Mobile learning: benefits of augmented reality in geometry teaching

As a consequence of the technological advances and the widespread use of mobile devices to access information and communication in the last decades, mobile learning has become a spontaneous learning model, providing a more flexible and collaborative technology-based learning. Thus, mobile technologies can create new opportunities for enhancing the pupils’ learning experiences. This paper presents the development of a game to assist teaching and learning, aiming to help students acquire knowledge in the field of geometry. The game was intended to develop the following competences in primary school learners (8-10 years): a better visualization of geometric objects on a plane and in space; understanding of the properties of geometric solids; and familiarization with the vocabulary of geometry. Findings show that by using the game, students have improved around 35% the hits of correct responses to the classification and differentiation between edge, vertex and face in 3D solids.This research was supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council Design Star CDT (AH/L503770/1), the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) projects LARSyS (UID/EEA/50009/2013) and CIAC-Research Centre for Arts and Communication.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Heuristic Evaluation for Serious Immersive Games and M-instruction

© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2016. Two fast growing areas for technology-enhanced learning are serious games and mobile instruction (M-instruction or M-Learning). Serious games are ones that are meant to be more than just entertainment. They have a serious use to educate or promote other types of activity. Immersive Games frequently involve many players interacting in a shared rich and complex-perhaps web-based-mixed reality world, where their circumstances will be multi and varied. Their reality may be augmented and often self-composed, as in a user-defined avatar in a virtual world. M-instruction and M-Learning is learning on the move; much of modern computer use is via smart devices, pads, and laptops. People use these devices all over the place and thus it is a natural extension to want to use these devices where they are to learn. This presents a problem if we wish to evaluate the effectiveness of the pedagogic media they are using. We have no way of knowing their situation, circumstance, education background and motivation, or potentially of the customisation of the final software they are using. Getting to the end user itself may also be problematic; these are learning environments that people will dip into at opportune moments. If access to the end user is hard because of location and user self-personalisation, then one solution is to look at the software before it goes out. Heuristic Evaluation allows us to get User Interface (UI) and User Experience (UX) experts to reflect on the software before it is deployed. The effective use of heuristic evaluation with pedagogical software [1] is extended here, with existing Heuristics Evaluation Methods that make the technique applicable to Serious Immersive Games and mobile instruction (M-instruction). We also consider how existing Heuristic Methods may be adopted. The result represents a new way of making this methodology applicable to this new developing area of learning technology

Viewing the Future? Virtual Reality In Journalism

Journalism underwent a flurry of virtual reality content creation, production and distribution starting in the final months of 2015. The New York Times distributed more than 1 million cardboard virtual reality viewers and released an app showing a spherical video short about displaced refugees. The Los Angeles Times landed people next to a crater on Mars. USA TODAY took visitors on a ride-along in the "Back to the Future" car on the Universal Studios lot and on a spin through Old Havana in a bright pink '57 Ford. ABC News went to North Korea for a spherical view of a military parade and to Syria to see artifacts threatened by war. The Emblematic Group, a company that creates virtual reality content, followed a woman navigating a gauntlet of anti- abortion demonstrators at a family planning clinic and allowed people to witness a murder-suicide stemming from domestic violence.In short, the period from October 2015 through February 2016 was one of significant experimentation with virtual reality (VR) storytelling. These efforts are part of an initial foray into determining whether VR is a feasible way to present news. The year 2016 is shaping up as a period of further testing and careful monitoring of potential growth in the use of virtual reality among consumers

