Smart glasses for 3D multimodal composition

Extended reality technologies – mixed, augmented, and virtual reality, and future-related technologies – are rapidly expanding in many fields, with underexplored potentials for multimodal composition in digital media environments. This research generates new knowledge about the novel wearable technology – smart glasses – to support elementary students’ multimodal story authoring with 3D virtual objects or holograms. The researchers and teachers implemented learning experiences with upper elementary students from three classrooms to compose and illustrate written narratives before retelling the story with Microsoft HoloLens 2 smart glasses, selecting 3D holograms to illustrate the settings, characters, and events from the 3D Viewer software. The findings analyse how smart glasses supported students’ multimodal composition, and relatedly, the new modal resources available to students wearing smart glasses to compose 3D stories. The findings have significance for educators and researchers to understand and utilise the multimodal affordances of augmented and mixed reality environments for composing and storytelling

Augmented reality environments for teaching innovation

Abstract This contribution presents the results of research on teaching practices supported by augmented reality conducted in school contexts in the three-year period 2015–2017. With reference to the objectives of the National Plan for Digital Education relating to the realisation of innovative learning pathways to promote critical thinking, reflection and creativity, attention is addressed here to the digital environments and in particular to the augmented reality environments for school education. Specifically, the article aims to reflect on the impact of augmented reality in learning for secondary school students, in relation to the co-constructive and participative approach of knowledge and to the expressive re-elaboration. For this purpose, the analysis of the data of a questionnaire is proposed, administered to secondary school teachers from various Italian regions, in regard to heritage education developed by means of augmented reality. Both the strengths, with particular reference to the elements of teaching innovation, and the critical aspects have been examined to identify the elements/processes capable of making innovative learning practices sustainable

Virtuaaliluokkaretki : virtuaalitodellisuusteknologian koulukäytön mahdollisuudet ja kokemukset

