"... and we are the creators!" Technologies as Creative Material

A Meta-Analysis of Tangible Learning Studies from the TEI Conference

“…In addition, since 2014, eight studies [6,13,20,42,63,97,101,148] have tried to incorporate all three modalities into their interaction design. However, only 4 [10,87,114,117] were auditory and 2 [3,82] tactile feedback.…”

“…Simplify tasks [119,148] Enable spatial complementary actions [7] Support an integrated motor-cognitive process [7] Tolerance of errors Flexible, reconfigurable and low-cost prototype [95] Creativity Foster an ideation and divergent thinking [87] Self-regulation Exposed structure explicitly [96] Visible infrastructure and allow to umassemble and reconstruct [87] Learning Behaviour Confidence Positive impact on self-esteem and self-confidence [56] Build a confidence and trust with the teacher [95] concepts: The review results showed TUIs had helped children and teenagers learn concepts in different fields, e.g., music [10], mathematics [89], gravitational force [89], principles of physics [90], and popularisation of archaeology [76]. We summarised the reasons came from: first, TUIs allowed students to get insights from an expert view, e.g., SpinalLog [23], which provided passive haptic feedback combined with immediate visual feedback, showed in immersive interaction the high fidelity of physical shape had little impact on task performance but was praised in participants' comments.…”

“…Promoting children and teenagers' creativity. Four studies mentioned that interacting with tangibles had a positive effect on children's and teenagers' creativity [22,87,95,96]. TUIs provided children opportunities for risk-taking and exploration, enabling them to "flex their creative skills with tangibles. "…”

“…TUIs provided children opportunities for risk-taking and exploration, enabling them to "flex their creative skills with tangibles. " This was a good method to foster their ideation and divergent thinking [87]. For instance, Tangible Lighting Proxies [95] were used in the K-12 creative arts classroom to allow students to learn the design and operation of stage lighting by experimenting with different possible configurations.…”

“…In addition, unassembled objects prompted children's understanding to provide a kind of curiosity about how things work in the world [94]. For example, Matthews et al [87] pointed out that it was a challenge or even an obstacle for novices to use the tangible system as a design material to implement their ideas. It was better to show the infrastructure and design of the TUIs that not only enabled children to decipher the problem quickly and supported them to unassembled and reconstruct to explore the possible solutions.…”