Minimizing Disorientation in Informal Learning Environments

This study aims to explore the factors that contribute toward disorienting children from their learning task in an informal learning environment (ILE) using science festivals as a context and how the app can reorient users.

Background and Goals

We have several research questions in mind to help us achieve the project's goal.

Generative Research Goals:

Understand how disorientation might develop in tech-centered learning activities.
Identify the factors that cause disorienting learners in ILE and how they reorient towards the learning task.

Design Research Goals:

How can we leverage the knowledge of inherent factors while designing mobile educational applications for use in ILEs?

Method

Prior studies indicated that children in Science festivals appreciate hands-on exploration. Due to this fact, we designed and developed a mobile application that motivates children to learn more about leaves by doing hands-on learning activities. To understand which factors in and out of the mobile application disorient children from learning, we designed an experiment that incorporates different app versions for the try-outs to examine the effect of the presence, absence, or combination of progress notification and delay.

We set up our experiment in the sience festival at Virginia Tech. We used an observational cross-sectional study methodology to discover the features that cause disorientation and reorientation in a scientific festival since such a study can be conducted very quickly and inexpensively, making it a good fit for investigating learning in ILEs.

Crucuial Insights

Our study revealed that the biggest distractors came from family, especially parent(s), while children performed a learning task using mobile applications in an ILE such as a science festival.

We observed that the progress bar did not help in orienting the participants towards the task, as young participants did not seem to notice it or understand its purpose. Besides, the delay between actions caused participant and their parents to drop out of the experiments or complete the task without considering do it successfully or not.

Our findings indicated that co-participation of parents, interactive learning, and minimal design are several important design considerations to minimize disorientation for elementary school-aged children in an ILE.

For additional findings and learnings, please get in touch with morva.saati@gmail.com, or see our publication, "Designing Mobile Applications to Minimize Disorientation in Informal Learning Environments," relating to this study.

This paper got a best paper honorable mention award at ACM Interaction Design and Children (IDC) conference 2021.

Research Impact

Design Impact

Results from this exploratory event inform the design of educational mobile applications for use in ILE to provide a learning experience while minimizing
disorientation.

Several features/circumstances are being prioritized.

Present new design strategies by stakeholders collaboration.

Strategic Impact

Stakeholder collaboration Impact

My Learnings

Designing mobile applications for young children in order to minimize disorientation also requires psychological information.
The participant observation method, also known as ethnographic research, is an appropriate approach for collecting data and understanding the big picture of the problem. However, follow-up interviews with participants and children could reveal possible reasons for disorientation and the strategies children use to cope with it.
There are several challenges in conducting experimental research for young children (e.g., ethical concerns, limited cognitive capabilities, etc.).

Neelma Bhatti, Morva Saaty, and Dr. Scott McCrickard.

Fall 2019

Bhatti, N., Saaty, M., & McCrickard, S. (2021, June). Designing Mobile Applications to Minimize Disorientation in Informal Learning Environments. In Interaction Design and Children (pp. 196-203).