Problem Solving in Coordinated Embodied Activity: Emergent Goals and Solutions

• In Event: 29.027 - Designing Digital Environments to Support Mathematical and Scientific Reasoning: Theoretical and Disciplinary Perspectives

Abstract

This paper investigates how second grade students’ problem solving processes are influenced by an embodied digital environment, STEP (Science Through Technology Enhanced Play; Danish, Enyedy, Saleh, Lee, Andrade, 2015), which relies on the coordinated embodiment of multiple students to successfully solve problems. Previous research has shown the value of embodiment in supporting student learning (Lindgren & Johnson-Glenberg, 2013), and previous iterations of STEP (Danish, Enyedy, Saleh, Lee, Andrade, 2015) highlighted the potential for coordinated group embodiment to help students grapple with the complexities of particle behavior. In this iteration of the STEP Design, we extend our previous findings by contrasting two distinct forms of play: 1) a structured game and 2) less structured free play, both using a simulation of water particles. In the game, students had to create ice, liquid, and gas at key moments in order to help a robot escape a volcanic island (see figure 1). In free play, students explored the particle simulation and formed various states of matter according to their desires (DeLiema, Saleh, Lee, et al., 2016).

Our design was informed by Vygotskyian notions of play (1978), which suggest that play includes an imaginary situation structured by rules. By engaging with an imaginary situation, students are able to explore the underlying rules (e.g., science concepts). In STEP, students’ motion is tracked using computer vision and incorporated into a projected simulation. On the screen, students see themselves as moving particle avatars, and colored lines connect particles to signal ice, liquid, or gas bonds. Colored bar graphs indicate the current percentage of particles in each state.
Our research question focuses on how the different designed activities (game-play and free-play) influenced how students coordinated their movement and talk while exploring the relationship between particle motion and states of matter . To measure learning gains, students were given pre/post tests in the form of semi-structured interviews. Students had significant pre/post gains in both conditions. We examined video of three days of classroom activity to see how the conditions influenced students’ coordinated activity. Though the coordinated nature of the particle simulation required students to work together to solve problems, the design of particle activities as either a competitive game or less structured free play seemed to influence the selection of goals for problem solving and the pathways for successful solutions. In the play condition, goals were more emergent; students and teachers alike suggested ice, liquid, or gas as potential target states. This also led to students focusing on understanding why particle behavior produced distinct states. In contrast, students playing the game focused closely on the goal of producing the state that the robot required. Thus, they attended more to how each state was produced with less discussion of why until the teacher promoted those discussions during debrief. Contrasting these two conditions, we see how the different features of the play framing led to distinct forms of problem-solving activity, which necessitated alternative roles for the teacher; these nuances will be the focus of our presentation.

Authors

• Megan Alyse Humburg, Indiana University - Bloomington

• Joshua Adam Danish, Indiana University

• Noel D. Enyedy, University of California - Los Angeles

• Asmalina Saleh, Indiana University