ARIS Summit 2015

Drawn from design based research, this presentation will present case studies from Jewish Time Jump: New York focused on civic and democrative education, including the use of NPC bias mirroring for facilitating player openness to opposing points of view, and supra reveals to frame enduring historic themes while maintaining narrative suspense.

The EcoMOBILE project (http://ecolearn.gse.harvard.edu) blends classroom learning via a virtual ecosystem with outdoor field trip experiences augmented by mobile technology. We are interested in exploring how best to support middle school students in making connections between learning about ecosystems and activities with observation and data collection in the real world.Using EcoMUVE, students conduct inquiry in immersive simulated ecosystems Then, with EcoMOBILE, students use mobile devices running augmented reality (AR) experiences and probeware to collect scientific data during local field trips. The AR experiences are designed to direct students to geo-referenced locations to access important ecosystems information; to engage with simulations that illustrate aspects of causal complexity; and to guide students to observe, make predictions, and collect data in the field. Augmented reality can support students’ ability to recall and use information about variables that they can’t see (e.g., photosynthesis, respiration), while on a field trip.

This talk will review analytic techniques that have been useful for understanding the behavior of students who have participated in the Play the Past exhibit that was built with ARIS at the Minnesota History Center. The talk will also go over how to these techniques can be used to identify behaviors that reflect engagement and learning.