Do Tangible Interfaces Improve

1

• Do Tangible Interfaces Improve
• Collaboration between Young Children in
  Educational Settings?

Hannah Staddon Lisa Robinson Rea Wilson Mridula
Iyer
2
Overview

• Collaboration Techniques
• Controversy
• Ely the Explorer
• Results
• Criticisms
• Conclusion

3
What Is Collaboration?

• learning environments in which small groups, two
  to six learners, work together to achieve a
  common goal (Underwood Underwood, 199912)
• Working effectively with another individual,
  avatars or technology
• It involves
• Mental articulation of thoughts
• Co-operation and sharing
• Constructing knowledge
• meaning that is constructed in successful
  processes of collaboration as a shared group
  product (Stahl, 200580)

4
Advantages of Learning Collaboratively

• Motivating
• Enjoyable
• Challenges original concepts in childs mind
• Increase self-esteem
• Conflict (Piaget Socio-Cognitive)
• Peer scaffolding (Vygotsky- Socio-Cultural)
• Less off task

5
Collaboration Skills Present in Early Development

• Preoccupation with sharing knowledge,
  experiences, artifacts (Crook, 1998)
• .only humans have the kind of appetite a
  one-year old begins to show for sharing the
  arbitrary use of tools, places, manners and
  experiences (Trevarthan, 1988 within Crook,
  1998)
• Development of language, vast degree of
  collaboration with adults (Bruner, 1983 within
  Crook, 1998)
• Children exhibit good playground collaboration
  yet this stops in the classroom (Crook, 1998)

6
Why is Collaboration Difficult for Young Children
in the Classroom?

• Developmental researchers suggest young children
  do not have the cognitive skills for successful
  collaboration (Crook, 1998)
• Ethnographies of classroom in early education
  reveal that effective pupil collaboration is
  strikingly rare (Crook, 1998238-239)
• Piaget - until the developmental age of 7
  believed the child was governed by egocentric
  thought.
• In some circumstances of collaborative
  interactions, skilled peers often dominated
  decision making, ignored their partner and
  communicated little (Rogoff,1991355)

7
Technological Attempts to Improve Collaboration

• Childrens success as collaborative learners
  depends a lot on the character of the resources
  at hand to mediate their interaction (Crook,
  1997239).
• Original desk top PC limits the physical
  interaction with the task (use of 1 input),
  (Africano et al, 2004)
• Multiple input devices reduces ability to
  dominate (Stewart, 1999, within Stanton et al,
  2002).
• Each child has an input device - more engagement,
  more active, and more preference by child (Inkpen
  et al. 1999)
• Children playing together on 1 machine completed
  significantly more puzzles than a child playing
  alone (Inkpen et al 1995)

8
Successful Collaboration

• 3 aspects of social interaction necessary for
• successful collaboration (Crook, 1998)
• 1) sense of a community when problem solving
• 2) external sources improving collaboration e.g.)
  computers, digital toys
• 3) presence of interpersonal relations prior to
  collaboration, likes/dislikes/expectations
• Gender composition
• Group task

9
Controversy

• Children working collaboratively without
  technology
• vs.
• Children working collaboratively
• with technology

10
Collaborating with Technology

• Case Study Africano et al (2004)
• Designing Tangible Interfaces for Childrens
  Collaboration
• Aims Investigate whether a new multi-user
  interactive play system supported
  collaboration, interactivity and promoted
  sufficient enjoyment and engagement of younger
  children

11
The Ely Doll

• Both a soft toy and an on-screen character
• An agent designed to guides children through a
  learning experience giving instructions and
  feedback

12
System Components
13
The on-screen Ely Explorer
On-screen Ely
The Teleporter
The on-screen display
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Method

• 9 pre-school children (M 5 years 9 months)
• 14 first grade children (M 7 years)
• Children from the same class were randomly
  assigned to mixed-sex triads
• Two Tasks
• 1) Skills Language Problem Solving
• Location Holland
• Task to grow a tulip
• 2) Skills Mental Arithmetic
• Location Sweden
• Task build a traditional house

15
Measurements

• Six dependent variables analysed
• Interactivity
• Collaboration
• Verbal Discussion
• Engagement
• Motivation and Enjoyment

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Findings

• Results showed that the system supported both
  sequential and concurrent interaction and
  collaboration
• High levels of enjoyment, engagement and
  motivation
• Encouraged communication
• The split interface was seen as a novel way for
  children to learn from each other and compare
  their work constructively
• However, levels of collaboration varied with age.

