Talk given to the members of the HCI Centre at the University of Birmingham

1. Learning in the wild:
designing for location-based experiences
Elizabeth FitzGerald
Institute of Educational Technology, The Open University

5. Introduction
• Mobile communications are now part of
everyday life
• Huge potential for utilising location-specific
resources and rich multimedia experiences
• How we can use these resources for effective
contextual learning?
• How can we design and evaluate location-
based learning?

6. Types of mobile and contextual learning
• Six general categories of activity:
– Behaviourist: learning results in a change in learners’
observable actions
– Constructivist: learners actively construct new
ideas/concepts based on previous and current knowledge
– Situated: learning occurs within authentic context and
culture
– Collaborative: learning through social interaction
– Informal/lifelong: learning outside of formal settings
– Learning and teaching support: help co-ordination of
learners and resources
Ref: Naismith, L., Lonsdale, P., Vavoula, G. & Sharples, M. (2005) Literature Review in Mobile
Technologies and Learning. A report for NESTA Futurelab (available online).

7. Contextual learning (1)
• Learning occurs in a series of contexts e.g. time, place,
tasks/goals, resources, social activities – within and
between groups and individuals
• Learning also creates context through continual
interactions between people, settings, technologies and
other artefacts
• Context can be seen as a film or movie: each scene
represents a context state, one that follows on the
previous one
• Learners share artefacts and create mutual
understanding through dialogue and physical interaction

8. Contextual learning (2)
• Context can also be seen as an emergent property
of interaction…
• … i.e. how we augment human activity in context,
instead of modelling it
• The challenge is how to add value to locations or
places with appropriate tools and materials
• Can then enable people, individually and together, to
create and maintain their own rich contexts for
learning

9. Case Study 1:
Augmenting the visitor experience
Ref: Priestnall, Gary, Brown, Elizabeth and Mike Sharples (2009)
A student-led comparison of techniques for augmenting the field
experience. Proceedings of the mLearn 2009 Conference, Orlando,
Florida, 26-30 Oct 2009, pp 195-198.

10. To assess a range of techniques for
exploring the use of digital geographic information to
augment real scenes in the field
Create a student-led exercise to encourage critical
evaluation of these techniques to support the field
experience (and mobile tourist guides).
Aims

11. Eric Robson (Striding Edge Ltd)
Supporting learning about the landscape
Sir Hugh Walpole Video

12. 1. Computer-generated Acetate

14. 2. Custom
PDA-based
application

15. Screen visibility can be an issue
… this is as good as it gets

16. VIDEO from
Derwent
Water
Wainwright OS Photo
Audio of
Wainwright
3. Mediascape on a mobile phone

17. Phone-based mediascapes

18. 4. Google Earth on a Tablet PC

20. Geovisionary (Virtalis, Univ. Leicester, Univ. Nottingham)
5. Head-Mounted Display (partial VR)

23. Summary of student findings
• Computer-generated acetate:
 Successful format/simple, ‘electronic acetates’ a vision for the future?
 Difficult in windy conditions, predetermined viewpoints a drawback.
• Custom PDA application:
 Sketching, legend & audio popular (but relevance?)
 Stability, incl. GPS connectivity. Screen visibility in bright sunlight.
• Mediascape on a mobile phone:
 Easy authoring (control over media placement)
 Screen size and visibility, graphical media less effective.
• Google Earth on a tablet PC:
 Large screen and Google Earth’s data exploration environment popular
 Screen visibility, battery life, pen-based interaction (GE designed for
desktop)
• Head-Mounted Display:
 Fun, engaging, good for heavily graphical information
 Technical complexity, robustness, heavy, not waterproof!

24. Reflections on exercise
• Relating digital information to features in the real world
– How can digital representations be mapped onto the real world by the
user
– Information doesn't always relate to neat trigger regions
– How do we mimic the in-field expert pointing things out?
• In-field evaluation
– Asking students to develop their own evaluation schema
– Video diaries a promising technique
• The role of graphics
– Seek alternatives to heavily graphical representations
– More emphasis on design of audio for in-field use.
• Ease of use
– Even tech-savvy students didn’t have time for complex mapping apps
– The demand for simplicity was in evidence across all interactions