Tavoitteet. Tämän tutkimuksen tavoitteena on tutkia virtuaalitodellisuusteknologian (VR) soveltamista osana ympäristöopin projektia kompleksisessa koulutodellisuudessa ja raportoida niin oppilaiden kuin opettajienkin kokemuksia ja havaintoja sen käytöstä. Tutkimuksen keskiössä ovat VR teknologian havaitut toiminnan mahdollisuudet ja käyttäjien kokemukset. Vastaavaa on tutkittu aiemmin lähinnä kliinisissä olosuhteissa. Menetelmät. Tutkimukseen osallistui kolme opettajaa ja 59 5.-6. luokkalaista oppilasta kahdesta eri koulusta. Osanottajat olivat vapaaehtoisia VISIOT-hankkeeseen osallistujia. Hanke on valtakunnallinen ponnistus kokeilla ja kehittää virtuaalitodellisuuteen-, lisättyyn todellisuuteen ja esineiden Internettiin liittyvien teknologioiden opetuskäyttöä. Hanketta koordinoi valtakunnallinen Innokas-verkosto. Tutkija ja kaksi opettajaa suunnittelivat yhteistyössä ja designtutkimuksen periaatteita noudattaen VR-teknologiaa soveltavan oppimisprojektin. Opettajat ottivat käyttöön VR-järjestelmän, joka koostui HTC Vive -laitteesta ja Google Earth VR -sovelluksesta. Aineiston keruu tapahtui pääasiassa verkkokyselyin projektin alussa, sen aikana ja projektin päätyttyä. Lisäksi tutkimuksessa mitattiin oppilaiden avaruudellista hahmotuskykyä, ja kuultiin opettajien havaintoja innovatiivisten verkkohaastatteluiden avulla. Pääsääntöisesti laadullista aineistoa analysoitiin sisällönanalyysin varassa teemoitellen aineistoa, ja analysoiden eroja ja yhtäläisyyksiä osanottajien kirjallisesti kuvaamissa kokemuksissa. Tutkimuksessa seurattiin kuinka opettajat keksivät soveltaa VR-järjestelmää osana ympäristöopin projektia. Projekti alkoi joulukuussa 2017 ja päättyi huhtikuussa 2018. Oppilaat arvioivat VR-järjestelmän käyttöä ja siihen liittyviä omia kokemuksiaan niin projektin aikana kuin sen päätyttyäkin. Tulokset ja johtopäätökset. Opettajat kohtasivat vaihtelevasti oppimisen orkestroinnin haasteita, teknisiä vaikeuksia, sekä tilallisen - ja ajallisen ulottuvuuden rajoitteita projektin aikana. Vaikutti siltä, että sovelletun VR järjestelmän sujuva käyttöönotto vaatisi olemassa olevien skriptien purkamista, sekä toisenlaisia ja jouhevia tilallisia, ajallisia ja pedagogisia ratkaisuja, kuin mihin kouluissa oltiin totuttu. Tästä huolimatta oppilaat omaksuivat VR teknologian käytön varsin nopeasti ja kokivat sen erittäin myönteisesti. VR järjestelmää käytettiin projektissa lähinnä motivoivana lisänä. Roolileikkien ja maapallon visuaalisesti tehostetun tutkimisen lisäksi VR järjestelmän havaitut toiminnan mahdollisuudet sisälsivät oppilaiden mielenkiinnon heräämistä, teknologian käytöstä nauttimista, todentuntuisuuden ja mielen uppoutumisen kokemuksia, sekä onnistumisen kokemuksia. Oppilaat pitivät VR laitetta erittäin mukavana ja VR ohjelmaa käyttäjäystävällisenä. Näytti siltä, että sovellettu VR järjestelmä ja sen käyttötavat projektin aikana vaikuttivat oppilaiden käsityksiin virtuaalitodellisuudesta. Tästä huolimatta oppilaat kykenivät kuvittelemaan monenlaisia virtuaalisia maailmoja, joissa haluaisivat vierailla ja opiskella. Tyypillisten kategorioiden lisäksi he kuvittelivat korkean fantasian maailmoja ja aikamatkustusta tulevaisuuteen. Yleisesti ottaen oppilaat vaikuttivat halukkailta jatkamaan VR teknologian käyttöä tulevissa opinnoissaan. Projektin jälkimittauksissa heidän itseraportoimansa minäpystyvyys ja osallistumisen into olivat korkeat. Poikien raportoima pystyvyys oli tilastollisesti merkittävästi tyttöjä korkeampi. Oppilaat pitivät VR ohjelman maailmaa luotettavana lähteenä lähinnä kokemusperäisesti; joko järjestelmän tuottaman todentuntuisuuden takia tai koska virtuaalimaailma vaikutti vastaavan täsmällisesti heidän kokemuksiaan fyysisestä maailmasta. Kaiken kaikkiaan vaikuttaisi siltä, että tutkimukseen osallistuneet 11-12 vuotiaat oppilaat ottaisivat VR teknologian mieluusti osaksi omaa oppimisympäristöään, toisaalta opettajat oikeutetustikin kokivat, että sovellettu VR järjestelmä olisi siihen vielä liian monimutkainen ja vaativa.The purpose of this study is to implement immersive virtual reality (VR) technology as part of an environmental studies project in the actual complex school reality and analyze both the students’ and their teachers’ experiences and observations on the use of VR in learning and teaching. This study focuses on the user experiences and affordances that the appliance of VR technology brings forth in education. There are but few earlier studies on similar topics, most of which have been conducted in clinical settings. Three teachers and 59 students, 5-6th graders, from two different Finnish elementary schools participated in this study. The participants were all volunteers and took part in a nationwide VISIOT-project, coordinated by a nationwide Innokas Network. Its main purpose was to provide opportunities for trying out and developing virtual reality, augmented reality and Internet of things -technologies in education. The three teachers in this study applied a VR system that consisted of HTC Vive -device and Google Earth VR -program. The different ways in which the teachers ended up implementing the VR system turned out to be an important research topic in this study. The project went on for over three months, spanning from December 2017 to April 2018. The students assessed the use of the VR system during and after the project. Their experiences became another key research area in this study. Data was gathered with online questionnaires, pre and post-surveys for students, a test of the students’ spatial reasoning abilities, and with a pre-survey and innovative post interviews for the teachers. This mostly qualitative data was analyzed with clustering content analysis, where I would find similarities and differences in the participants’ answers and place them in schematized categories. The teacher’s encountered technical, spatial and temporal challenges, as well as challenges in orchestrating the implementation of the VR system. It appeared that VR’s implementation in education demanded more innovative scripts and different spatial, temporal and pedagogical arrangements than the two studied schools were used to. Albeit, the students adapted to the use of VR technology rather quickly and had a very positive emotional experience with it. The VR system was mostly used as a motivational addition to learning. Besides the visually enhanced exploration of the Earth and tourist role-play, the VR system’s actualized affordances included enjoyment and interest, realism and mental immersion, and mastery experiences. Students found the device as very comfortable and the program as user-friendly. Their conception of virtual reality was evidently affected by the applied VR system and its uses during the virtual field trip project. Despite of this, the students were able to imagine diverse learning worlds for VR. In addition to typical categories, they imagined high fantasy worlds and time travelling to the future. By and large, the students appeared willing to use VR technology again in the future. Their post-survey measures for self-efficacy and interest to engage with the technology were relatively high. The self-reported self-efficacy of boys was statistically significantly higher than the girls corresponding. The students found the VR program to be a credible source mostly due to the virtual world’s realism or resemblance with their experiences of the real world. Altogether, VR technology appears to be something that these 11-12-year-old students would gladly include in their learning environment, on the other hand, the teachers rightfully felt that the implemented VR system was too complex and demanding for permanent inclusion

