PDA mediated museum visit

1. NikolaosTselios*#
Ioanna Papadimitriou*,Vassilis Komis*, NikolaosAvouris#
*ICTEGroup, ECEDU Department, #HCI Group, ECE Department,
University of Patras

2.  Spread of PDAs in the field of education
 used in different contexts, serving a variety of learning
tasks
 considered as a motivation trigger for the pupils,
augmenting their attention and allowing them to engage
in learning activities meaningful to them
 As information appliances for acquiring, storing,
transmitting, editing and visualizing data and information
 As communication appliances and they can be used in
the frame of formal or informal forms of education
2/17

3.  Mobile technologies can find in museums an important area of
implementation
 learning in a museum context integration, of personal, sociocultural, and
physical contexts over time
 museum visits are structured around motion,
 it is crucial that technology will support visitors during and not just after or
before the visit
 New possibilities
 Interaction with the exhibit: reading of information and ‘static’ observation of
the exhibit is transformed to a dialectic relationship where the user is
interacting with the exhibit through the pda.
 active construction of interpretation,
 information processing and organization, reflection
 Collaboration and communication
 ‘Learning on the move’
3/17

4.  As electronic guides (SottoVoce, ImogI, Marble Museum, PEACH
project)
 applications in a form of an electronic guide.These applications provide information on the
exhibits, predetermined guided tours based on certain thematic criteria
 The children have in their disposal a PDA equipped with location technology capable of
extracting information from the exhibits
 Different location technologies are used (infrared beacons, RFID, Bayesian triangulation ,
see also Raptis,Tselios and Avouris,2005)
 As supporting tools (Exploratorium Science museum, San
Francisco)
 the visitor has the possibility to manipulate and experiment with the exhibits, although the
tour and recognition of each exhibit is not an easy task
 Allows visitors to record their visit path and re-experience it through museum’s website
 using specific educational scenarios (MUSEX, Scavenger Hunt
Game)
 A scenario is given to the children and are invited to complete a series of predefined tasks
 Typically drill and practice educational system: the children are challenged to answer
correctly a number of multiple choice questions 4/17

5.  A novel approach for designing educational activities using PDAs in
museums based in social-constructive theories
 Influenced by three basic factors:
 the characteristics of the museum context where the activity is to take place
 the affordances of the mobile technology to be used
 the goals of the educational approach to be followed 5/17
Pedagogical
Goals Learners
Available content,
pedagogical
goals, learning
theories
Type of exhibits, museum
goals, physical layout,
appropriate technology
Learner’s characteristics
and needs, model of
interaction, interaction
affordances’ recognizability
and understandability
Museum context

6.  Historical Museum
 The majority of the exhibits are paintings and personal
objects of historical Greek persons of the 19th century
 Direct interaction not available
 Available content consisted of texts with information
about the exhibits
 Specific goals supported by the imposed technology:
 Highlight the inherent historical interrelation between
various exhibits
 Provide a way of deeper interaction with the exhibits
 Design a narrative to integrate the required historical
information into a meaningful story
6/17

7.  Model of interaction heavily influences the activity’s
pedagogical design
 positioning and context awareness methods and models to
present useful information to the user with respect to the
information communicated to him/her by the environment
 RFID tags to identify the exhibits, using an RFID reader in the pdas to ‘scan’ them
 When an exhibit is scanned, the PDA sends a request for information to a server
through Wi-Fi infrastructure
 models to invert the flow of information
 The server delivers appropriate content, for the desired exhibit, presented in
the form requested by the user according to her needs (e.g. age, specific
interests, etc)
 information provided in HTML without requiring text entry
7/17

8.  Exhibit observation through technology
 Actions imposed by technology
 Actions are associated to physical/virtual space
 Actions in physical space are influenced and enhanced by technology
 Actions in virtual space exist only through technology 8/17

9.  Goal: to engage the students into meaningful problem solving and
exploratory learning activities
▪ stimulate the pupils’ imagination
▪ allowing them to engage with information extracted by the exhibits
▪ align them towards a synergistic approach to accomplish their goals instead of
just answering multiple choice questions
 Problem solving -Collaborative Learning
 Active exploration of museum exhibits
 Harvest information of complementary nature compared to that presented in the
physical space and exchange of information
 Collaborate to extract meaning from the correlation of their findings
9/17

