Out there and in here: design for blended scientific inquiry learning

One of the benefits of mobile technologies is to combine ‘the digital’ (e.g., data, information, photos) with ‘field’ experiences in novel ways that are contextualized by people’s current located activities. However, often cost, mobility disabilities and time exclude students from engaging in such peripatetic experiences. The Out There and In Here project, is exploring a combination of mobile and tabletop technologies in support for collaborative learning. A system is being developed for synchronous collaboration between geology students in the field and peers at an indoor location. The overarching goal of this research is to develop technologies that support people working together in a suitable manner for their locations. There are two OTIH project research threads. The first deals with disabled learner access issues: these complex issues are being reviewed in subsequent evaluations and publications. This paper will deal with issues of technology supported learning design for remote and co-located science learners. Several stakeholder evaluations and two field trials have reviewed two research questions: 1. What will enhance the learning experience for those in the field and laboratory? 2. How can learning trajectories and appropriate technologies be designed to support equitable co-located and remote learning collaboration? This paper focuses on describing the iterative linked development of technologies and scientific inquiry pedagogy. Two stages within the research project are presented. The 1st stage details several pilot studies over 3 years with 21 student participants in synchronous collaborations with traditional technology and pedagogical models. Findings revealed that this was an engaging and useful experience although issues of equity in collaboration needed further research. The 2nd stage, in this project, has been to evaluate data from over 25 stakeholders (academics, learning and technology designers) to develop pervasive ambient technological solutions supporting orchestration of mixed levels of pedagogy (i.e. abstract synthesis to specific investigation). Middleware between tabletop ‘surface’ technologies and mobile devices are being designed with Microsoft and OOKL (a mobile software company) to support these developments. Initial findings reveal issues around equity, ownership and professional identity

Creating an Understanding of Data Literacy for a Data-driven Society

Society has become increasingly reliant on data, making it necessary to ensure that all citizens are equipped with the skills needed to be data literate. We argue that the foundations for a data literate society begin by acquiring key data literacy competences in school. However, as yet there is no clear definition of what these should be. This paper explores the different perspectives currently offered on both data and statistical literacy and then critically examines to what extent these address the data literacy needs of citizens in today’s society. We survey existing approaches to teaching data literacy in schools, to identify how data literacy is interpreted in practice. Based on these analyses, we propose a definition of data literacy that is focused on employing an inquiry-based approach to using data to understand real world phenomena. The contribution of this paper is the creation of a common foundation for teaching and learning data literacy skills

Leveling transparency via situated intermediary learning objectives (SILOs)

When designers set out to create a mathematics learning activity, they have a fair sense of its objectives: students will understand a concept and master relevant procedural skills. In reform-oriented activities, students first engage in concrete situations, wherein they achieve situated, intermediary learning objectives (SILOs), and only then they rearticulate their solutions formally. We define SILOs as heuristics learners devise to accommodate contingencies in an evolving problem space, e.g., monitoring and repairing manipulable structures so that they model with fidelity a source situation. Students achieve SILOs through problem-solving with media, instructors orient toward SILOs via discursive solicitation, and designers articulate SILOs via analyzing implementation data. We describe the emergence of three SILOs in developing the activity Giant Steps for Algebra. Whereas the notion of SILOs emerged spontaneously as a framework to organize a system of practice, i.e. our collaborative design, it aligns with phenomenological theory of knowledge as instrumented action

Urban Data in the primary classroom: bringing data literacy to the UK curriculum

As data becomes established as part of everyday life, the ability for the average citizen to have some level of data literacy is increasingly important. This paper describes an approach to teaching data skills in schools using real life, complex, urban data sets collected as part of a smart city project. The approach is founded on the premise that young learners have the ability to work with complex data sets if they are supported in the right way and if the tasks are grounded in a real life context. Narrative principles are used to frame the task, to assist interpretation and tell stories from data and to structure queries of datasets. An inquiry-based methodology organises the activities. This paper describes the initial trial in a UK primary school in which twelve students aged 9-10 years learnt about home energy consumption and the generation of solar energy from home solar PV, by interpreting existing visualisations of smart meter data and data obtained from aerial survey. Additional trials are scheduled with older learners which will evaluate learners on more challenging data handling tasks. The trials are informing the development of the Urban Data School, a web-based platform designed to support teaching data skills in schools in order to improve data literacy among school leavers

Conceitos e métodos para apoio ao desenvolvimento e avaliação de colaboração remota utilizando realidade aumentada