An Analysis of the Pedagogical Affordance of a Learning Environment in a Catholic School

A capstone submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Education in the College of Education at Morehead State University by Carol E. Templeton on March 24, 2019

Engaging educators in the ideation of scenarios for cross-reality game-based learning experiences

Cross-reality media technology creates alternate reality experiences in which the physical and the virtual world are interconnected and influence each other through a network of sensors and actuators. Despite technological advances, the landscape of cross-reality technology as an enabler of alternate reality educational experiences has not been explored yet. The technical expertise required to set up and program such mixed environments is too high to engage the problem owners (i.e. educational experts) in the design process and, hence, user-driven innovation remains challenging. In this paper we explore the co-creation of cross-reality experiences for educational games. We created a no-programming toolkit that provides a visual language and interface abstractions to quickly build prototypes of cross-reality interactions. The toolkit supports experience prototyping and allows designers to coproduce, with educational experts, meaningful scenarios while they create, try out and reconfigure their prototypes. We report on a workshop with 36 educators where the toolkit was used to ideate cross-reality games for education. We discuss use cases of game-based learning applications developed by the participants that follow different pedagogical strategies and combine different physical and virtual spaces and times. We outline implications for the design of cross-reality interactions in educational settings that trigger further research and technological developments.Open Access funding provided thanks to the CRUE-CSIC agreement with Springer Nature (Funding for APC: Universidad Carlos III de Madrid - Read & Publish Agreement CRUE-CSIC 2022). This work is supported by the projects CROSS-COLAB (PGC2018–101884-B-I00) and Sense2makeSense (PID2019-109388GB-I00) funded by the Spanish State Research Agency

Architecture for Collaborative Learning Activities in Hybrid Learning Environments