Evaluación de aplicaciones educativas de AR con estudiantes adultos

There is a growing interest in the educational applications of Augmented Reality (AR). While most applications of these technologies have been examined in the context of children education, our knowledge about their usefulness in adult education is deficient and particularly more in the category of Location-Based Augmented Reality (LBMAR) games, so the aim of this thesis is to examine the opinions of adult learners (young, middle-aged and elderly) about one particular LBMAR game, the “Ingress”. The main problems addressed by this research comprise questions relating to the usefulness of some key technological components of AR in education (secondarily) and to aspects of training adults by using AR (primarily). As concerns the technological aspects, i.e. "which one of the three types of AR (marker-based, markerless, location-based) is more often associated with naturalistic approaches and what are their relative advantages?”, this research showed that naturalistic approaches applied to marker-based AR enhance active participation in virtual environments, motivate learners, promote personal involvement in conquering new information, offer different perspectives of the content and arouse interest for knowledge. In the case of markerless AR, naturalistic designs foster participants’ collaboration in games, enhance interactivity, offer panoramic views, visualization, and the possibility to examine the role of visual controls. Moreover, naturalistic approaches applied to location-based AR are suitable for designing multidisciplinary applications, can be used for training and have the possibility to be designed so as to account for locality and context. The fact that, as appears from the peer-reviewed literature that was examined, the location-based AR technologies are more appropriate for education and for smartphones, hints that a deeper examination of their potential usefulness for education (and for adult education in particular) might be interesting. As concerns the educational aspects, which also constitute the main focus of the thesis, these focus on the exploration of the usefulness of the LBMAR game “Ingress” in adult education, by answering two intertwined questions: a) how to assess opinions of adult learners about the LBMAR game “Ingress”? and b) what do adult learners think about this game and how do they perceive its features? Providing answers to these questions is tantamount to receiving adequate results from quantitative and qualitative empirical research which would be designed so as to explore their opinions, views and attitudes with respect to this LBMAR game. Hence, 45 adult persons from Greece, aged 20 to 62,cooperated as subjects of this research. They followed a short introductory informal training (on AR, VR, MAR and the games that are relevant to these technologies) by the researcher of this thesis and were subsequently given the instructions of how to use “Ingress” on a smartphone. The quantitative research was carried out before and after training and all trainees participated by filling 31 Likert-type closed questions before and after training. The qualitative research was based on the analysis of their responses to two different sets of open-ended questions. The first set consisted in 5 such questions to which answered 24 participants and the second set had 2 broader questions to which responded 36 participants. This research showed the advantages for adult education of integrating the ARCS model into the learning phase of an LBMAR game. Specifically, it was shown that using Keller’s widely known “ARCS model” (Attention – Relevance – Confidence - Satisfaction) enabled the classification of users’ responses with respect to their interaction with the game and is therefore useful in evaluating adult education with LBMAR games. The players’ responses did not change linearly with their age and the training has had different impact on each age group of learners. Also, statistical analyses proved that training increased the scores of the factors of ARCS model. Other results of this research showed that those over 36 years old focused more on the facts that the play of “Ingress” is primarily a geographical game and its scenario reflects interesting discussions about the evolution of humanity. Participants in the age groups 20–35 and >52 agreed that the game does not have idle phases, that it combines excitement with insecurity, and that it is pleasant to play locally a game of planetary proportions.Another age-related observation concerned the answers to the question (“How do you feel when you endow the geographical space with personal preferences?”) between age groups with age groups agreeing in pairs: the first two age groups (20–30) and (30–40) agreed more than with the last two (40–50) and (50–60). Yet, in question “Do you think that the game offers opportunities for learning and teaching geography, building on your previous geographical knowledge?” , there was an overlap in the responses of participants among age groups. As for the first question, the most critical concept was: “the users feel a kind of nostalgia”, followed by the concept “the users consider portals as personal creations”. In the case of the second question, the most critical concept was that the participants believe that the game offers entirely new opportunities for education in geography, compared with their previous experiences. This fosters an evidence of constructivist approaches to adult education and, also, relevance of some other prominent theories of adult education such as humanism. Methodologically, this research it was shown that content analysis is a valuable method for exploring opinions and attitudes of adult users towards MAR games and Jaccard indices can be used to quantitatively explore themes emerging from content analysis. Content analysis was performed on the users’ responses qualitatively in order to identify characteristic sentences expressing attitudes and opinions. For the quantitative assessment of similarities between responses for each question and subconcept, the Jaccard similarity index was calculated pair-wise for every pair of participants. In addition to the Jaccard indices and furthering the scope of new methods for content analysis, this thesis shows how to use Social Network Analysis (SNA) to model concept maps, thus opening up excellent opportunities to create visualizations of concepts and their inter-relationships. Quantitative aspects of SNA analysis (i.e. by using radial centrality and information centrality) provide mechanisms suitable to measure internal relationships in concept maps (in addition to visual inspection) that would not otherwise be visible. Using SNA enabled the classification of users’ responses with respect to their interaction with the game and therefore was a fruitful approach for education that involves MAR games. Furthermore, with this novelty, it is shown how texts derived from interviews or from responses to open questions by different individuals can be analyzed both qualitatively and quantitatively with SNA. Concluding, this research has produced novelties at both the educational and the methodological levels. As concerns adult education, it was shown that i) LBMAR games are suitable for it, ii) adult education about them can be enhanced by following Keller’s ARCS model, iii) perception and satisfaction of adult learners depends on age, and iv) certain theories of adult education (i.e. constructivism and humanism) can be relevant when adult learners use LBMAR games such as “Ingress”. As concerns methods of educational research, this research suggested entirely new methods, for first time ever, for analyzing data that are derived from trainees' responses to open questions. These new methods are content analysis of the participants’ responses with the use of Jaccard indices and methods of SNA and can have a wider applicability to educational research.Existe un creciente interés por las aplicaciones educativas de la Realidad Aumentada (RA). Mientras que la mayoría de las aplicaciones de estas tecnologías se han examinado en el contexto de la educación infantil, nuestro conocimiento sobre su utilidad en la educación de adultos es deficiente y, en particular, más en la categoría de juegos de Realidad Aumentada Basada en la Localización (LBMAR), por lo que el objetivo de esta tesis es examinar las opiniones de los estudiantes