AUS faculty and students collaborate on award-winning paper

Faculty members from the College of Engineering (CEN) at American University of Sharjah (AUS) recently collaborated with their students on a conference paper which won the Best Short Paper Award at the 20th International Conference on Advanced Learning Technologies and Technology-enhanced Learning (ICALT) held in in Tartu, Estonia last month.

The paper was authored by Dr. Imran Zualkernan, Professor of Computer Engineering and Dr. Fadi Aloul, Head of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering; along with students Eilaf Algebail, Mohamed El Refaay, Abdulkarim Ali and Omar El Sabaa.

The paper, entitled “Little Genius: An Experiment in Internet of Tangible Learning Things (IoTLT),” discussed how IoTT provides new opportunities for building technology-enhanced learning

systems that wirelessly connect tangible sensor data to remote learning services. The paper presented the design and implementation of an IoTLT voice-driven learning platform that uses Amazon Alexa along with sensor-enabled wireless dice to build tangible and interactive math games for kindergarten and primary school children.

Speaking about their research, Dr. Zualkernan said:

"To put it simply we have shown how voice-enabled services, like Alexa, can be combined with the Internet of Things (IoT) to provide exciting game-based learning experiences for children where they learn as they play. In doing so we have spawned a new area of research called Internet of Tangible Learning Things (IoTLT)."

ICALT is an annual international conference organized by the IEEE Computer Society and the IEEE Technical Committee on Learning Technology.