25. Need to develop design rules for mobile field
guides which mimic the field expert.
Reduced emphasis on graphics, new challenges
in making geographically relevant audio.
Simple but effective? – all new geospatial and
handheld AR applications will need to strive to
move from being novelty apps to becoming
killer apps.
Google Maps
Navigation for
Android 2.0
Beginning to exploit real-time
handheld Augmented Reality
Caistor Roman Town,
East Anglia, UK.
Data from Will Bowden
(Archaeology)
Implications and future work

26. Case Study 2:
Hidden Histories: To the Castle!
Refs:
• FitzGerald, Elizabeth; Taylor, Claire and Craven, Michael (2012)
To the Castle! A comparison of two audio guides to enable public
discovery of historical events. Personal and Ubiquitous Computing
(DOI 10.1007/s00779-012-0624-0).
• FitzGerald, Elizabeth (2012) Assessing informal learning: a case study
using historical audio guides. In: CALRG Annual Conference 2012,
19-20 June 2012, Milton Keynes, UK.

27. Overview of the project
• Investigated how geolocated audio can be
used to provide opportunities for historical
learning in public history
• Case study of the 1831 Reform Riot in
Nottingham, content created by a local history
group
• Conducted 2 types of
guided walk:
– People-led
– Technology-led

28. What we were trying to find out
• Can mobile technology be used to convey
historical empathy and learning from conflicting
perspectives?
• How were these two audio tours different or
similar?
• Did they provide an effective means of learning
by the general public about local historical
events?
• How might these kinds of techniques can be used
in the future or by other community groups?

30. To the Castle! ‘people-led’ walk

32. To the Castle! ‘technology-led’ walk

33. Not without problems

34. 7scenes – tracing the walk

35. Key findings around…
• Mode of delivery
• Number of participants and social interactions
• Geographical affordances of places/spaces
• User experience
• Opportunities for learning
• Other factors:
– Technical problems
– Length of audio
– Political views of community group

36. Case Study 3:
Situ8
Ref: FitzGerald, E. (2012). Creating user-generated content for location-
based learning: an authoring framework. Journal of Computer Assisted
Learning, 28(3), pp. 195–207.

37. Designing location-based experiences
• Context is king
• Some media formats can be more suitable or
compelling than others
• Can we break away from ‘authoritative’
content to something a bit more personal?

39. Ad hoc learning in location
• Anyone can be a field guide, through creation
and delivery of user-generated geolocated
content
• Enables learning in location through
serendipitous discovery of media placement
• In-field authoring and editing of content
• Enables reflection by user, either at the time
or later on

40. A framework for authoring
Landscape domain
Type of
communication
Use of language/media
related to the
landscape
Knowledge level
of content
Contextual aspects
Interaction –
try to include:
1. form of
landscape
2. common
knowledge
3. science
4. history
5. contemporary
use
6. myth
7. symbol
8. art
9. suggestion
10. hint or
warning
11. conversation
12. practical task
13. reminiscence
14. short textual
description
15. exhortation
(e.g. ‘look
carefully’)
16. describe shape,
colour, size
17. use emotions or
personal response
where
appropriate
18. use simple English
(short, commonly-
used words)
where possible
19. avoid jargon but
do use
appropriate
language
20. be culturally
sensitive
21. be clear and
concise
22. orient the visitor
appropriately
23. Domain-specific:
 beginner
 intermediate
 advanced
 specialist
24. age-related?
(children might
not have the
same knowledge
or level of
understanding as
an adult)
25. Needs prior
knowledge?
Temporal:
26. is this info related to
the time of year or
the seasons?
27. is this info related to
time of day?
28. visibility of the
landscape and its
features/landmarks
Available resources:
1. other people
2. experts
3. leaflets
4. notices/signs
33. authenticity
34. relevance to
everyday life
35. element of fun
36. anything unusual
or unexpected
37. opportunity for
reflection by the
user
38. respect for
others and for
the environment
39. the story behind
the visible (e.g.
photosynthesis
in a leaf)

41. Analysis of existing content
• Analysed 3 systems that contained user-created content:
– OOKL
– Peoples’ Collection Wales
– WildMap
Media type:
Number of items (out of 217)
that contained that media type:
Percentage (%)
… text 204 94.0
… audio 12 5.5
… video 2 0.9
… 1 photo 166 76.5
… 2 or more photos 33 15.2
… web link (URL) 13 6.0

