Daryl - Journals

I chose to read the following 4 journals:

1. p163-bakker (read but don't think it's much of interest regarding our project)
2. p163-marshall (read & quoted)
3. p191-xie (read & quoted)
4. p2243-antle (read but don't think it's much of interest regarding our project)

An interesting journal was the one of Marshall (p-163).

'Learning Through Physical Interaction - (Marshall - p163)

In the journal an analytic framework was presented comprising of 6 perspectives that may guide research and development on the use of tangible interfaces for learning.

In my opinion the following are the most important domains we can use:

• Possible Learning Benefits (Playful Learning, Collaboration...etc...)
• Learning activity (Exploratory, Expressive)

Are Tangibles More Fun? Comparing Children's Enjoyment and Engagement Using Physical, Graphical and Tangible User Interfaces - (Xie - p191)

Enjoyment and Engagement

"Enjoyment and engagement are integral and prerequisite aspects of children’s playful learning experiences. They are the two primary dependent variables evaluated in this research study. The conceptual definitions of enjoyment and engagement set the scope and meaning of the terms within this research study. Each is a complex construct which may be derived from physical, social and cognitive theories."

Collaboration

"Another variable of interest related to enjoyment and engagement is collaboration. Children communicate and learn through social interaction and imitating one another. In this way they acquire new knowledge and hone their ability to collaborate with others. Inkpen et al. found that children exhibit a significantly higher level of engagement and activity when working alongside each other [12]. Sluis et al. suggest that a collaborative environment is more likely to elicit increased intrinsic motivation [30]. Working together in small groups is shown to increase children’s enjoyment, engagement and motivation [12,29]. Based on the assumption that a collaborative, co-located condition is ecologically valid and would enhance children’s enjoyment and engagement for all interface styles, a paired collaboration situation was chosen for our study design as detailed below."

This Journal basically talks about a jigsaw puzzle game on different types of User Interfaces (Traditional User Interface, Graphical User Interface, Tangible User Interface).

Below are the results:

Results of Children Preference:

"Children commented that the puzzle was challenging but that they liked it because they could finish it within the allocated length of time. Some children commented that they were concerned about how much time they had already spent and how much time they still left for solving the puzzle in the progress of play. This finding is in line with guidelines proposed by Salen and Zimmerman [27], which state that an enjoyable game balances challenge against possibility of winning. It is possible that two thirds of the pairs rated all puzzles as enjoyable because the puzzles contained right balance between challenge and achievability regardless of interface style. Children also commented that they liked getting help during play from either the reference pictures or their partner (collaboration). This result was consistent with our observations on their collaborations and use of the reference picture.

Some children indicated that they did not like it when the picture underlying the puzzle was turned off (perhaps by their partner). A few children mentioned that they disliked feeling pressured due to the time limitation. This comment was more frequent from the pairs in the GUI condition. Some children complained that there were too many pieces in GUI puzzles (which had fewer pieces than the TUI or PUI puzzles)".

Design Implications:

Based on the findings of this study we see several implications for design of tangibles for children.

1. collaboration style was related to input design. The multiple access points afforded by a tabletop game (tangible and traditional) combined with enough space to move supported parallel independent play rather than sequential turn taking.
2. there does seem to be a benefit to physical manipulation of objects on a tabletop space. We observed evidence of moving the body to engage in perspective taking. Direct interaction with pieces was reported as easier and less frustrating for children than indirect interaction using a mouse or touchpad.
3. the value of integrated representations depended on the cognitive strategies being used in problem solving. For a jigsaw puzzle, children preferred a visual strategy (picture matching) to a spatial one (shape matching) and so the display of the reference picture was important. It is unclear if there was a benefit to having the picture integrated with the input space.
4. the gap between girls and boys comfort levels with computers was not automatically bridged by using tangibles based on familiar objects.