17
Criticisms of Study

• Too Complex for young children
• Costly
• Collaborative context limited to one setting
• Lack of generally accepted definitions of
  interactivity and collaboration and the
  non-existence of a baseline for these variables
• Differences in cognitive level
• Content design
• Instructing the children before testing

18
Peers vs Technology

• Criticisms of Technology
• Technology is still not sophisticated enough to
  ever replace humans. Problems still exist in
  terms of
• Interactivity
• Mobility
• Intelligence and Adaptability
• Avatars and computer programs, can never fully
  teach and appreciate social skills.
• Facilitator exhaustion is necessary to show the
  true functioning of humans.
• Computer programs are currently only capable of
  repetition and do not offer the element of
  competition like peers do.
• Aided collaboration, but this could be as a
  result of the individual component of this
  exercise

• Criticisms of Peers
• Children under 7 are still egocentric, and
  distract each other.
• Facilitator exhaustion.
• Peer interaction and relationships can remove the
  standardising element that technology aims to
  introduce in education.

19
Technology as a Replacement for Humans

• Can a teacher ever be properly replaced?
• Children get dependant on technology as a means
  to communicate.
• Interest wanes as children get used to the
  technology.
• Limitations for children with learning
  disabilities.

20
Conclusion

• Research shows that the use of computers can
  foster social support and interaction (Africano
  et al, 2004855)
• However, Collaboration with technology is not
  necessarily at a stage that we can say it is
  better than without.
• Technology aims to replace the human and
  standardise the means of collaboration within
  education. However it is impossible at the moment
  to replicate human characteristics such as
  emotion in a computer.
• To conclude there is no such thing as a
  standard human and therefore a computer can
  never replace the human being and the social
  skills they bring to an educational setting.

21
References

• Africano, D., Berg, S., Lindbergh, K., Lundholm,
  P., Nilbrink, F. and Persson, A. (2004) Designing
  Tangible Interfaces for Childrens Collaboration,
  CHI 2004, p.853-868.
• Crook, C. (1998) Children as Computer Users The
  Case of Collaborative Learning, Computers
  Education, 30(3/4), p 237-247.
• Inkpen, K., Booth, K.S., Klawe, M. and Upitis, R.
  (1995) Playing Together Beats Playing Apart,
  Especially For Girls, Proceedings of Computer
  Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL)95, p
  177-181.
• Inkpen, K.M., Ho-Ching, W., Kuederle, O., Scott,
  S.D. and Shoemaker, G.B.D. (1999) This is Fun!
  Were All Best Friends and Were All Playing
  Supporting Childrens Synchronous Collaboration.
  Proceedings of Computer Supported Collaborative
  Learning (CSCL)99, p 252-259.

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References

• Lewis, A., Maras. P, Simonds, L., (2000), Young
  School Children Working Together A Measure of
  Individualism/ Collectivism, Child Care, Health
  Development, 263, pp 229-238.
• Rogoff, B, (1991), Social interaction as
  apprenticeship in thinking guided participation
  in spatial planning in Resnick, L.B., Levine,
  J.M., Tesley, S., (eds) Perspectives on Socially
  Shared Cognition, Washington DC, American
  Psychology Association
• Stahl, G. (2005) Group Cognition in
  Computer-Assisted Collaborative Learning, Journal
  of Computer Assisted Learning, 21, p 79-90.
• Stanton, D., Neale, H. and Bayon, V. (2002)
  Interfaces to Support Childrens Co-present
  Collaboration Multiple Mice and Tangible
  Technologies, Computer Support for Collaborative
  Learning (CSCL) 2002. ACM press, p 342-352.

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References

• Underwood, J. and Underwood, G. (1999) Task
  Effects on Co-operative and Collaborative
  Learning with Computers. In Littleton, K. and
  Light, P. (eds) Learning With Computers,
  Analysing Productive Interaction. London
  Routledge.