ETEC 533 Inquiry eFolio Week 11: Embodied Learning

“Describe using specifics, the nature of the activities that may have been central, in your opinion, to the learning experiences described in the papers you read.”

Adamo-Villani, N. & Wilbur, R. (2007). An immersive game for k-5 math and science. Proceedings of the 11th International Conference Information Visualization, 921-924. http://ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/login?url=http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/IV.2007.23

SMILE – Science and Math in an Immersive Learning Environment is an immersive game in which deaf and hearing children ages 5-10 learn math and science concepts and ASL (American Sign Language) terminology through interaction with animated 3D characters and objects. The user can explore the town – Smilevile, enter buildings, select and manipulate objects, construct new objects, and interact with the characters.
Keywords for activities: immersive learning environment; manipulating consoles; social affordance;
My questions for future explorations: is it reasonable for public schools to purchase expensive AR/VR equipment? If not, how should these AR/VR be marketed? Should developers target parents of school-aged children or directly target students?

Novack, M. A., Congdon, E. L., Hemani-Lopez, N., & Goldin-Meadow, S. (2014). From action to abstraction: Using the hands to learn math. Psychological Science, 25(4), 903-910. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3984351/ (Links to an external site.) (Links to an external site.)

In the experiment, 142 3-graders were tested in their elementary schools in the Chicagoland area on mathematical equivalence problems given different instructions 1) with hand gestures, 2)with hand actions, and 3) without hand movement. The results showed that action and gesture support learning across a variety of ages and contexts, whereas gesture leads to deeper and more flexible learning in math.
Keywords for activities: learning with gestures and actions; meaningful gestures
My questions for future explorations: does gesture learning still work for young adolescents? As an adult, what kind of gestures still works for me?

Winn, W. (2003). Learning in artificial environments: Embodiment, embeddedness, and dynamic adaptation. Technology, Instruction, Cognition and Learning, 1(1), 87-114. Full-text document retrieved on January 17, 2013, from: http://www.hitl.washington.edu/people/tfurness/courses/inde543/READINGS-03/WINN/winnpaper2.pdf

The new framework for learning:

“Learning is considered to arise from the reciprocal interaction between external, embodied, activity and internal, cerebral, activity, the whole being embedded in the environment in which it occurs. ” – Winn, 2003

My Week 11 Discussion:

The framework of learning in artificial environments that Winn(2013) introduced allows us to ruminate over the interrelationships between the mind, environment, and cognition. To me, this framework involves a lot of evolutionary theories in cognition and somewhat profound. However, the author made his conclusion very straightforward: educators should continue exploring various artificial environment technologies to facilitate the cognitive process and promote positive learning outcomes through affective coupling students and the learning environments.

My second article’s choice presents an immersive game based on AR and haptics technologies, SMILE – Science and Math in an Immersive Learning Environment (Adamo-Villani & Wilbur, 2007). It is an immersive game in which deaf and hearing children ages 5-10 learn math and science concepts and ASL (American Sign Language) terminology through interaction with animated 3D characters and objects. The user can explore the town – Smilevile, enter buildings, select and manipulate objects, construct new objects, and interact with the characters:

Screen Shot 2021-04-04 at 1.05.34 PM.png

Two characters in the foreground of Smilevile.

The authors designed this application for display in both immersive VR devices and non-immersive standard computer systems to expand the target users. The highlight of this project is the design utilized the advantages of VR technologies to promote learning for people with disabilities. Although this project was still at its early stage of development and there were no further quantitative researches conducted for assessment in 2007, I believe the design conquered many learning barriers for the deaf: access to safe and barrier-free scenarios for daily living tasks; self-pacing; repetition; control over environment; ability to see or feel items and processes in concrete terms (difficulty with abstract concepts); and motivation.

In the last article, I select ‘From action to abstraction: Using the hands to learn math’ from Novack et al. (2014). In the experiment, 142 3-graders were tested in their elementary schools in the Chicagoland area on mathematical equivalence problems given different instructions 1) with hand gestures, 2)with hand actions, and 3) without hand movement. The results showed that action and gesture support learning across a variety of ages and contexts, whereas gesture leads to deeper and more flexible learning in math.

My questions are:

Do you agree with the authors in my second reading that VR, AR technologies would help students with impairments? In what ways?
In both of my selective readings, researchers deliberately chose the participants from primary schools. Do you agree that embodiment teaching and learning strategies may influence students at a younger age more than young adolescents?
References:

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