10.  An historian working for the museum hides
his will in his favorite exhibit
 Students were asked to help the people of the
museum to find the will of the imaginary
historian that worked for years in the museum
▪ Come in contact with the historical background of the
exhibits
▪ Collect, exchange, manage data
▪ Use problem solving strategies
▪ Collaboratively examine and reflect upon the
information provided
10/17

11.  Initially, the children are introduced to the scenario and are
prompted to exchange a certain amount of information the historian
left in order to start their quest
 Students are challenged to collect related information from a variety
of exhibits through reading and storing of the clues in a notepad
 The children try to locate the clues which can lead them to the will
 Each team has a PDA equipped with RFID tag readers
 Motivated to read information
 Collect and exchange data
 Manage information with criteria communicated by the clues
 Towards accomplishment of their goal, the students had to
collaborate and exchange data as the teams send clues to each other
 Finally, they had to engage into a problem solving process to extract
meaning from the correlation of their findings
11/17

12. (a) (b) (c) (d)
Offers a series of functions:
a) Scan and read RFIDTags
b) Retrieve and display information from the server
c) Store and exchange data (by pointing to each
other’s pda)
d) Examine collected cues and select the ‘favorite’
exhibit
12/17

13.  In real conditions, inside the museum
 Observe learners’ behaviors in real setting,
 validate effective usage of mobile devices,
 PDA’s effectiveness as instructive tools and in
their repercussions in the learning process
 17 children (6 male 11 female), aged 10
 In 4 groups of 4 or 5 members each
 Data collection via
 mp3 voice recorders,
 Video camera,
 pda screen capturing application
 essay describing their experience
13/17

14.  Learning should be examined in relation to the symbolic tools used to facilitate it (Cobb, 2002)
 Activity theory: a conceptual tool used to study human practices from the perspective of
consciousness and personal development
 We chose to adopt this model of analysis, since such a learning activity is comprised by multiple
interacting elements and learners collaborating with each other
 It takes into account both individual and collaborative activities, the asymmetrical relation between
people and things, and the role of artifacts in everyday life 14/17

15.  Extensive collaboration during the procedure
 Some of the children were in the border of this process (reduce # of
members?)
 Constant scaffolding from the researcher
 Children needed clarifications concerning the scenario
 Adoption of different strategies
 The groups were united and use concurrently the 2 pda’s to observe the
clues and the information related to an exhibit in the same time
 Children were highly motivated
 the children had never used a PDA before
 they did not encountered serious problems during the activity
 some problems with the time required by the application to provide feedback
to the user’s actions, thus confusing them in some cases
15/17

16.  Activity theory as a conceptual tool to facilitate design and
evaluation seems ideal in this context
 focus not only on the subject but also on the context and on the tools involved
 Appropriate support with technology could substantially enhance
the learning opportunities
 This experience, which is in the border between learning and an entertaining
activity, seems ideal to be supported by PDAs
 Promotes imagination, engagement and alignment
 Design decisions are affected and should take into account
pedagogical, technological and contextual issues
16/17

17.  Proper adoption in different contexts
 instantiation of an activity is affected by issues such as
the scope of the museum and the type of the exhibits
 More research in effective awareness
mechanisms and communication issues
 Realization of an abstract design and evaluation
framework for learning activities in the context
of a museum visit
17/17

18. NikolaosTselios*#
Ioanna Papadimitriou*,Vassilis Komis*, Nikolaos Avouris#
*ICTE Group, ECEDU Department, #HCI Group, ECE Department,
University of Patras, Rio Patras, Greece
{iopapad,komis,avouris}@upatras.gr, nitse@ee.upatras.gr
www.ecedu.upatras.gr

19.  Introduction
 Learning opportunities with PDA usage in museums
 Design
 influenced by pedagogical, technological and contextual issues
 Case Study
 to evaluate the new design approach
 a typical example of our approach, the ‘inheritance activity’
was introduced to young students visiting a Cultural-Historical
Museum
 Conclusions
19/18