TY - GEN
T1 - In-class Collaborative Learning Environment for Middle School Children
T2 - 22nd Annual ACM Interaction Design and Children Conference: Rediscovering Childhood, IDC 2023
AU - Sultana, Afroza
AU - Bakogeorge, Alex
AU - Tibu, Tudor
AU - Zeng, Litong
AU - Hadinezhad, Shafagh
AU - Zaccagnini, Luigi
AU - Cang, Xuesong
AU - Gnesdilow, Dana
AU - Tarun, Aneesh P.
AU - Puntambekar, Sadhana
AU - Tissenbaum, Mike
AU - Mazalek, Ali
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2023 Copyright held by the owner/author(s).
PY - 2023/6/19
Y1 - 2023/6/19
N2 - Creating effective middle school STEM curricula requires a combination of individual and collaborative learning. Prior studies showed that finding a proper balance and providing uninterrupted knowledge transmission between different learning modes can be challenging in such mixed pedagogical approaches. In this paper, we present a multi-device interactive educational platform named SimSnap to teach biology curriculum to middle school children. SimSnap facilitates interactions among touchscreen Chromebooks to perform in-class individual and group activities. We present a usability analysis study with eight middle school children where they learn about the influence of temperature on tomato plant growth. Our study demonstrated that SimSnap facilitates group discussions to complete collaborative tasks. It also creates seamless knowledge propagation between prior to current tasks to learn about more complex concepts from previous simpler activities. Middle school children gave overall high usability ratings and positive feedback on SimSnap. This study also helped to outline some design recommendations for future improvements of SimSnap.
AB - Creating effective middle school STEM curricula requires a combination of individual and collaborative learning. Prior studies showed that finding a proper balance and providing uninterrupted knowledge transmission between different learning modes can be challenging in such mixed pedagogical approaches. In this paper, we present a multi-device interactive educational platform named SimSnap to teach biology curriculum to middle school children. SimSnap facilitates interactions among touchscreen Chromebooks to perform in-class individual and group activities. We present a usability analysis study with eight middle school children where they learn about the influence of temperature on tomato plant growth. Our study demonstrated that SimSnap facilitates group discussions to complete collaborative tasks. It also creates seamless knowledge propagation between prior to current tasks to learn about more complex concepts from previous simpler activities. Middle school children gave overall high usability ratings and positive feedback on SimSnap. This study also helped to outline some design recommendations for future improvements of SimSnap.
KW - Collaborative learning
KW - classroom learning
KW - middle school STEM education
KW - middle school biology curriculum
KW - middle school children
KW - multi-device interaction
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85169103745&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85169103745&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1145/3585088.3593915
DO - 10.1145/3585088.3593915
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:85169103745
T3 - Proceedings of IDC 2023 - 22nd Annual ACM Interaction Design and Children Conference: Rediscovering Childhood
SP - 661
EP - 666
BT - Proceedings of IDC 2023 - 22nd Annual ACM Interaction Design and Children Conference
PB - Association for Computing Machinery
Y2 - 19 June 2023 through 22 June 2023
ER -