Remote Collaboration using Augmented Reality (AR) shows great potential to establish a common ground in physically distributed scenarios where team-members need to achieve a shared goal. However, most research efforts in this field have been devoted to experiment with the enabling technology and propose methods to support its development. As the field evolves, evaluation and characterization of the collaborative process become an essential, but difficult endeavor, to better understand the contributions of AR. In this thesis, we conducted a critical analysis to identify the main limitations and opportunities of the field, while situating its maturity and proposing a roadmap of important research actions. Next, a human-centered design methodology was adopted, involving industrial partners to probe how AR could support their needs during remote maintenance. These outcomes were combined with literature methods into an AR-prototype and its evaluation was performed through a user study. From this, it became clear the necessity to perform a deep reflection in order to better understand the dimensions that influence and must/should be considered in Collaborative AR. Hence, a conceptual model and a humancentered taxonomy were proposed to foster systematization of perspectives. Based on the model proposed, an evaluation framework for contextualized data gathering and analysis was developed, allowing support the design and performance of distributed evaluations in a more informed and complete manner. To instantiate this vision, the CAPTURE toolkit was created, providing an additional perspective based on selected dimensions of collaboration and pre-defined measurements to obtain “in situ” data about them, which can be analyzed using an integrated visualization dashboard. The toolkit successfully supported evaluations of several team-members during tasks of remote maintenance mediated by AR. Thus, showing its versatility and potential in eliciting a comprehensive characterization of the added value of AR in real-life situations, establishing itself as a generalpurpose solution, potentially applicable to a wider range of collaborative scenarios.Colaboração Remota utilizando Realidade Aumentada (RA) apresenta um enorme potencial para estabelecer um entendimento comum em cenários onde membros de uma equipa fisicamente distribuídos precisam de atingir um objetivo comum. No entanto, a maioria dos esforços de investigação tem-se focado nos aspetos tecnológicos, em fazer experiências e propor métodos para apoiar seu desenvolvimento. À medida que a área evolui, a avaliação e caracterização do processo colaborativo tornam-se um esforço essencial, mas difícil, para compreender as contribuições da RA. Nesta dissertação, realizámos uma análise crítica para identificar as principais limitações e oportunidades da área, ao mesmo tempo em que situámos a sua maturidade e propomos um mapa com direções de investigação importantes. De seguida, foi adotada uma metodologia de Design Centrado no Humano, envolvendo parceiros industriais de forma a compreender como a RA poderia responder às suas necessidades em manutenção remota. Estes resultados foram combinados com métodos da literatura num protótipo de RA e a sua avaliação foi realizada com um caso de estudo. Ficou então clara a necessidade de realizar uma reflexão profunda para melhor compreender as dimensões que influenciam e devem ser consideradas na RA Colaborativa. Foram então propostos um modelo conceptual e uma taxonomia centrada no ser humano para promover a sistematização de perspetivas. Com base no modelo proposto, foi desenvolvido um framework de avaliação para recolha e análise de dados contextualizados, permitindo apoiar o desenho e a realização de avaliações distribuídas de forma mais informada e completa. Para instanciar esta visão, o CAPTURE toolkit foi criado, fornecendo uma perspetiva adicional com base em dimensões de colaboração e medidas predefinidas para obter dados in situ, que podem ser analisados utilizando o painel de visualização integrado. O toolkit permitiu avaliar com sucesso vários colaboradores durante a realização de tarefas de manutenção remota apoiada por RA, permitindo mostrar a sua versatilidade e potencial em obter uma caracterização abrangente do valor acrescentado da RA em situações da vida real. Sendo assim, estabelece-se como uma solução genérica, potencialmente aplicável a uma gama diversificada de cenários colaborativos.Programa Doutoral em Engenharia Informátic

Analysis and Design of Mobile Collaborative Applications Using Contextual Elements

Collaborative mobile applications support users on the move in order to perform a collaborative task. One of the challenges when designing such applications is to consider the context where they will execute. Contextualized applications are easy to adopt by the users; unfortunately the design of contextualized tools is not evident. This paper presents a framework of contextual elements to be considered during the conception, analysis and design phases of a mobile collaborative application. This framework supports developers to identify non-functional requirements and part of the architectural design in order to get contextualized applications. The use of this framework is complementary to any structured software process. A framework use example is also presented as an illustration of its applicability

Planning Curricular Proposals on Sound and Music with Prospective Secondary-School Teachers

Sound is a preferred context to build foundations on wave phenomena, one of the most important disciplinary referents in physics. It is also one of the best-set frameworks to achieve transversality, overcoming scholastic level and activating emotional aspects which are naturally connected with every day life, as well as with music and perception. Looking at sound and music by a transversal perspective - a border-line approach between science and art, is the adopted statement for a teaching proposal using meta-cognition as a strategy in scientific education. This work analyzes curricular proposals on musical acoustics, planned by prospective secondary-school teachers in the framework of a Formative Intervention Module answering the expectation of making more effective teaching scientific subjects by improving creative capabilities, as well as leading to build logical and scientific categorizations able to consciously discipline artistic activity in music students. With this aim, a particular emphasis is given to those concepts - like sound parameters and structural elements of a musical piece, which are best fitted to be addressed on a transversal perspective, involving simultaneously physics, psychophysics and music.Comment: 12 pages with 5 figures. Submitted for publication in Physics Curriculum Design, Development and Validation - GIREP 2008 book of selected papers, 200

weSPOT: A personal and social approach to inquiry-based learning

weSPOT is a new European initiative proposing a novel approach for personal and social inquiry-based learning in secondary and higher education. weSPOT aims at enabling students to create their mash-ups out of cloud based tools and services in order to perform scientific investigations. Students will also be able to share their inquiry accomplishments in social networks and receive feedback from the learning environment and their peers. This paper presents the research framework of the weSPOT project, as well as the initial inquiry-based learning scenarios that will be piloted by the project in real-life educational settings

Energy Awareness Displays: designing a prototype for personalised energy consumption feedback at the workplace

Börner, D., Kalz, M., & Specht, M. (2012). Energy Awareness Displays: designing a prototype for personalised energy consumption feedback at the workplace. 2012 IEEE Seventh International Conference on Wireless, Mobile and Ubiquitous Technology in Education (pp. 211-213). March, 27-30, 2012, Takamatsu, Japan: IEEE Computer Society.The paper describes work-in-progress on a prototype providing personalised energy consumption feedback at the workplace. Based on a provisional framework developed in the context of an ongoing research project the prototype and the supporting infrastructure are conceptually outlined