. Importance to CHI education

Academic respondents indicated a mean value of 6.5, with student respondents indicating a value of 5.2, meaning academic respondents, on average, perceive CHI education to be between ‘important’ and ‘very important’.  Student respondents perceive CHI education as being between ‘somewhat important’ and ‘important’ to their overall computing education. 

4.5 Survey Results: Importance of CHI to Industry

Academic and Student respondents indicated the importance they placed on CHI education to industry.  The results obtained are shown in Figure 2. 

Figure 2. Importance to industry

Academic respondents indicated a mean value of 6.2 and student respondents indicated a mean value of 5.7. The academic mean value equates to a ranking of between ‘important’ and ‘very important’, with the student mean value equating to a rating of between ‘somewhat important’ and ‘important’.  

5. DISCUSSION

This section will discuss the results obtained from this research.  Academic respondents indicated that the topics ‘user participation design tools’ and ‘task analysis’ were the most common inclusions in the HCI courses with which they were familiar with.   Academic respondents then indicated they perceived the topic of ‘task analysis’ as being the most important topic in terms of its contribution to the field of CHI, thus indicating there was some reflection of the importance of such topics in the make up of CHI courses.   However, such a statement is not always found to be true, as topics that rated highly in their inclusion in CHI courses were not deemed as being so important. 

Apparent differences between the interest student respondents had in the CHI and the importance that academic respondents placed on such topics were found.  For example, student respondents indicated the topic they had the greatest level of interest in was Voice Telephony Interaction (also referred to as Interactive Voice Response systems).  However, academic respondents rated this topic as being the least important of all topics. 

Academic respondents tended to place a greater level of importance on CHI education in terms of students overall computing education and industry.  Perhaps an explanation for this result is that academic respondents have incorporated CHI as a part of their career, and as a result will place a higher level of importance on it. 

6. CONCLUSION

This research has explored the current status of CHI education from a New Zealand perspective.  Survey methods were employed in order to ascertain the perceptions of academics and computing students with regards to CHI education.  Some differences were apparent as to the importance and interest that both groups had with regards to CHI topics and overall.  Nevertheless it was considered that not having a course dedicated to this topic in an Information Technology major was a serious omission. The prescription for such a course and the lecture outline of the topics to be included is detailed in Sharkey (2004).

7. REFERENCES

Greenberg, S.  Teaching Human Computer Interaction to Programmers.SIGCHI Bulletin, Vol 28, No 2, April 1996.

Kotze, P.  “Directions in HCI Education, Research and Practice in Southern Africa” CHI 2002, April 20-25, Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA

Oestreicher, L and Gulliksen, J.  "HCI Education in Sweden".  SIGCHI Bulletin 31(2), , April 1999.

Perlman, G, Ephrath, T, Long, J, Mountford, S & Preece, J.  "Is HCI getting a passing grade from industry?".   CHI 1994, April 24-28, Boston, Massachusetts, USA

Preece, J, Rogers, Y, Sharp, H, Benyon, D, Holland, S & Carey, T.  "Human Computer Interaction". 1994, 1st Edition, Addison Wesley. 

Sharkey, E. "An Exploratory Study of Human Computer Interaction Education in New Zealand". Unpublished Honours Research Essay, January, 2004.

Tscheligi, M and Giller, V.  "The Gear Model of HCI Education".  CHI’95 Mosaic of Creativity, 1995, May 7 – 11. 

Yusop, N, Zowghi. D and Lowe D. "An Analysis of E-Business Systems Impacts on the Business Domain".The Third International Conference on Electronic Business (ICEB 2003): E-Business Paradigms: Strategic Transformation and Partnership, Singapore, 9-13 Dec 2003

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