3D virtual worlds are recognized as collaborative learning environments. However, the underlying technology is not sufficiently mature and the virtual worlds look cartoonish, unlinked to reality. Thus, it is important to enrich them with elements from the real world to enhance student engagement in learning activities. Our approach is to build learning environments where participants can either be in the real world or in its mirror world while sharing the same hybrid space in a collaborative learning experience. This paper focuses on the system architecture and a usability study of a proof-of-concept for these hybrid learning environments. The architecture allows the integration of the real world and its 3D virtual mirror; the exchange and geolocalization of multimodal information, and also the orchestration of learning activities. The results of the usability evaluation show positive engagement effects on participants in the mirror world and, to a lesser extent, on those in the real world.This research has been partially supported by the following projects: “España Virtual” within the Ingenio 2010 program, subcontracted by Elecnor Deimos, "EEE" (TIN2011-28308-C03-01) funded by the Spanish National Plan of Research, Development and Innovation, and "eMadrid", S2009/TIC-1650 “Investigación y Desarrollo de tecnologías para el e-learning en la Comunidad de Madrid” funded by the Region of Madrid.Publicad

Learning from Digital Natives: Bridging Formal and Informal Learning. Final Report

Overview This report suggests that students are increasingly making use of a variety of etools (such as mobile phones, email, MSN, digital cameras, games consoles and social networking sites) to support their informal learning within formalised educational settings, and that they use the tools that they have available if none are provided for them. Therefore, higher education institutions should encourage the use of these tools. Aims and background This study aimed to explore how e-tools (such as mobile phones, email, MSN, digital cameras, games consoles and social networking sites) and the processes that underpin their use can support learning within educational institutions and help improve the quality of students’ experiences of learning in higher education (pgs 9-11). Methodology The study entailed: (i) desk research to identify related international research and practice and examples of integration of e-tools and learning processes in formal educational settings; (ii) a survey of 160 engineering and social work students across two contrasting Scottish universities (pre- and post-1992) – the University of Strathclyde and Glasgow Caledonian University – and follow-up interviews with eight students across the two subject areas to explore which technologies students were using for both learning and leisure activities within and outside the formal educational settings and how they would like to use such technologies to support their learning in both formal and informal settings; and (iii) interviews with eight members of staff from across the institutions and two subject areas to identify their perceptions of the educational value of the e-tools. (pgs 24-27). Key findings • Students reported making extensive use of a variety of both e-tools (such as mobile phones, email, MSN, digital cameras) and social networking tools (such as Bebo, MySpace, Wikipedia and YouTube) for informal socialisation, communication, information gathering, content creation and sharing, alongside using the institutionally provided technologies and learning environments. • Most of the students owned their own computer or had access to a sibling or parent’s computer. Many students owned a laptop but preferred not to bring it onto campus due to security concerns and because they found it too heavy to carry about. • Ownership of mobile phones was ubiquitous. • Whilst the students’ information searching literacy seemed adequate, the ability of these students to harness the power of social networking tools and informal processes for their learning was low. Staff reported using a few Web 2.0 and social software tools but they were generally less familiar with how these could be used to support learning and teaching. There were misconceptions surrounding the affordances of the tools and fears expressed about security and invasion of personal space. Considerations of the costs and the time it would take staff to develop their skills meant that there was a reluctance to take up new technologies at an institutional level. • Subject differences emerged in both staff and student perceptions as to which type of tools they would find most useful. Attitudes to Web 2.0 tools were different. Engineers were concerned with reliability, using institutional systems and inter-operability. Social workers were more flexible because they were focused on communication and professional needs. • The study concluded that digital tools, personal devices, social networking software and many of the other tools explored all have a large educational potential to support learning processing and teaching practices. Therefore, use of these tools and processes within institutions, amongst staff and students should be encouraged. • The report goes on to suggest ways in which the use of such technologies can help strengthen the links between informal and formal learning in higher education. The recommendations are grouped under four areas – pedagogical, socio-cultural, organisational and technological

