Abstract-A major challenge in teaching hypermedia is to illustrate how varying dimensions of using context are related to user's quality experience of online services. The Urban Computing Lab (UCL) tool was developed for students to collect rich information for further analysis about quality experiences of online services in authentic situations. Meaningful learning from the real world problems in authentic contexts enhances learning of abstract and theoretical issues.Index Terms-Authentic learning, context-aware service, experience of service, quality of service.
I. TEACHING CHALLENGES IN HYPERMEDIAHigh quality and an overall acceptability of online services have become more and more important for users. Smart phones and small laptops enable users to access online services and communities almost everywhere, and contexts of use of online services have become more diverse. The consideration of users' expectations in the design of online services requires an understanding that quality is perceived and experienced subjectively by the user. The quality experience of online services is a complex phenomenon affected by many diverse aspects like usability, accessibility, informational quality, user's physiological and psychological capability, user's personality as well as a situation and a context of use. There are always some permanent dimensions affecting the user's experience such as psychological and physiological traits of human beings (memory, perception, sense, basic needs) and cultural factors, but also some varying dimensions of context of use like the purpose of use, social situation, physiological environment, device used, and emotions and arousal level of user at a given moment. Because of these varying dimensions of context every case of usage is unique and offers the user an unique quality experienceOne important issue in the teaching of hypermedia is promoting and ensuring the knowledge of quality management and quality evaluation. In addition to professional and theoretical materials, cases and authentic examples are widely used in engineering education. Students cannot learn hypermedia engineering practices unless they can authentically experience those practices. One of the main challenges in teaching quality management and quality evaluation in hypermedia is to illustrate abstract and theoretical phenomena like quality experience.The Hypermedia Laboratory is responsible for the teaching of hypermedia engineering at Tampere University of Technology (TUT). Hypermedia can be studied as a major or a minor subject, and students can focus on either the technical implementation of structured information or general design and management of hypermedia projects. This paper reports a study of a teaching experiment of Hypermedia Laboratory. The aim of the study was to develop the teaching of quality management and evaluation issues in hypermedia towards more authentic learning. First theoretical background is presented. Then the Urban Computing Lab (UCL) tool, data collection and participants are described. Thi...