Education in the Wild

Back in November, Elizabeth Fitzgerald of the Institute of Educational Technology, gave a coffee-morning presentation on the subject of “Location-based Learning: Education in the Wild”. Using her experience from various Mobile Learning projects in which she’s been involved, she explored the possibilities of augmenting human activity in context and adding value to locations or places with appropriate tools and materials. Two of the case studies were:

1. Students on location

This project assessed a variety of digital resources for supporting student learning about geographical landforms in the field. The resources ranged from the basic (computer-generated acetate) to the sci-fi-esque (a virtual reality head-mounted device). All suffered to various degrees with functionality issues: the acetate helpfully traced out landscapes but blew about in the wind; students could access information from the web through hand-held devices like mobile phones and tablet PCs, but not without screen visibility problems, poor connectivity and failing batteries; the head-mounted display offered the greatest potential for augmentation, but was technically complex, heavy, and not particularly hardened to the elements. The central point to have come across was the need for flexible, lightweight technologies that were easy to use. Even tech-savvy students didn’t have time for complex mapping apps.

2. Hidden Histories Tour of Nottingham

Taking a specific case study—the 1831 Nottingham Reform Riot (content was created by a local history group)—this project aimed to investigate how smart audio could be used to provide opportunities for learning in a public context. It involved a comparison of user experiences, between those on a tour led by a guide and those using only technology. This latter group had access to pre-prepared audio clips of relevant information that would be triggered when the user entered a particular zone. The findings indicate that users preferred the ‘human’ experience of a tour. It was not only the case that the technology (again) suffered from functionality issues (trigger regions often require the user to ‘hit’ a precise spot to activate the device); using the technology fundamentally changed the group dynamic. The users found themselves listening to their own mobile device rather than interacting among themselves, as frequently happens with a human tour-guide.

(For more information about the broader local history project, see: For more information, see http://peopleshistreh.wordpress.com/)

In both cases, ML technology can’t replace ‘being there’. Therefore, we need to find ways of getting the technology to offer something different without making it an individual sterile experience. In what ways can ML technology be used to encourage interaction and teamwork?

Size matters in Mobile Arts

Arts digital learning materials tend to be more multi-media heavy than those of other discipline areas. This is because Arts subjects, by their very nature, lend themselves to the use of animations, recorded music, 3D scans, images of paintings and sculptures, interactive maps, video ethnographies, and so on. Often, these resources are not there to simply illustrate a concept, but rather as a core element of the syllabus in themselves.

·The Good

The creative use of multi-media elements in digital educational resources offers an excellent opportunity to make teaching materials attractive in an aesthetic sense (i.e. the eye-candy factor). The relation between aesthetics and cognition in digital interface design is discussed by Stephen Anderson here.)

·The bad

The problem is that most of the multi-media resources that work perfectly well in a desktop computer with a 22" monitor at home do not work very well at all in a 3" smartphone screen used in the middle of a busy street. When using a small screen, there is a compromise between details and overall perspective, the interface design is altered and the navigation experience is affected. The bottom line is: most large images do not display well in smartphones.

·The ugly

Tablets solve many of these problems. Their screen size is large enough to display most maps and paintings in sufficient detail and their hardware is generally perfectly capable of coping with video and audio. However, the use of tablets leads to another two problems:

1. When used outdoors, most tablet screens have an ugly reflection (I know, it was a stretch to fit this under “ugly”!), which could, in many cases, defeat the purpose of truly mobile learning.
2. The serendipity factor. We carry our phones in our pocket most of the time, but we don’t always carry our tablets with us, because they are not as portable. Many of the mobile learning apps and web resources that we download are a result of serendipity (e.g. bumping into an interactive display in a museum, walking past a poster in the departmental noticeboard, having a conversation with a friend...). If a user does not have the right device to access a mobile learning resource on the spot, it might be a wasted opportunity for the content distributor to get the message across to the right audience.

Image: CC Michael Reuter.

There is currently no perfect solution for the display-portability compromise in mobile devices. Arts mobile learning resources are especially vulnerable to this problem because of their heavy reliance on multi-media content. Therefore, it could pay off to consider from a very early stage not just what our Arts mobile learning resource will contain, but also which device it is most likely to be accessed through (and, by extension, when and where it is most likely to be accessed by the end user).