Researchers and practitioners have studied how technology can support visitors' learning in science centers, but few have considered technology specifically designed for science center docents; the staff that explains and interprets exhibits to visitors. We present a qualitative, exploratory study at a zoo where we designed and evaluated technological supports for docents running an immersive, embodied-interaction. Our study focused on the affordances of portable tablets and large fixed displays, as well as on a comparison of two approaches to docent notification (an orchestration approach vs. a just-in-time approach). Making use of docent interviews, video observations, and feedback from zoo educators, we recommend the use of a hybrid approach. Our main contribution is the identification of advantages and disadvantages of display options and notification approaches leading to a list of design considerations for technology that assists docents in delivering information to visitor audiences.
Immersive reality technologies have been widely utilized in the area of cultural heritage, also known as Virtual Heritage. We present a tangible Virtual Reality (VR) interaction demo that allows users to freely walk in the physical space while engaging with digital and tangible objects in a "learning area". The space setup includes stations that are used symbiotically in the virtual and physical environments, such setup defines consistency throughout the experience. With this method, we enhance the immersive learning experience by mapping the large virtual space into a smaller physical place with a seamless transition. CCS CONCEPTS • Human-centered computing → Interaction design process and methods; Mixed / augmented reality; • Applied computing → Collaborative learning.
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The propagation of Inquiry Based Learning has lead to many more elementary students interacting with authentic scientific tools and practices. However, the more problematic realities of scientific data collection, such as noise and large data sets, are often deliberately hidden from students. Students will need to confront these realities and be able to make skillful data scoping decisions in order to make sense of ever more prevalent large datasets. We dub software designed to support these activities InformationBuilding Applications (IBAs). This paper presents the design considerations that went into building an exemplar IBA, PhotoMAT (Photo Management and Analysis Tool), a brief user study to show how the solutions enacted by following these principles are taken up by actual students, and a discussion of how the design considerations identified by our work might be applied to another IBA.
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