Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and education researchers have applied Augmented Reality (AR) to support spatial thinking in K-12 education. However, fewer studies support spatial thinking through spatial exploration. Room-scale AR, a recent technology development, brings new opportunities not yet researched. We developed NetLogo AR, an AR authoring toolkit, that allows children to play with, design, and create room-scale AR experiences that combine AR with computational models. To acquire a deeper and more nuanced understanding of children's interactions with this new technology, we conducted eight-week participatory design sessions with seven children aged 11-13. We analyzed 48 hours of video data, interview transcripts, and design artifacts. Children were enthusiastic and engaged in spatial thinking activities. We affirmed room-scale AR's role in spatial exploration by comparing it with other supported modalities. Building on existing studies, we propose a new AR design framework around spatial movement and exploration that could help inform design decisions.
doi.org/10.1145/3613904.3642043
Teaching is one of many professions for which personalized feedback and reflection can help improve dialogue and discussion between the professional and those they serve. However, professional development (PD) is often impersonal as human observation is labor-intensive. Data-driven PD tools in teaching are of growing interest, but open questions about how professionals engage with their data in practice remain. In this paper, we present ClassInSight, a tool that visualizes three levels of teachers’ discussion data and structures reflection. Through 22 reflection sessions and interviews with 5 high school science teachers, we found themes related to dissonance, contextualization, and sustainability in how teachers engaged with their data in the tool and in how their professional vision, the use of professional expertise to interpret events, shifted over time. We discuss guidelines for these conversational support tools to support personalized PD in professions beyond teaching where conversation and interaction are important.
doi.org/10.1145/3613904.3642487
Virtual reality (VR) offers promise in education given its immersive and socially engaging nature, but it can pose challenges for educators when creating VR-specific content. VR videos can function as a new educational tool for VR content creation due to their creation affordability and user-friendliness. However, little empirical research exists on how educators utilize VR videos and associated pedagogy in real classes. Our research employed a contextual inquiry, through in-person interviews and online surveys with 11 instructors to gain actionable insights from envisioned teaching scenarios for VR videos that are informed by actual instructional practices. Our study aims to understand the factors that motivate instructors' adoption of VR videos, identify challenges educators face when incorporating VR videos into instructional units, and examine pedagogical adjustments when integrating VR videos into teaching. Through empirical evidence, we provide design implications for the development of VR-based learning experiences across diverse educational contexts. Our study also serves as a practical case of how VR can be adopted and integrated into education.
doi.org/10.1145/3613904.3642510
Despite the best intentions to support equity with educational technologies, they often lead to a “rich get richer” effect, in which communities of more advantaged learners gain greater benefit from these solutions. Effective design of these technologies necessitates a deeper understanding of learners in understudied contexts and their motivations to pursue an education. Consequently, we studied a 15-week remote course launched in 2021 with 17,896 learners that provided engineering education through a radio and phone-based system aimed for use in rural settings within Northern Uganda. We address shifts in learners’ motivations for course participation and investigate the impact of demographic features and motivations of students on persistence and performance. We found significant increases in student motivation to learn more about and pursue STEM. Importantly, the course was most successful for learners in demographics who typically experience fewer educational opportunities, showing promise for such technologies to close opportunity gaps.
doi.org/10.1145/3613904.3642221
Fostering learners’ interest remains an important challenge in computer science (CS) education. In this paper, we explore how creative music-making, tangible interfaces, and embodiment can be used toward this end. The primary contribution of this paper is Xylocode, a novel exhibit that introduces middle school age learners to computing concepts and fosters interest in CS via a tangible playspace for making music using an embodied simulation. We additionally present an in-museum evaluation of Xylocode with 29 middle school age children. Our results indicate that the exhibit fosters situational interest in computer science and leads to recognition of certain computing concepts, including arrays and global variables. Future research is needed to assess whether the exhibit leads to longer-term learning and/or interest gains and to explore why other computing concepts were not recognized by as many learners. We identify several implications and directions for future work based on our findings.
doi.org/10.1145/3613904.3642098