In today’s world, digital technology must play a central role in students’ learning. A convergence of trends in the learning science and human-computer interaction (HCI) research offers new theoretical and technological frameworks for learning. in particular, mixed-reality, experiential media systems can support learning in a way that is social, collaborative, multimodal, and embodied. These systems comprise a new breed of student-centered learning environments [SCLE’s]. Importantly, they must address the practicalities of today’s classrooms and informal learning environments (eg.: space, infrastructure, financial resources) while embracing the innovative forms of interactivity that are emerging from our media research communities (eg: multimodal sensing, real time interactive media, context aware computing).

Our project takes a holistic approach to achieving this vision through direct interaction with students, educators, administrators, media researchers, theorists, and policy makers. From a research perspective our work is informed by current education theories including Situated Cognition, Embodied Learning, and Collaborative Learning that shape the architecture of the space and guide our development of mediated learning scenarios. In this manner, our project looks to shape the future of K-12 learning with the delivery of a new student centered learning environment, an associated suite innovative learning scenarios, and practice-based research that features a hybrid approach to evaluation. This initiative is having an impact in the educational community and the domains of multimodal sensing, interface design, and interactive media.

click here or image above for video showing SMALLab physical structure

SMALLab - a new platform for education

Central to our work is the development of a new interactive mixed reality learning environment, the Situated Multimedia Art Learning Lab [SMALLab]. SMALLab is an environment developed by a collaborative team of media researchers from education, psychology, interactive media, computer science, and the arts.  SMALLab is an extensible platform for semi-immersive, mixed-reality learning. By semi-immersive, we mean that the mediated space of SMALLab is physically open on all sides to the larger environment.  Participants can freely enter and exit the space without the need for wearing specialized display or sensing devices such as head-mounted displays (HMD) or motion capture markers.  Participants seated or standing around SMALLab can see and hear the dynamic media, and they can directly communicate with their peers that are interacting in the space. As such, the semi-immersive framework establishes a porous relationship between SMALLab and the larger physical learning environment.  By mixed-reality, we mean that there is an integration of physical manipulation objects, 3D physical gestures, and digitally mediated components.  By extensible, we mean that researchers, teachers, and students can create new learning scenarios in SMALLab using a set of custom designed authoring tools and programming interfaces.

SMALLab supports situated and embodied learning by empowering the physical body to function as an expressive interface. Within SMALLab, students use a set of “glowballs” and peripherals to interact in real time with each other and with dynamic visual, textual, physical and sonic media through full body 3D movements and gestures.  For example, working in the Spring Sling scenario, students are immersed in a complex physics simulation that involves multiple sensory inputs to engage student attention.  They can hear the sound of a spring picking up speed, see projected bodies moving across the floor, feel a physical ball in their own hands and integrate how the projected ball moves in accordance with their own body movements to construct a robust conceptual model of the entire system.

Our work encompasses research and practice that is undertaken at multiple levels. We have including focused user studies to validate sub-components of the system, and perception/action experiments to better understand the nature of embodied interaction in mixed-reality systems such as SMALLab.  Over the past several years we have reached over 25,000 students and educators through research and outreach in both formal and informal contexts that spans the arts, humanities, and sciences. Since Summer 2007 SMALLab has been permanently installed on the campus of Coronado High School, a large public school in the Scottsdale Unified School District. This work provides an empirical base that informs our theoretical framework.

• Standards Based Assessment
• Qualitative and quantitative instruments drawn from education and museum studies
• Psychological metrics for perception/cognition
• Computational models of context and knowledge representation

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Arizona Commission on the Arts

Herberger College for Kids @ Arizona State University