adultos (jóvenes, de mediana edad y mayores) sobre un juego LBMAR, el "Ingress". Los principales problemas que aborda esta investigación comprenden cuestiones relacionadas con la utilidad de algunos componentes tecnológicos de la RA en la educación (secundariamente) y con aspectos de la formación de adultos mediante el uso de la RA (principalmente). En cuanto a los aspectos tecnológicos, es decir "¿cuál de los tres tipos de RA (basada en marcadores, sin marcadores, basada en la localización) se asocia más a los enfoques naturalistas y cuáles son sus ventajas relativas?", esta investigación demostró que los enfoques naturalistas aplicados a la RA basada en marcadores potencian la participación activa en entornos virtuales, motivan a los alumnos, promueven la implicación personal en la conquista de nueva información, ofrecen diferentes perspectivas del contenido y despiertan el interés por el conocimiento. En el caso de la RA sin marcadores, los diseños naturalistas fomentan la colaboración de los participantes en los juegos, mejoran la interactividad, ofrecen vistas panorámicas, visualización y la posibilidad de examinar los controles visuales. Además, los enfoques naturalistas aplicados a la RA basada en la localización son adecuados para el diseño de aplicaciones multidisciplinares, pueden utilizarse para la formación y tienen la posibilidad de diseñarse teniendo en cuenta la localidad y el contexto. El hecho de que, como se desprende de la literatura revisada por pares que se examinó, las tecnologías de RA basadas en la localización son más apropiadas para la educación y para los teléfonos smartphones, sugiere que podría ser interesante un examen más profundo de su utilidad potencial para la educación (y para la educación de adultos en particular). En cuanto a los aspectos educativos, que también constituyen el foco principal de la tesis, éstos se centran en la exploración de la utilidad del juego LBMAR "Ingress" en la educación de adultos, respondiendo a dos preguntas entrelazadas: a) ¿cómo evaluar las opiniones de los alumnos adultos sobre el juego LBMAR "Ingress"? y b) ¿qué piensan los alumnos adultos sobre este juego y cómo perciben sus características? Dar respuesta a estas preguntas equivale a recibir resultados adecuados de una investigación empírica, cuantitativa y cualitativa, que se diseñaría para explorar sus opiniones, puntos de vista y actitudes con respecto a este juego LBMAR. Por lo tanto, 45 personas adultas de Grecia, con edades entre 20 y 62 años, colaboraron como sujetos de esta investigación. Siguieron una breve formación informal introductoria por parte del investigador de esta tesis (sobre RA, realidad virtual, RA móvil, y sobre los juegos relacionados con estas tecnologías) y posteriormente se les dieron las instrucciones de cómo utilizar "Ingress" en un smartphone. La investigación cuantitativa se llevó a cabo antes y después de la formación y todos los alumnos participaron respondiendo a 31 preguntas cerradas del tipo Likert antes y después de la formación. La investigación cualitativa se basó en el análisis de sus respuestas a dos conjuntos diferentes de preguntas abiertas. El primer conjunto constaba de 5 preguntas de este tipo (a las que respondieron 24 participantes) y el segundo conjunto tenía 2 preguntas más amplias, a las que respondieron 36 participantes. La investigación cuantitativa mostró las ventajas para la educación de adultos de integrar el modelo ARCS en la fase de aprendizaje de un juego LBMAR. En concreto, se demostró que la utilización del conocido "modelo ARCS" de Keller (Atención - Relevancia - Confianza - Satisfacción) permitió clasificar las respuestas de los usuarios con respecto a sus interacciones con el juego y, también, es útil para evaluar la educación de adultos con juegos LBMAR. Las respuestas de los jugadores no cambiaron linealmente con su edad y el entrenamiento ha tenido un impacto diferente en cada grupo de edad de los alumnos. Además, los análisis estadísticos demostraron que el entrenamiento aumentó las puntuaciones de los factores del modelo ARCS. Otros resultados de esta investigación mostraron que los mayores de 36 años se centraron más en el hecho de que el juego "Ingress" es principalmente un juego geográfico y su escenario refleja interesantes debates sobre la evolución de la humanidad. Las opiniones de los participantes de los grupos de edad de 20-35 y >52 coincidieron en que el juego no tiene fases ociosas, que combina la emoción con la inseguridad y que es agradable jugar a nivel local a un juego de proporciones planetarias. Otra observación relacionada con la edad se refería a las respuestas a la pregunta ("¿Cómo te sientes cuando dotas al espacio geográfico de preferencias personales?") entre grupos de edad que coincidían: los dos primeros grupos de edad (20-30) y (30-40) estaban más de acuerdo que los dos últimos (40-50) y (50-60). Sin embargo, en la pregunta "¿Crees que el juego ofrece oportunidades para aprender y enseñar geografía, aprovechando tus conocimientos geográficos previos?" hubo un solapamiento en las respuestas de los participantes entre los grupos de edad. En cuanto a la primera pregunta, el concepto más crítico fue: "los usuarios sienten una especie de nostalgia", seguido del concepto "los usuarios consideran los portales como creaciones personales". En el caso de la segunda pregunta, el concepto más crítico fue que los participantes creen que el juego ofrece oportunidades totalmente nuevas para la educación en geografía en comparación con sus experiencias anteriores. Esto fomenta una evidencia de los enfoques constructivistas de la educación de adultos y, también, la relevancia de algunas otras teorías prominentes de la educación de adultos, como el humanismo. Metodológicamente, esta investigación demostró también que el análisis de contenido es un método valioso para explorar las opiniones y actitudes de los usuarios adultos hacia los juegos MAR y los índices de Jaccard pueden utilizarse para explorar cuantitativamente los temas que surgen del análisis de contenido. El análisis de contenido se realizó sobre las respuestas de los usuarios de forma cualitativa para identificar las frases características que expresan actitudes y opiniones. Para la evaluación cuantitativa de las similitudes entre las respuestas de cada pregunta y subconcepto, se calculó el índice de similitud de Jaccard por parejas para cada par de participantes. Además de los índices de Jaccard y de ampliar el alcance de los nuevos métodos de análisis de contenido, esta tesis muestra cómo utilizar el Análisis de Redes Sociales (Social Networks Analysis - SNA) para modelar los mapas conceptuales, abriendo así excelentes oportunidades para crear visualizaciones de los conceptos y sus interrelaciones. Los aspectos cuantitativos del análisis SNA (es decir mediante el uso de la centralidad radial y la centralidad de la información) proporcionan mecanismos adecuados para medir las relaciones internas en los mapas conceptuales (además de la inspección visual) que de otro modo no serían visibles. El uso del SNA permitió la clasificación de las respuestas de los usuarios con respecto a su interacción con el juego y, por lo tanto, fue un enfoque fructífero para la educación que involucra los juegos MAR. Además, con esta novedad, se muestra cómo los textos derivados de las entrevistas o de las respuestas a las preguntas abiertas de diferentes individuos pueden ser analizados tanto cualitativamente como cuantitativamente usando SNA. En conclusión, esta investigación ha aportado novedades, tanto a nivel educativo como metodológico. En lo que respecta a la educación de adultos, se ha demostrado que i) los juegos LBMAR son adecuados para ella, ii) la educación de adultos sobre ellos puede mejorarse siguiendo el modelo ARCS de Keller, iii) la percepción y la satisfacción de los alumnos adultos depende de la edad, y iv) ciertas teorías de la educación de adultos (es decir, el constructivismo y el humanismo) pueden ser relevantes cuando los alumnos adultos utilizan juegos LBMAR como "Ingress". En cuanto a los métodos de investigación educativa, esta investigación sugirió métodos totalmente nuevos para analizar los datos que se derivan de las respuestas de los alumnos a las preguntas abiertas. Estos nuevos métodos son el análisis de contenido de las respuestas de los participantes con el uso de los índices de Jaccard y los métodos de SNA y pueden tener una aplicabilidad más amplia a la investigación educativa

