EcoMOBILE: Augmented Reality Supports Scientific Data Interpretation Skills by Engaging Students in Authentic Data Collection in Their Local Communities

• In Event: Roundtable Session 30
  In Roundtable Session: PCs in the Himalayas and iPads on the Reservation: Impact of Technology on Learning Within Cultures

Abstract

Objectives

Collection and interpretation of data is central to scientific practice, yet classroom data activities are often weakly tied to students’ every day experience in their communities, and may be disconnected from a larger picture of scientific practice (e.g. McClain, Cobb and Gravemeijer 2000, Kanari and Millar 2004). In this presentation, we summarize several studies in which we attempt to narrow this gap using technology to mediate the relationship between young people, scientific data, and their daily lives in their local cultural and geographic setting.

Theoretical framework

Social constructivism suggests that meaning is constructed through the interaction among learners, their environment, and mediating tools (Greeno 1998; Brown, Collins, & Duguid 1989). Designing interventions that situate student work in familiar physical and social contexts should help students reach learning goals.

Here we describe our design and research on an ecosystem-based mobile learning experience called EcoMOBILE (http://ecomobile.gse.harvard.edu). EcoMOBILE builds upon the ecosystem-based multi-user virtual environment (EcoMUVE) curriculum project, in which students take on scientific roles, collect data, and collaboratively develop a concept map representing their shared understanding of the ecological relationships in a virtual environment (Metcalf et al. 2011).

EcoMOBILE uses an augmented reality (AR) application on a smartphone to connect EcoMUVE with a field experience in a familiar ecosystem near the school. The AR app supports student data collection through location-specific prompts, reminders about procedures, and real-time feedback. By situating the data collection process within a familiar outdoor environment, and supporting data collection with the technology, we hypothesize that students will gain a richer understanding of data, and its connection to scientific practices.

Methods

We’ve implemented EcoMOBILE with middle school students in the northeast United States ranging from 6th-8th grade. We draw from a number of pilot implementations to describe students’ experience with and attitudes toward data collection and analysis. We will also describe the design and implementation of outdoor data collection activities within EcoMOBILE. By combining an experience that is tailored to a local community context with a generalized, model-based virtual environment experience in the classroom, we explore the impact of the context-specific and context-neutral learning interventions in different cultural contexts.

Data sources

We conducted a pre-post survey on students’ self-efficacy related to data analysis and interpretation, and we contextualized these survey results with semi-structured interviews conducted with a sub-set of students. We will also share insights derived from video and audio data collected during field activities.

Results

Students constructed ecologically relevant explanations for variation in data collected from real environments. Student interviews also revealed an appreciation for the technology-supported connection between data collection activities and their local environment.

Significance

Designing learning experiences that take advantage of the physical environment, social networks, and cultural context of particular groups of students is challenging. Our findings offer suggestions for how mobile technologies may support culturally and geographically contextualized learning experiences in real environments.

Authors

• Amy M. Kamarainen, New York Hall of Science

• Shari J. Metcalf, Harvard University

• Christopher J. Dede, Harvard University