Exploring the Impact of Varying Levels of Augmented Reality to Teach Probability and Sampling with a Mobile Device

abstract: Statistics is taught at every level of education, yet teachers often have to assume their students have no knowledge of statistics and start from scratch each time they set out to teach statistics. The motivation for this experimental study comes from interest in exploring educational applications of augmented reality (AR) delivered via mobile technology that could potentially provide rich, contextualized learning for understanding concepts related to statistics education. This study examined the effects of AR experiences for learning basic statistical concepts. Using a 3 x 2 research design, this study compared learning gains of 252 undergraduate and graduate students from a pre- and posttest given before and after interacting with one of three types of augmented reality experiences, a high AR experience (interacting with three dimensional images coupled with movement through a physical space), a low AR experience (interacting with three dimensional images without movement), or no AR experience (two dimensional images without movement). Two levels of collaboration (pairs and no pairs) were also included. Additionally, student perceptions toward collaboration opportunities and engagement were compared across the six treatment conditions. Other demographic information collected included the students' previous statistics experience, as well as their comfort level in using mobile devices. The moderating variables included prior knowledge (high, average, and low) as measured by the student's pretest score. Taking into account prior knowledge, students with low prior knowledge assigned to either high or low AR experience had statistically significant higher learning gains than those assigned to a no AR experience. On the other hand, the results showed no statistical significance between students assigned to work individually versus in pairs. Students assigned to both high and low AR experience perceived a statistically significant higher level of engagement than their no AR counterparts. Students with low prior knowledge benefited the most from the high AR condition in learning gains. Overall, the AR application did well for providing a hands-on experience working with statistical data. Further research on AR and its relationship to spatial cognition, situated learning, high order skill development, performance support, and other classroom applications for learning is still needed.Dissertation/ThesisPh.D. Educational Technology 201

Making Waves: Intra-actions with Educational Media at the National Film Board of Canada from 1960-2016

This dissertation aims to excavate the narrative of educational programming at the National Film Board of Canada (NFB) from 1960 to 2016. The producers and creative staff of Studio G the epicentre of educational programming at the NFB for over thirty years produced extraordinarily diverse and innovative multimedia for the classroom. Multimedia is here understood as any media form that was not film, including filmstrips, slides, overhead projecturals, laserdiscs and CDs. To date, there have been no attempts to document the history of educational programming at the NFB generally, nor to situate the history of Studio G within that tradition. Over the course of five years, I have interviewed thirty-four NFB technicians, administrators, producers and directors in the service of creating a unique collective narrative tracing the development of educational media and programming at the NFB over the past fifty-six years and began to piece together an archive of work that has largely been forgotten. Throughout this dissertation, I argue that the forms of media engagement pioneered by Studio G and its descendants fostered a desire for, and eventually an expectation for specific media affordances, namely the ability to sequence or navigate media content, to pace ones progress through media, to access media on demand and to modify media content. As new waves of mediated practices emerge throughout the time-period here covered, the complex interconnections between media innovation and pedagogical practice are revealed to be deeply interwoven within the political, social and economic pressures of particular historical moments. The first of these waves focuses on the media produced by Studio G primarily during the tumultuous 1960s to the mid-1980s. The second wave (early-1980s to mid-1990s) marks the shifts in practices and social expectations with the rise of the PC computer. The third wave (mid-1990s to 2004) recognizes yet another shift as Internet technologies and the privileging of consumer expectation eclipsed what were by then seen as dated practices. In the fourth wave (2004 to 2016), the NFBs focus on interactivity is co-opted as a strategy of audience engagement in an ever-more competitive media landscape. The four affordances are realized to a greater and lesser degree in each of these waves. The narrative of the NFBs production of educational multimedia provides an ideal lens through which to identify and more deeply understand the nuanced and complex intra-action between technology, practice and society in which the interface is revealed to be far from neutral

Immersive Virtual Reality as a Tool to Make in K-12 Environments

Immersive Virtual Reality (VR) is beginning to be implemented into K-12 contexts. As this technology makes its way into more learning environments there is a need to not only understand how to address curricular goals with this technology, but which frameworks for learning best inform the use of this tool. In addition, previous research has called for a need to begin to explore how immersive VR can be used as a tool for creation in K-12 classrooms (Maas & Hughes, 2020). This multiple-case study aimed to address these needs by examining the use of VR as a tool to create digital artifacts with high school science educators through a professional development experienc