Research Stories

by Sheilah Britton

People around the globe are adapting to the dispersal of the digital Diaspora. But teachers and others working in the world of education have been slow to respond. Many schools have not been able to keep up with technology, let alone understand the way in which members of the current generation use it to learn. At Arizona State University, researchers are taking cues directly from students themselves. They have incorporated what once might have been considered distractions and are busy creating tools that are transforming the learning process.

David Birchfield is a professor in the Arts, Media and Engineering Program (AME) at ASU. He leads a team that developed SMALLab, short for Situational Multimedia Arts Learning Lab.

SMALLab is a multimodal, interactive environment for learning. It is a freestanding, interactive space. A cube-shaped trussing structure frames its open architecture. The structure supports sensing and feedback equipment, including a camera array, a top-mounted video projector, and audio speakers for surround sound feedback. The system architecture includes tools familiar to all the members of generation Y—gamepads, wiimotes, and embedded sensors.

During the past few years, more than 25,000 learners have used SMALLab pilot programs through regional school and museum programs. Birchfield and his team have built a solid theoretical foundation to back up why the environment is working.

“We had an idea that SMALLab could help students with their ability to move between different kinds of representation. I call that ability ’representational fluency,’” Birchfield explains. “For example, consider a physics concept like acceleration. The concept can be represented through paper and pencil methodology. We can create a diagram of how something moves. Or we can use algebraic representations that define how something moves.”

Representational fluency allows a participant to experience the feel or the sound of the event. In other words, they get to embody the event. Embodied learning empowers the physical body to function as an expressive interface.

In 2007, a SMALLab moved into Scottsdale’s Coronado High School. Teachers in the Scottsdale Unified School District got the chance to incorporate SMALLab into their teaching curricula. The lab was used for language arts, astronomy, and oceanography.

Dan Sweeney is a geology teacher. He worked with SMALLab artists and technologists to develop a visual depositional environment. They built video layers of the Earth’s crust into the space. Students were asked to match sedimentary soils to index fossils. They literally moved an image from one space to another to layer the rock. Using motion tracking, they received immediate feedback as to whether or not their choice was correct.

Sweeney saw that his students were completely plugged in to the environment. This kind of learning came naturally to them.

“It’s always best when it’s discovery-based learning or inquiry-based learning,” he says. “Students are coming to their own conclusions based on a certain set of rules or concepts. That always sticks with you better than just memorizing some set of vocabulary words or some words in a text. It’s by far superior to your regular classroom-type setting.”

Norm Colling teaches astronomy, physics, and oceanography at Coronado. He, too, saw the “wow” factor that engaged his students.

“The students are a part of the model. That is how the system works. Students manipulate things. They react to sounds and visual stimuli in that environment. And they can have a discussion based on something they actually interacted with in a multidimensional way,” he explains. “It really draws them in and makes them take ownership.”

Lisa Tolentino is an AME graduate student. She has worked with SMALLab since she began her doctoral program in 2007. Tolentino takes her experience with people who have exceptional needs and applies it to SMALLab as part of a future classroom. She believes creative activities within the space strip away the notion of a “human deficiency.” Technology becomes a partner and friend in expression.

“My overall goal is to create an experience for these students and their teachers,” she explains. “I want them to be creative together, connect with one another, and learn from each other.”

In summer 2008, SMALLab was awarded a $590,000 MacArthur Foundation grant in partnership with the Institute of Play in New York. The project is called Gaming SMALLab. It combines SMALLab’s research on mixed-reality learning with the Institute of Play's work in games and learning. Collaboration began immediately. Game designers, educators, artists, and technologists are working with AME’s SMALLab. A second SMALLab was installed at Parsons School of Design in New York.

Katie Salen is executive director for Institute of Play and an associate professor at Parsons. She says that learning based on game experience is problem solving at its most basic.

“Games really support kids in problem solving, and often in a collaborative context,“ she says. “Multi-player games often give kids a chance to specialize in certain areas of expertise. All of these things really map to the 21st-century skill set. Kids need to know and be able to collaborate in cross-functional teams.”

Beyond mastering the skill set, players actually influence the design of the game as it is developing. Since game design is a process, young players understand the need for feedback.

“It’s very important for kids to learn how to iterate. That is something they struggle with in writing and math,” Salen explains. “They never think about the idea that a math problem might take a couple of tries. And when you fail, it’s not that you suck, it’s that you had a wrong assumption about something and you need to try a different way.”

Young people who discover learning through SMALLab quickly adapt to the tools and the technology. The researchers say that evaluation of Coronado students supports significant gains in the process of geological evolution. They showed an improved ability to collaboratively reason and to apply a collaborative, inquiry-based approach to learning. Learning gains were also documented for language arts students regarding their ability to identify, generate, and critique literary metaphors.

Birchfield and his team say the gains made are the work of many. Teachers have contributed valuable ideas. Students are able to participate in the learning. Based on their feedback, ideas are re-worked ideas until they provide even more solid learning experiences.

“These kinds of technology are just another tool,” says Birchfield. “We view SMALLab as a way to bring together emerging technology with the best practices in teaching and learning.”

The Arts, Media and Engineering Program is part of the Herberger College of the Arts and the Ira A. Fulton School of Engineering at ASU. Gaming SMALLab is also supported in part by the Intel Foundation, the National Science Foundation, and the Kauffman Foundation.