Task design

Since our intention for subsequent studies is to employ games to create engaging and structured activities, it is significant to see that learners react to even the simplest of location-based activities in game-playing terms. It is apparent that we can easily engage learners in an activity, but the challenge is to ensure that they engaged with all of the activity and not just surface level aspects of it.

In particular, students seem to be fascinated with location, and co-location, and how their movements can form part of an ongoing activity. This accords with DeweyÕs principles of experiential learning (Dewey, 1916), and also PapertÕs notion of linking dead learning in the classroom into something more live and meaningful away from the classroom (Papert, 1980).

Location was a key part of the activity because the students had to locate the hotspots, which meant they had to be able to navigate to them by locating themselves on the map, relating this to the environment, and choosing the correct direction to travel in. This caused numerous problems for several students. The primary problem was that the map had a fixed, north-pointing orientation. As students turned, the map remained static, apart from small fluctuations due to the GPS signal Ð GPS receivers cannot provide cardinal direction information when stationary. Because we had simplified

the map and removed the smaller features, the students often saw only a screen containing one or more hotspots and their own location marker. This was insufficient for them to determine which way to head in order to reach a target hotspot. Students were instructed to face away from the school with the PDA pointing towards the rear of the field to orient themselves, but few heeded this advice, instead making many experimental movements in order to find out which way they should go. For hotspots anchored to specific features, such as the wall or tree, the students knew which way to go, highlighting that was particularly an issue related to placing target hotspots away from recognizable environmental features. This suggests that more closely associating target locations with recognizable environmental features will help learners to navigate the space more successfully.

Another challenge we face is how to support the applied cycle of learning as proposed by Kolb (1975), expanding on DeweyÕs (1916; 1938) experiential foundation. KolbÕs model (Kolb, 1984) includes engagement and action (as active experimentation and concrete experience), and reflection (as reflective observation and abstract conceptualisation), with the latter leading to more engagement. Engagement and action are easy, they are almost unavoidable when presenting learners with an appealing activity, but how can we promote reflection? Admittedly in the present study there was little to reflect on, but we saw that over-engagement in particular aspects of a task may interfere with the engagement in other aspects that was intended by the designers of the activity.

The challenge therefore appears to be one of how to effectively couple or integrate the learning content into the interactive experience. The concept of extrinsic versus intrinsic motivation is important here. Malone (1980) identified that for the motivational effects of games to be maximized, the motivation must be intrinsic to the game. In other words, players must want to play the game for its own sake, and not because of some external reason. This concept is highly salient for the use of games

to deliver learning; it is not sufficient to Ôbolt-onÕ learning to a gaming activity, we must instead try to integrate the learning into the game and have the two things serve as one unified experience. This importance of intrinsic motivation in learning has been acknowledged, for example by Lepper & Malone (1987) and Habgood (2005). Game theorists such as Koster (2005) have further suggested that pleasure may be derived from the activity of solving puzzles within a game.

Learners appeared to be highly engaged by the ÔdoingÕ aspects of the activity, and were quick to latch on to goals such as Ôfind the hotspotsÕ. The related goals, read the content and respond to questions, were largely ignored, or required prompting. When questioned about this, the students stated that they enjoyed being outdoors and being involved in doing things, but did not want to have to read any content on the screen. This implies that we should minimize the display of content and focus on making the PDA a tool with which to perform an activity. It may be acceptable to display status information to inform learners of their current distance from their goals and offer them options, but trying to embed content within the context of outdoor, location-based activity appears to be difficult.

We were successful in using the environment to provide a focus for the task, and using real features of the physical space did appear to be a draw for students. Using features that were clearly visible meant that they had something to focus their shared discussions (minimal though these were) and they were able to orient themselves to the map and decide on what to look at next. It seems we can exploit the immediate engagement of being outdoors with a mobile device to kick-start learners into beginning a task. However, we saw that this initial engagement could wear off without further feedback from the activity. The exploratory activity in this study gave students no feedback about what they had done or what they could do next, and many students appeared to struggle with this, asking what they should do or just doing

All of this highlights the difficulties of conducting an outdoor learning activity where we are relying on handheld devices to engage and motivate the learners. This engagement and motivation is present at the beginning, but after that it becomes difficult to coordinate the learnersÕ activities and they find it difficult to do this themselves. Discussions with the teacher involved with these trials further cemented this view: there are a vast number of opportunities for learning outdoors, but the primary problems of coordination and being able to deliver an activity that is at least as structured as one in the classroom are paramount.

