Robotics brings together learning across mechanism, computation and interaction using the compelling model of real-time interaction with physically instantiated intelligent devices. The project described here is the third stage of the Personal Rover Project, which aims to produce technology, curriculum and evaluation techniques for use with after-school, out-of-school and informal learning environments mediated by robotics. Our most recent work has resulted in the Personal Exploration Rover (PER), whose goal is to create and evaluate a robot interaction that will educate members of the general
This study at the National Aquarium in Baltimore (NAIB) was conducted to assess four key aspects of the visitor experience: (1) incoming conservation knowledge, attitudes, and behavior of NAIB visitors; (2) patterns of use and interaction with exhibition components throughout the NAIB; (3) exiting conservation knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors of visitors; and (4) over time, how the NAIB experience altered or affected individuals' conservation knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors. Three hundred six visitors participated in the study, which was conducted from March through July, 1999. The
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Institute for Learning InnovationJohn H FalkLeslie AdelmanSylvia James
Constraints on learning, rather than being unique to evolutionarily privileged domains, may operate in nonprivileged domains as well. Understanding of the goals that strategies must meet seems to play an especially important role in these domains in constraining the strategies even before they use them. THe presente experiments showed that children can use their conceptual understanding to accurately evaluate strategies that they not only do not yet use but hat are more conceptually advanced than the strategies they do not use. In Experiment 1, 5-year-olds who did not yet use the min strategy
This paper presents two perspectives that the author believes will contribute to an enhanced ability to describe and understand learning from museums. Arguably, a major strength of the past decade of research on learning from museums has been the description and investigation of many of the myriad factors that appear to influence learning from museums. However, though we now understand the factors, we do not yet know how to consider them holistically. We do not conduct research as if all these variables were important. In addition, we have not sufficiently incorporated scope and scale into our
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Institute for Learning InnovationJohn H Falk
Museums invest considerable resources in promoting and supporting elementary-school field trips, but remain skeptical about their educational value. Recent cognitive psychology and neuroscience research require a reappraisal of how and what to assess relative to school-field-trip learning. One hundred and twenty-eight subjects were interviewed about their recollections of school field trips taken during the early years of their school education: 34 fourth-grade students, 48 eighth-grade students, and 46 adults composed the group. Overall, 96% of all subjects could recall a school field trip
In this article, the authors review a collaborative project between two developmental psychologists and the staff of Children's Discovery Museum of San Jose. Under the broad agenda of studying the development of scientific literacy, they have been exploring the hypothesis that the guidance of parents is an important bridge between the intentions of the exhibit designer and the experience and knowledge of the child. Their research is guided by a framework inspired by a combination of socio-cultural and information-processing theories of how children learn. In the first section of this article
Both metacognitive and associative models have been proposed to account for children’s strategy discovery and use. Models based on only metacognitive or only associative mechanisms cannot entirely account for the observed mix of variability and constraint revealed by recent microgenetic studies of children’s strategy change. We propose a new approach where metacognitive and associative mechanisms interact in a competitive negotiation. This approach provides the flexibility to model the observed variability and constraint.
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Kevin CrowleyJeff SchragerRobert Siegler
The science museum field has made tremendous advances in understanding museum learning, but little has been done to consolidate and synthesize these findings to encourage widespread improvements in practice. By clearly presenting the most current knowledge of museum learning, In Principle, In Practice aims to promote effective programs and exhibitions, identify promising approaches for future research, and develop strategies for implementing and sustaining connections between research and practice in the museum community.
There is a recognized need to rigorously examine the efficacy of approaches to supporting informal learning. In this study, we used a 2 × 2 factorial experimental design to test the impact of a computer guide on 3 proximal measures of visitor learning at an interactive math exhibit. In total, 128 families were systematically assigned to engage with the exhibit either with or without access to a supplementary computer kiosk. Visitor groups with access to the computer spent longer, on average, at the exhibit and engaged in more mathematical behaviors compared to other groups. However, based on
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Oregon Museum of Science and IndustryScott PattisonScott EwingAngela Frey
For the past twenty years there has been a slow trickle of research disseminated through a variety of channels on the natureand use of computer interactives within museum and gallery environments. This research has yet to be consolidated into arobust and coherent evidence base for considering and understanding the continued investment in such interactives byinstitutions.Simultaneously however, the technology has changed almost beyond recognition from early kiosk-based computer exhibitsfeaturing mostly film and audio content, through to the newer generation of multi-touch interfaces being
This paper demonstrates a pressure-sensitive depth sorting technique that extends standard two-dimensional (2D) manipulation techniques, particularly those used with multitouch or multi-point controls. Then analyzes the combination of this layering operation with a page-folding metaphor for more fluid interaction in applications requiring 2D sorting and layout.
Though many tabletop applications allow users to interact with the application using complex multi-touch gestures, automated tool support for testing such gestures is limited. As a result, gesture-based interactions with an application are often tested manually, which is an expensive and error prone process. In this paper, we present TouchToolkit, a tool designed to help developers automate their testing of gestures by incorporating recorded gestures into unit tests. The design of TouchToolkit was informed by a small interview study conducted to explore the challenges software developers face
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TEAM MEMBERS:
Shahedul Huq KhandkarS. M. SohanJonathan SillitoFrank Maurer