Informal Community Science Investigators (iCSI) creates a network of four geographically diverse informal science institutions working together on strategies to engage youth ages 10-13 through location based augmented reality (AR) games played on smartphones. These high-interest, kid-friendly games will be used by families visiting the institutions and by youth who enroll in more intensive summer camp programs. Using AR games, participants will engage in playful but scientifically-grounded investigations drawing on each institution's research, exhibits, and natural spaces. For example, a botanical garden might engage young visitors through AR games with themes related to native and invasive species, while a zoo might create a game experience focusing on illegal wildlife trade. Participants in the iCSI summer camp program will have more intensive experiences, including work with the host institution's scientists, opportunities to develop original augmented reality games, and experiences with game-related service learning and citizen science programs. For both target groups (families and campers), the location specific games build understanding of both the institution's mission and the broader realm of scientific research and application. The project will test the notion of participants as "learner hero," the link between game play and the individual's development of competency, autonomy and the relationship to real world experience, in this case through community action on the subject of the game developed. To that end, participants will be encouraged to extend their involvement through related investigations on site and participation in community activities and projects that can be done at home. Social media tools such as Facebook and web sites managed by the host institutions will provide recognition for this extended engagement, helping participants maintain ties to the program. Additionally, program resources provide assistance to adult family members in nurturing and sustaining youth interest in STEM activities and careers. A major effort of the project will be development of a new software infrastructure called TaleBlazer for the augmented reality game that will enable teachers and students to develop their own game that incorporates real data collection and scientific model building. The new platform will enhance the game play platform MITAR developed with NSF funding.
This research explores how to support collaborative learning practices when science museum visitors employ their own personal mobile devices as Opportunistic User Interfaces (O-UIs) to manipulate a simulation-based museum exhibit. The sophisticated graphical capabilities of modern mobile devices have the potential to distract visitors, a phenomenon known as the heads-down effect. To study the impact of O-UI design on collaboration, a highly-dynamic "complex" O-UI was contrasted against more simplistic, "remote-control" OUI design, in the context of a cancer-treatment simulation. As expected
Through an iterative design process involving museum educators, learning scientists and technologists, and drawing upon our previous experiences in handheld game design and a growing body of knowledge on learning through gaming, we designed an interactive mystery game called Mystery at the Museum (the High Tech Whodunnit), which was designed for synchronous play of groups of parents and children over a two to three hour period. The primary design goals were to engage visitors more deeply in the museum, engage visitors more broadly across museum exhibits, and encourage collaboration between
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Eric KlopferJudy PerryKurt SquireMing-Fong JanConstance Steinkuehler
Studies of interactive systems in museums have raised important design considerations, but so far have failed to address sufficiently the particularities of family interaction and co-operation. This paper introduces qualitative video-based observations of Japanese families using an interactive portable guide system in a museum. Results suggest that interaction with the system is socially structured through family relationships, leading to unexpected usage. The paper highlights the necessity to more fully consider familial relationships in HCI.
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Tom HopeYoshiyuki NakamuraToru TakahashiAtsushi NobayashiShota FukuokaMasahiro HamasakiTakuichi Nishimura
The availability of mobile and stationary devices opens up new challenges to support users in several contexts. Here we present a multi-device environment to support cooperation among museum visitors through games. In particular, we present a design and the associated implementation for using a combination of PDAs and public displays to enhance the learning experience in a museum setting by using game playing interactions. The basic assumption is to use the mobile devices for individual game play, and the situated displays for synchronized public views of shared game play; the individual game
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Riccardo DiniFabio PaternoCarmen Santoro
Designers of mobile, social systems must carefully think about how to help their users manage spatial, semantic, and social modes of navigation. Here, we describe our deployment of MobiTags, a system to help museum visitors interact with a collection of "open storage" exhibits, those where the museum provides little curatorial information. MobiTags integrates social tagging, art information, and a map to support navigation and collaborative curation of these open storage collections. We studied 23 people's use of MobiTags in a local museum, combining interview data with device use logs and
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Dan CosleyJonathan BaxterSoyoung LeeBrian AlsonSaeko NomuraPhil AdamsChethan SarabuGeri Gay
The museum visit is an important part of elementary school science teaching. However, a divide exists between teachers, who require curricular accountability, and museums, who emphasize free-choice exploration. Can a carefully constructed worksheet bridge this divide by providing free-choice exploration of curricular topics during the museum visit? In the present study, a theoretical framework was constructed to inform the design of worksheets as free-choice learning devices. This framework was used to analyze the design of an existing museum worksheet. Subsequently, curriculum-related
This article presents a contextual model of learning that examines visitor learning in museums. It explores features of the model, factors that can influence learning in a museum setting, and challenges associated with teaching in a museum context.
Guided by contextual and constructivist perspectives, this study situates museumgoing in the everyday lives of children, exploring how children perceive their experiences in museums in relationship to the other places they visit. Children tended to categorize places by their relationship to them, placing museums most frequently in groupings organized by quality descriptors, when they visit, and social context. They perceive and value museums as places to look at unique, special things of interest to them. Most children prefer visiting museums with family and friends, with control of their
There is a growing commitment within science centres and museums to deploy computer-based exhibits to enhance participation and engage visitors with socio-scientific issues. As yet however, we have little understanding of the interaction and communication that arises with and around these forms of exhibits, and the extent to which they do indeed facilitate engagement. In this paper, we examine the use of novel computer-based exhibits to explore how people, both alone and with others, interact with and around installations. The data are drawn from video-based field studies of the conduct and
In this chapter we introduce the notion of islands of expertise, explore links between related socio-cultural and information processing theory, and overview a study of family conversations while parents and children look at authentic and replica fossils in a museum.