Frohberg et al. (2009) comment on this issue of giving learners too much control over their own learning, and suggest that, while giving over more control to the students themselves can be beneficial, it can be detrimental if they are given too much, with students becoming uncoordinated and distracted. In attempting to move away from the classroom activity, this study appears to have moved too far towards the other extreme, and subsequent activities will need to be carefully designed in order to provide a more optimal level of control.

Another factor that may have led to lower engagement is the fact that after a while the students appeared to realize that there was nothing more to the task than could be observed initially. They enjoyed finding the imaginary river, but once they had located a few hot spots they realized that the remainder of the task would yield few surprises and hence they were perhaps aware that there were no further rewards to be had. The implication here is that initial engagement needs to be followed by a structured task that keeps providing rewards.

The task therefore very quickly became a treasure hunt for the students. They fixated on finding the hotspots, often at the exclusion of paying attention to other goals. One pair demonstrated this to the extreme, taking great lengths to locate a hotspot that, due to GPS errors, was temporarily beyond their reach at the back of the field. This

demonstrates the power of the location-based activity to engage, but perhaps only at the surface level. It may prove more difficult to engage the learners in the underlying learning process that we are trying to promote. All of this implies that games are a highly promising direction to follow in terms of wanting to provide in situ support for field-based enquiry learning. Students readily treat the activity as a game, respond well to challenge, look for feedback, and want to be doing rather than reading.

5.4.3 Evaluation

We employed a mixed-methods approach in the evaluation of this study, and found that this was a rewarding and effective approach that allowed us a rich exploration of the behaviour of learners both in the field and in the classroom. However, it became apparent that what was of most interest was the processes that learners were engaged in, and what mediated and impacted on those processes. The outcome of the learning was less interesting from the point of view of understanding how to support learners with mobile technologies.

This fits with current calls to approach learning more as a ÔdoingÕ activity rather than an Ôacquiring knowledgeÕ activity. The richness of the learner activity suggested that it is much more valuable to explore how and why they are learning rather than just whether they are learning at all. Granted, outcome measures give us an indication of success, but as we saw it can be difficult to set up evaluations so that differences between groups can be observed when trying to support this kind of activity-based learning.

For subsequent studies, this implies that we should further adopt a process-centric approach to evaluation, and look for methods that allow us to understand learner activity on its own terms, in the context in which it arises. This means that we need to use enhanced tools to both record and analyse learner activity. Critical incidents were useful in this first study to identify salient issues, but for evaluating subsequent

designs of location-based learning activities we will need to explore how different factors relate to one another and what are the core processes involved in learnersÕ activities.

Reflecting on the post-task interviews conducted with the students, it seems that although the students were able to provide helpful suggestions about future versions of the activity and were open to creative thinking about the task, they found it difficult to provide detailed information about their own activities and motivations. This further contributed to our decision to focus on process-centric evaluation, with much more in- depth analysis of field data rather than relying on post-hoc data gathering.

5.4.4 Summary

This study has provided insights into the factors that impact on students using a location-based mobile learning activity to explore the grounds of their school. We saw first-hand how such an activity compared with a similar activity indoors, and although there are some apparent benefits or at least aspects of being outdoors than can be exploited, there remain significant problems to overcome in terms of maintaining engagement, coordinating activity, and keeping students on task. These findings will be helpful in designing further studies using the PaSAT toolkit, and the overall indication appears to be that structured activities such as games, which can provide motivation, structure and ongoing reward, are a strong candidate for attempting to support field-based learning, but there are specific and significant issues to overcome relating to ongoing motivation, deep engagement, and coordination of learner activity.

Chapter 6

Design of BuildIt: a situated mobile learning game to support