Promoting secondary school learners' curiosity towards science through digital public displays

Abstract

This paper contributes to the understanding of how digital public displays can be utilized in schools taking into consideration educational goals. This work is part of a currently on-going research project that aims to promote students' curiosity in science and technology through creative film-making, collaborative editing activities, and content sharing. In order to explore the design space concerning digital public displays for schools' contexts, six workshops with secondary school teachers in two different countries were conducted to elicit sensitivities towards possible features and interaction techniques as well as inquire about expectations and technology adoption. Our findings suggest that teachers are receptive to the technology and were able to generate scenarios that take advantage of the possibilities offered by digital public displays to stimulate learning processes. However, there are several crucial elements regarding management and control of content that need to be carefully crafted/designed in order to accommodate each schools' organizational issues.

Collaborative Learning through Creative Video Composition on Distributed User Interfaces

“…Longitudinal studies with a variety of students and teachers have provided empirical evidence, that confirms research pointing to the potential in our approach to social, constructivist learning [3,10]. We follow a user-centred design methodology, examining options for building pedagogical and technological scaffolds for students and also the teachers or orchestrators of learning activities in typical classrooms and more flexible learning environments.…”

“…While studies such as in [14] provide evidence for the merit in our constructive learning approach, driven by creative, collaborative video-making, we must still provide evidence for its utility and applicability, along with intuitive support for implementation within established/traditional learning structures and institutions, if we are to see adoption in practice [2,10]. A key component of our design is therefore to involve a good cross-section of our target users (students and teachers) as informants to the system and user interface (UI) design (see [12]), and through a process of iterative usability evaluation.…”

“…Students are guided to craft stories that juxtapose TCs against alternative, creative, real-world or other experiences they relate to. Doing this through performance and video-making requires students to step through a process of collaborative knowledge discovery and construction, leading to deep, correct understanding of a TC and its component parts [3,9,10,14]. Further, the resultant video serves as a tangible artefact and expression of understanding, and an avenue for further reflection on, and hence, reinforcement of any knowledge gained.…”

“…Guided by the outcomes of the design studies in section 3.1, a number of subsequent studies following the same methodology in a variety of formal and nontraditional learning environments, and earlier studies with teachers/instructors (see also [3,10]), we carried out further, comprehensive analysis of the CSCL literature. This extended requirements and design phase resulted in an initial prototype targeted at the multi-user, multi-touch table, implemented using the Microsoft Surface 2.0 SDK.…”

“…The project is grounded on a specific pedagogic framework that aims to identify "threshold concepts" (TCs) [9] -key concepts that constitute learning barriers -and facilitate understanding through the creation and sharing of explanatory, expressive, student-managed videos. These, with additional data, such as quizzes and peer comments, and subsequent engagement with viewers via interactive public displays, constitute what we call a "video performance" [10].…”