Research Publications Authored by SLIIT Staff
Permanent URI for this communityhttps://rda.sliit.lk/handle/123456789/4195
This collection includes all SLIIT staff publications presented at external conferences and published in external journals. The materials are organized by faculty to facilitate easy retrieval.
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Publication Embargo CodeJr: Comprehensive Programming Application for Children(IEEE, 2022-12-09) Muthuthanthirige, M.D.C. J; Illangasinghe, U.P; Illangasinghe, D.N; Halgaswatta, I.; Samarakoon, U; Amarasena, NSince the beginning of the millennium, computer technology has been the key area of concern and developing essential programming knowledge and intellectual skills from the young age have proven that they will gain more success in their careers. The ideology behind this research is, the problem with absence of a complete multi-disciplinary and interactive programming application for children between the age of 10 - 15 years, to learn programming concepts with a well-established text-based programming language. There are 4 major approaches in this research. Gamification approach focuses on expressing knowledge about Python programming via a game while concentrating on low perfumers. Collaborative approach aims to deliver a brand-new experience for children by aggregating cooperative methodologies and Artificial Intelligence with learning to enforce mutual learning. This component is based on collaborative sessions which allow a group of students with similar interest to join to learn python programming. Drag-drop approach enables children to learn Python language through videos and will be given basic practice questions after finishing the course. Story telling approach guides children to learn programming concepts step by step using story telling. Focused on storytelling approach and interactivity via voice conversation to learn programming language for children.Publication Open Access Designing for Financial Literacy: Co-design with Children in Rural Sri Lanka(Springer, Cham, 2017-09-20) Halloluwa, T; Vyas, D; Usoof, H; Bandara, P; Brereton, M; Hewagamage, PFinancial literacy can play an important role in supporting the livelihood of the poor. Sri Lanka, being a country that aims to become a knowledge economy, has started to integrate the use of technology in its primary education. This paper presents a case study from a Co-Design activity with primary school children in rural Sri Lanka to ideate designing of mobile applications to engage primary school students in financial literacy. Three workshops were conducted spanning over two months based on the bonded design method. Techniques involving bags of stuff, storyboarding and stickies were utilised to support idea generation. Two themes; shopping and transporting were prominent among the final designs. From the findings of this paper, we discuss the design inspirations of the study and the impact that scaffolding practices had on the outcomes of the study. Finally, we lay out some initial guidelines to follow when conducting co-design workshops with rural and resource constrained children in Sri Lanka.Publication Embargo Assistive Learning Platform for Children with Down Syndrome(IEEE, 2020-11-04) Wellala, S; Thathsarani, S. A; Senaratne, D; Samaranayake, P; Jayakody, ADown Syndrome (DS) is a genetic disorder. Researchers believe that persons with DS generally have poor logical knowledge, communication, motor skills, and skills needed for everyday life. The proposed system is a web-based assistive learning platform for children with DS to address those problems. It provides an excellent opportunity for learning educational subjects, including math and language. The authors also created interactive modules improving their health habits, social skills, and motor skills. Since the authors deeply consider their requirements, the system was developed by providing excellent features with those modules. Users' faces can be recognized to keep their attention with the system, thereby suggesting and referring their most interesting content according to their emotions while using the system. Also, the dashboard can analyze user data. Most importantly, it capable of assessing the users through the system. Here the research team has assessed 50 children with DS, and 31 showed improvement after using the system. Therefore, the proposed system with all these modules and features can be introduced as a very productive assistive learning platform in Sri Lanka.Publication Embargo Adapting MaryTTS for Synthesizing Sinhalese Speech to Communicate with Children(IEEE, 2021-12-01) Lakmal, M. A. J. A; Methmini, K. A. D. G; Rupasinghe, D. M. H. M; Hettiarachchi, D. I; Piyawardana, V; Senarathna, M; Reyal, S; Pulasinghe, KThe majority of the Sri Lankan population speak Sinhala, which is also the country's mother tongue. Sinhala is a difficult language to learn by children aged between 1–6 years when compared to other languages. Text to speech system is popular among children who have difficulties with reading, especially those who struggle with decoding. By presenting the words auditorily, the child can focus on the meaning of words instead of spending all their brainpower trying to sound out the words. In Sri Lanka, however, computer systems based on the Sinhala language especially for children are extremely rare. In this situation having a Sinhala text-to-speech technology for communicating with children is a helpful option. Intelligibility should be considered deeply in this system because this is specific for children. Recordings of a native Sinhalese speaker were used to synthesize a natural-sounding voice, rather than a robotic voice. This paper proposes an approach of implementing a Sinhalese text-to-speech system for communicating with children using unit selection and HMM -based mechanisms in the MaryTTS framework. Although a work in progress, the intermediate findings have been presented.