Students in kindergarten to 12th grade could interact with technology in new ways with the help of ASU research.
ASU researchers were awarded a $2.5 million grant on Aug. 15 that will fund research for interactive learning in Arizona schools.
The National Science Foundation awarded the five-year grant to a research team headed by professor David Birchfield of the School of Arts, Media and Engineering.
The research focuses on embodied learning as it applies to Science, Technology, Engineering and Math, and will engage physical interaction in the classroom in order to incite learning, Birchfield said.
“We basically experience the world through our bodies,” he said. “Essentially, everything we know and understand has an embodied slant.”
The team has installed embodied learning environments in two Arizona schools and one school in New York, including one at Coronado High School in Scottsdale in which students are able to blend the physical and digital experiences of learning, Birchfield said.
For instance, if a student is learning about velocity, he or she can enter the learning environment and walk within a designated space. As the student walks, a diagram and equation will generate within the lab space and will represent the velocity of his or her walking motion, Birchfield said.
“It’s really a sort of experiment space and a playful space as well,” he said.
The first phase of research will be to bring in teachers from the collaborative schools to consult in the design process, Birchfield said.
They will focus on three types of embodied learning in order to find out what level of physical interaction best enhances learning, the first being the Situated Multimedia Art Learning Lab environment, which involves full-body interaction.
Interactive whiteboards, which will involve arm and upper-body motion, will be used to rate learning through a lesser form of physical interaction.
A final type involves the students looking at a desktop, which will engage the eyes and head — the lowest form of physical engagement.
After the three designs are created, high school-age students will be brought to ASU to test the different designs to ascertain which type of learning environment is most effective, Birchfield said.
Linda Flinn, assistant principal of Coronado High School, said in a phone message that the school has many interactive activities with the students because of the SMALLab and called Birchfield a ‘guru.’
The grant funds will allow the research team to build on this experience and collaboration with students and teachers.
The last two years of the grant will involve implementing the final product in the classrooms.
“We will do it in a controlled environment, and then we want to validate the results from that and look at how this can really be put into practice in real-world classrooms,” Birchfield said.
He said they will be connecting with more than 750 students and teachers through this research because of the grant.
Reach the reporter at anatwood@asu.edu
