Digitally augmented physical spaces (e.g., smart classrooms) offer opportunities to engage students in novel and potentially transformative learning experiences. This paper presents an immersive rainforest simulation and collective inquiry activity where students collect observational data from the environment and explore their peers' data through large visualization displays and personal mobile devices. Two iterations of the design were tested, which resulted in higher quality student explanations constructed. Images were found to be an important source of evidence for the explanations, more so than text-only evidence. We also found that patterns of collective ideas influenced student performance, and that visualizations, as ambient or plenary displays, supported both teacher and students in reviewing patterns of collected data.
Her research interests span the fields of learning sciences, humancomputer interaction, technology-enabled learning, science inquiry and computer-supported collaborative learning, with an emphasis on immersive environments. Rhonda McEwen is an associate professor and director of ICCIT at UTM. She is a Canada Research Chair in Tactile Interfaces, Communication and Cognition. Her research combines communication studies, applied and behavioral sciences to examine the social and cognitive effects of technologies, with a current focus on tactile interfaces.
Translation of curricular content scripts into representation maps supported the collaborative design process by establishing a common visual language. The web-based prototype will be formatively and summatively evaluated to assess pedagogic design, knowledge-translation scaffolds, pain knowledge gains, relevance, feasibility and fidelity of this educational innovation.
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