An Enactive approach to inform design principles for ...

App Lab + ER Lab Research Collaboration – August 2017







An Enactive approach to inform design principles for AR/VR meaning-making Claudio Aguayo1 & Cristóbal Dañobeitia2 1 App Lab & Centre for Learning and Teaching, Auckland University of Technology, New Zealand. 2 Embodied Reports Lab, Santiago, Chile Keywords: Emerging learning technologies, meaning-making, enaction, extended cognition, AR/VR Project Summary A critical factor in educational success is the level of engagement that learners are able to acquire towards educational content. Designing meaningful learning requires an understanding of how different target audiences, including cross-cultural audiences, experience learning situations. New mobile technology (smart devices), pedagogical frameworks (e.g. BYOD, bring your own device; self-generated learning), and digital platforms, such as Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR), can contribute in developing meaning-making of knowledge, potentially leading to new ways of thinking. However, in order to harness the educational potential of new mobile learning technologies, it is crucial to understand how learners experience the learning process to design and develop meaningful learning environments (FitzGerald et al., 2013; Wu et al., 2013). Such process in turn is determined by the sociocultural background of learners (Aguayo, 2016; Cole & Engeström, 2001). New theoretical and methodological advancements from cognitive science now allows for addressing the subjective experience of individuals by combining quantitative biological responses with qualitative data (elicitation interviews). This experimental setting is inspired in enactive approaches from cognitive science and promotes taking into account cultural, biological, and subjective aspects of human educational experiences. In light of this, we propose to investigate how audiences learn and relate to educational AR/VR content. To do this we will use a multidimensional approach, evaluating the impact of digital spaces within authentic learning contents and contexts in cross-cultural audiences. This evaluation will be conducted using modern wearable physiological sensors for heart rate and skin conductance monitoring specifically designed for research in cognitive science (e.g. Brouwer et al., 2015), inspired by enactive approaches (Froese & Di Paolo, 2011); and subjective reports using elicitation interview techniques (Petitmengin, 2006). Both of these are related to emotional and cognitive activity. This constitutes a non-invasive way to evaluate the level of engagement, subjective experience and differential biological responses of learners to educational AR/VR content and environments. With this we aim to develop design principles and cross-cultural impact indexes with a solid empirical base, which can inform the design and development of educational AR/VR content capable of enhancing engagement across different types of audiences and educational sectors in meaningful ways. In addition, the proposed evaluation methodology could in the future be developed in commercial applications.

App Lab + ER Lab Research Collaboration – August 2017

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