Spotlight on Digital Media And Learning

7.23.08 | I lead a research team at Arizona State University called the K-12 Embodied and Mediated Learning group, situated in the Arts, Media and Engineering program. Much of our group’s research is done in something known as SMALLab - a scalable mixed reality learning environment where embodied action and multimodal feedback are integrated in support of powerful learning experiences. Within SMALLab, students use a set of “glowballs” to interact in real time with each other and with dynamic media through full body 3D movements and gestures. For example, students can be immersed in a complex physics simulation. They can hear the sound of a spring picking up speed, see projected bodies moving across the floor, feel a physical ball in their hands, and integrate how the projected ball moves in accordance with their own body movements to construct a robust conceptual model of the entire system. If this is hard to picture, you can see a video of a learning scenario that we recently developed in collaboration with teachers at Coronado High School here in Arizona. Students collaborate in SMALLab to investigate the nature of particle systems and various chemical processes.

SMALLab has proven to be a really interesting space for kids, and a new collaboration with Katie Salen and the non-profit she runs, the Institute of Play, will push at the question of what game design might look like within its borders. Our project—“Gaming SMALLab”—will focus on the design of a pedagogical framework for game-like, mixed-reality learning. The Institute of Play has developed a game-based pedagogy that will guide the design and development of a suite of standards-based learning scenarios for middle school students and teachers, using the SMALLab environment. This pedagogy frames learning as both situated and game-like. By “situated” we mean that students are asked to “take on” the identities and behaviors of designers, inventors, writers, historians, mathematicians, and scientists in contexts that are real and/or meaningful to them. By “game-like” we mean an approach to learning that draws on the intrinsic qualities of games and their design to engage students in a deep exploration of subject matter, with 21st century learning at its core. We kicked off the work earlier this summer in Tempe, during a workshop Christopher Martinez and I are running with 10 high school students in the SMALLab space. Excitement is high and we have a ton to get done. Katie and I will be posting updates on the work over the next year, so stay tuned for more missives from the SMALLab front!