Anais do IHC'2001 - Departamento de Informática e Estatística - UFSC

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Anais do IHC’2001 - IV Workshop sobre Fatores Humanos em Sistemas Computacionais
The interesting fact about Punnet Squares, from Stenning and Inder’s perspective, is the
emerging meaning in the representation, that no genetic traits can be indeterminate.
Therefore, the Punnet Square does not easily yield itself to a continuous constructive
progression of the concept. The table can only be filled out when and if the principle is
fully known. It cannot be used in the process of learning the principle (where knowledge
goes through successive stages of decreasing indeterminacy).
These two brief examples from different domains provide us with some interesting insights
regarding DCM and RDCM for interacting with learnware. They draw attention to the fact
that the visual representation of indeterminacy requires diagrams or images that can
represent types [Stenning & Inder, 1995; Stenning & Oberlander, 1995]. Indeterminacy
may be important for different reasons. First, it may be the case that there are cases of
indeterminacy in the domain of knowledge being learned (see the Euler Circles example).
Second, it may alternatively happen that, although there are no cases of indeterminacy in
the domain, the gradual construction of knowledge structures may require the
representation of indeterminate states in the learners’ conceptualizations (see the Punnet
Square example).
Viewed from this perspective, the evolution from DCM to RDCM interaction with Super
Tangrams © corresponds to a gradual decrease of the referential determinacy of visual
representations until a minimal threshold is reached. Visual cases of indeterminacy, in ST,
are compensated with internalized concepts that are arguably available in symbolic form
(the pre-linguistic mental formulation of general principles that have been learned from
previous more determinate stages of representation). We can then anticipate that the style
of learning adopted in ST would not be easily reproducible for teaching Logic with Euler
Circles or Genetics with Punnet Squares.
Conclusion
The previous sections give us some interesting elements to respond to the issues posed so
far about the value of DCM and RDCM as distinct interface styles in learnware. Firstly, in
semiotic terms DCM and RDCM can be argued to be more closely related than has been
originally suggested. In fact, the phenomenological categories of secondness (that refers to
establishing relations between two entities) and thirdness (that refers to establishing
relations between at least three entities) can suitably characterize the interface signs used in
Super Tangrams © . The relevance of this argument is that the availability of a theoretical
framework that can adequately account for design choices based on heuristic guidelines
and experimental observations allows us to explore a number of predictions and
explanations of HCI phenomena in the domain of learnware. These predictions are backed
by semiotic theory, and can help us not only probe the spectrum of possible answers to
known questions, but perhaps more importantly to formulate new questions and advance
our knowledge in the field.
To illustrate this point, we can already conjecture about the issues raised in previous
studies with the system.
1. What visual representations [should we] use to facilitate [the] development of proper
conceptual models?
Our analysis seems to support the conjecture that we should use those representations (a)
that can be related to the secondness as well as thirdness of their objects, and (b) that can