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Background: Recent years have witnessed wide applications of exergames to balance training among the older adults. However, research concerning balance training with the use of Kinect for Xbox has remained scarce. While previous studies have shown the positive effects of exergames on improving balance and preventing falling among the older adults, there has been a paucity of empirical evidence supporting the superiority of Kinect exercise to conventional exercise over balance training among the older adults. Therefore, this study aimed to compare the feasibility, safety, and effectiveness of Kinect exercise against conventional exercise over balance training among the community older adults. Method: A total of 20 participants were randomly assigned to the Kinect Exercise Group ( N = 10) or the Conventional Exercise Group ( N = 10) for a 5-week balance training (45 minutes a time, 2 times a week). Assessor blinding was employed to assess the participants’ performance before and after the treatment, including 30-Second Chair Stand Test (30-sec CST), Timed Up and Go (TUG), Functional Reach Test (FRT), and One-Leg Stance Test (OLST) respectively with eyes open and closed. Subjective feeling of the intensity of pain and side effects were recorded throughout the investigation period. Nonparametric statistics was used for data analysis. Results: Within-group comparison between the pre-test and post-test indicated that significant differences existed in all of the 5 tests (30-sec CST, TUG, FRT, OLST with eyes open, and OLST with eyes closed) in the Kinect exercise group. To the Conventional exercise group, however, significant differences were only observed in 30-sec CST, FRT and OLST with eyes open. With regard to between-group comparison, significant differences were only found in FRT. Conclusion: Such results indicated that both treatments were helpful in improving the participants’ balance performance, that Kinect exercise was more effective in terms of overall balance ability, and that Kinect exercise was particularly beneficial to functional reach enhancement in comparison with traditional exercise. Kinect exercise could be a feasible, safe, and effective alternative for dynamic balance training among older adults.

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Although many e-learning studies have applied the unified theory of acceptance and usage of technology (UTAUT) to investigate user acceptance, their findings have been inconsistent. One of reasons is that the user acceptance model of an e-learning system can be determined by the new information technologies (or mechanisms) the e-learning system utilises. Computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) with social network awareness (SNA) mechanisms has been widely adopted because it can enhance online collaborative learning effectiveness. Since new SNA mechanisms are expected to have a huge impact on user acceptance in CSCL environments, this study extends UTAUT to investigate user acceptance of an SNA CSCL environment. This study empirically evaluated the extended model by surveying 186 undergraduates, who had completed a 5-week electric commerce course in an SNA CSCL environment. The findings indicated that the SNA mechanism substantially strengthened the effect of social influence on behavioural intention to use the SNA CSCL system. Compared with other CSCL studies, the predictive power of social influence in this study was higher, while that of other determinants (i.e., performance expectancy and effort expectancy) in this study were lower. The extended model demonstrated higher explanatory power compared to models used in other CSCL studies.

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Students often face difficulties and experience negative emotions toward second language learning. The affective tutoring system (ATS) is a next-generation learning approach that can detect the affective status of learning to increase performance. Therefore, for the purposes of this study, an innovative affective mobile language tutoring system (AMLTS) was designed to support Japanese language learning. The effects of AMLTS, along with asynchronous discussion, that were intended to improve performance, were examined using a triangulation method. To investigate the effect on emotion, the proposed AMLTS provides a virtual emotion agent that can interact with users and record emotional events, learning assessments, and the results of the interaction into a database. Learning effectiveness evaluations were conducted via two experiments: prototype evaluation and final evaluation. Sixty-three students, all beginners, were invited to use the AMLTS to learn Japanese. The research results show that the proposed AMLTS affective interaction design significantly improves learner engagement and performance. In the emotion feedback analysis and learning process, AMLTS helped students deepen their understanding of the content, enabled them to clearly understand the content, and to engage in peer interaction and experience positive emotions. In the evaluation of system usability, AMLTS reveals good usability for foreign language acquisition.

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