Matthew Daniel's List: Methods

• A major advantage of egocentric perspectives is that they enable participants' actional immersion and motivation through embodied, concrete learning, whereas exocentric perspectives foster more abstract, symbolic insights gained from distancing oneself from the context (seeing the forest rather than the trees). Bicentric experiences that alternate these views combine these strengths.
• mmersive interfaces can foster educational experiences that draw on a powerful pedagogy: situated learning. Situated learning requires authentic contexts, activities, and assessment coupled with guidance from expert modeling, mentoring, and "legitimate peripheral participation"
• Our research results from River City show that a broader range of students gain substantial knowledge and skills in scientific inquiry through immersive simulation than through conventional instruction or equivalent learning experiences delivered via a board game. Our findings indicate that students are deeply engaged by this curriculum through actional and symbolic immersion and are developing sophisticated problem-finding skills (in a complex setting with many phenomena, problems must be identified and formulated before they can be solved). Compared with a similar, paper-based curriculum that included laboratory experiences, students overall (regardless of factors such as gender, ethnicity, or English language proficiency) were more engaged in the immersive interface and learned as much or more (11, 12).

  • evidence of success
• Many academically low-performing students do as well as their high-performing peers in River City, especially on performance-based measures (such as a letter to River City's mayor describing an intervention to help reduce illness and providing evidence to support this claim). Digital immersion allows these students to build confidence in their academic abilities by stepping out of their real-world identity of poor performer academically, which shifts their frame of self-reference to successful scientist in the virtual context. This suggests that immersive media may have the potential to release trapped intelligence and engagement in many learners, if we can understand how best to design instruction using this type of immersive, simulated experience.

  • low-performers can drastically improve by leaving that "outcast" stigma of the class and enter the body of a successful scientist, building confidence and unlocking trapped intelligence.
• Immersion may enhance transfer through simulation of the real world.
• Researchers differentiate between two ways of measuring transfer: sequestered problem-solving and preparations for future learning
• "learn how to learn
• One of the major criticisms of instruction today is the low rate of far-transfer generated by presentational instruction.
• As the students move around a physical location, such as their school playground or sports fields (Fig. 3B), a map on their handheld displays digital objects and virtual people who exist in a simulated world superimposed on real space (Fig. 4). When students come close to these digital artifacts, the augmented reality and GPS software triggers video-, audio-, and text files, which provide narrative, navigation and collaboration cues, as well as academic challenges to build math and literacy skills (SOM Text 3).

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• • Emerging writing programs provide formative assessment for students to improve writing and provide more time for teacher. Tested an app and it provides very generic feedback, still needs teacher oral and written assessment.