The Design of Learning Environments BY: Rachel Rose Ulgado University of California, Irvine Anthropology, Informatics Mentors Professor Gillian Hayes Meg Cramer Martin Hommer

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The Design of Learning EnvironmentsBY Rachel
Rose UlgadoUniversity of California,
IrvineAnthropology, InformaticsMentorsProfesso
r Gillian HayesMeg CramerMartin Hommer
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Traditional Classroom Practices

• Many elementary school classrooms make use of
  reflection as a means of reinforcing student
  learning
• Think, Pair, Share
• This is used frequently in the elementary school
  classroom setting

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Classroom Setups
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Current classroom technology
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Research questions

• In what ways can newer, upcoming technologies be
  integrated into the classroom?
• How can teachers use technology to teach their
  students more effectively and efficiently?
• Specifically, we are interested in how technology
  can be used for capturing student thinking as
  well as reflection.

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Preliminary Work (before I started SURF-IT)

• Interviewing teachers, asking questions about
  classroom routine, protocol, and current uses of
  technology.
• Observing teaching in classrooms
• Workshop 1 Brainstorming and storyboarding
  activities collecting data about teacher-parent
  communication and student reflection

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Recent work

• Workshop 2 Teacher acting activity
• Goal to observe how elementary school teachers
  visualize interaction between students and the
  tablet device.
• Workshop 3 User-Interface guidelines
• Goal to come up with a set of design guidelines
  for our application.
• Workshop 4 Access
• Goal to determine what types of access students,
  teachers, and parents need to student work.

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Workshop Setups
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Recent work (continued)

• Looking at academic articles on related research
  and work.
• Putting together an annotated bibliography.
• Transcribing and coding observation notes and
  interviews
• Helping with user interface design of the tablet

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User interface System design

• Google App Engine Android
• A web interface for creating prompts and pushing
  them to student devices
• Students can log in and then create a composition
  to complete the prompt
• The main interface will be like a canvas, with
  the added feature of having drag-able components

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The students composition

• A composition is made up of several types of
  movable elements/components
• Video Recordings
• Audio Recordings
• Photographs
• Comments/Annotations
• Sketches

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Design Guidelines

• The workshops helped us come up with a set of
  design guidelines to explain what the application
  should support.
• Help capture student thinking, and make captured
  student thinking available to others through
  sharing
• Provide a means for students to have meaningful
  arrangement concept mapping
• Structuring group formation
• Provide a way for students to access past work
  (and storage for that purpose)

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Where we are now

• Concept Validation
• One-on-one concept validation sessions with
  elementary school teachers to determine the
  usability of the application based on our design
  guidelines
• Checking to see how teachers might find the
  application to be a valuable tool for structuring
  lessons and how they could use it for engaging
  students in reflection

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Personal Reflection

• My research experience here has taught me
• How mobile devices such as tablets can be used
  for improving teacher instruction and student
  learning
• My overall experience at SURF-IT has taught me
• How to prioritize the multiple tasks assigned to
  me
• What its like to work within a graduate school
  setting
• How I might apply the skills Ive gathered in
  future work

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The end ?

• Any questions?