Introduction to location-based mobile learning

[About the book] The report follows on from a 2-day workshop funded by the STELLAR Network of Excellence as part of their 2009 Alpine Rendez-Vous workshop series and is edited by Elizabeth Brown with a foreword from Mike Sharples. Contributors have provided examples of innovative and exciting research projects and practical applications for mobile learning in a location-sensitive setting, including the sharing of good practice and the key findings that have resulted from this work. There is also a debate about whether location-based and contextual learning results in shallower learning strategies and a section detailing the future challenges for location-based learning

Augmenting the field experience: a student-led comparison of techniques and technologies

In this study we report on our experiences of creating and running a student fieldtrip exercise which allowed students to compare a range of approaches to the design of technologies for augmenting landscape scenes. The main study site is around Keswick in the English Lake District, Cumbria, UK, an attractive upland environment popular with tourists and walkers. The aim of the exercise for the students was to assess the effectiveness of various forms of geographic information in augmenting real landscape scenes, as mediated through a range of techniques and technologies. These techniques were: computer-generated acetate overlays showing annotated wireframe views from certain key points; a custom-designed application running on a PDA; a mediascape running on the mScape software on a GPS-enabled mobile phone; Google Earth on a tablet PC; and a head-mounted in-field Virtual Reality system. Each group of students had all five techniques available to them, and were tasked with comparing them in the context of creating a visitor guide to the area centred on the field centre. Here we summarise their findings and reflect upon some of the broader research questions emerging from the project