42. Impact of this work
• Content analysis  can guide creation of user-
generated content / provide framework for
authoring and aid metacognition
• Help curation of user-generated content +
tagging/filtering; potential for personalisation
• Media created should be of higher quality
• Use the framework to structure learning aims
and outcomes

43. Situ8: the challenge
• To develop new models of technology-enhanced
learning based on the activity of capturing, filtering
and presentation of crowd-sourced locational
information
• Basically, how to capture and deliver educational
media
– In location
– About location
– On-the-fly/dynamically
• Also how to situate this information within specific
physical and social contexts to enable learning to occur

44. Our app: how it works
• Anyone can be an author
• Create media for yourself and/or others to access
• Can be used in fieldwork, to upload observations and
data
• Can also be used for leisure activities – a natural
evolution from taking photos on holiday
• Also give fascinating insights into how other perceive
their surroundings
• Provide both formal and informal opportunities to
learn more about the environment/place/space

45. Overview of Situ8
• App available for Android phones
• Can create and view MOs (media objects)
• All MOs are public
• A MO can be text, image, audio, video
• Media is hosted/streamed through
third-party services
• Need Internet access for it to work, also GPS
• Only basic user accounts
(username, no password)

48. Current state of play
• Currently in private ‘alpha’ testing mode with
tame users
• Can be used as testbed for new projects, to do
with capture of location-based media
• Development of Situ8 web portal currently
underway, completion date July 2013:
funded by OpenScience Laboratory to develop
citizen science platform

49. Future development
• Features planned for future releases also include:
– Being able to view nearby MOs on a map
– Having full user accounts, with passwords, user
profiles etc.
– Users to have ability to edit and delete MOs
– Adding tags and categories
– Filtering and searching MOs, according to a user’s
interests, location or other contexts such as author or
date
– Local caching of MOs to enable asynchronous
upload/download, for when users are not connected
to the internet

50. Summary
• Whistle-stop tour of location-based mobile
learning
• Educational affordances and context
• Selection of case studies
– Augmenting the visitor experience
– To The Castle
– Situ8

51. A few lessons learned
• ‘In the wild’ not necessarily to do with physical
environment
• Can be tensions between
– Researcher and communities in which they work
– Innovative ‘catwalk’ technology vs ready-to-wear
technology
– Changing or maintaining practices
• Tech problems not gone away… but now
competing with other challenges around user-
generated data/content, privacy, ownership etc

52. Other questions
• Do we need new ‘in the wild’ theories?
• How do we make sense of augmented or
blended spaces?
– Do existing theories of situated learning help
explain what is so compelling about learning in
location?
• How can we manage this deluge of data being
made available to us?
(“cognitive curation” vs cognitive dissonance?)

54. Thanks for listening
elizabeth.fitzgerald@open.ac.uk
http://iet.open.ac.uk/e.j.fitzgerald
http://elara99.wordpress.com
http://www.tinyurl.com/edwild
Acknowledgements:
Gary Priestnall, Mike Sharples, Claire Taylor, Mike Craven, Rob Jones, People’s Histreh,
James Goulding and students from the School of Geography at the University of Nottingham

55. Further references
• Adams, Anne; FitzGerald, Elizabeth and Priestnall, Gary (2013). Of Catwalk Technologies and
Boundary Creatures. ACM Transactions of Computer-Human Interaction (In Press).
• Meek, Sam; FitzGerald, Elizabeth; Priestnall, Gary and Sharples, Mike (2013). Field trip
learning. In: Kinuthia, Wanjira and Marshall, Stewart eds. On the Move: Mobile Learning for
Development. Educational Design and Technology in the Knowledge Society. Charlotte, NC.:
Information Age Publishing Inc., (In press).
• FitzGerald, Elizabeth (2012). Towards a theory of augmented place. Bulletin of the Technical
Committee on Learning Technology, 14(4), pp. 43–45.
• FitzGerald, Elizabeth; Adams, Anne; Ferguson, Rebecca; Gaved, Mark; Mor, Yishay and
Thomas, Rhodri (2012). Augmented reality and mobile learning: the state of the art. In: 11th
World Conference on Mobile and Contextual Learning (mLearn 2012), 16-18 October 2012,
Helsinki, Finland .
• FitzGerald, Elizabeth; Sharples, Mike; Jones, Robert and Priestnall, Gary (2011). Guidelines for
the design of location-based audio for mobile learning. International Journal of Mobile and
Blended Learning, 3(4), pp. 70–85.