Q: Tell me about the new project.

A: It's funding for two years to look at learning in tangible learning environments, but to try and look more specifically at the kinds of interpretations or instances or understandings of scientific concepts that tangibles can engender.

To do that we've devised a framework trying to unpack some of the variables within the tangible learning environment. The framework focuses on representation as a kind of central issue, focusing on the different ways of linking representation to artifacts that are made possible in a tangible environment. One of the interesting things about tangible environments is this flexibility of being able to combine artifact with representation in different ways, and combine it with actions. We are going to be looking at whether, for example, embedding an object with a representation generates a different kind of inference or understanding about a concept, (say, about friction, in physics), as opposed to a visual representation, such as an animation on a big screen.

You mentioned science and physics. Can you be more specific?

Because tangibles have not really been explored to any degree of specificity in different domains, ideally it would be interesting to focus on a domain that intuitively lends itself to physical activity, like forces and motion in physics, but also to look at a completely different domain that is not necessarily related to physicality. One idea is to do something in genetics, using the physical properties of materials to portray features of, for example, meiosis, where the fragility of the process is instrumental in the occurrence of crossovers. Here the idea would be to have some physical materials that are ‘flimsy’ or have quite fragile connections, making the fragility of genetic processes more apparent and in conjunction with digital augmentation, conveying the process of genetic patterns more explicitly. You don't automatically think of that as being a kind of tangible thing that you would explore.

What age level?

For something like physics, and forces and motion, we will work with primary school age kids, because there is something that intuitively makes sense about them exploring in that kind of environment. But if we look at genetics we'd like to do it with A-level and sixth form students, because you don't automatically think, 'Oh they should explore physical environments like this.' There's something quite interesting about that, to see if it does actually facilitate different kinds of interpretations.

Sounds like this builds on your previous work, like Ambient Wood.

Yeah it does, but it's more specific in terms of tangibles. Projects like Ambient Wood and Hunting of the Snark used tangible and sensor technologies, but they much broader in scope and included environmentally embedded sensors, and wearables - technology embedded in jackets and things. This work will be more specific, using tabletops, with embedded objects, but also associated representations on screens, or audio as well.

So how are you actually going to make these things?

It’s a collaboration with George Roussos. We'll have two Research Fellows. One will be a computer scientist, who will be doing most of the building and technology development, and the other will be social science researcher, who will be doing to cognition research and working with kids in schools. At the moment we're just exploring technologies and sourcing technologies and deciding what kind of tabletop to use.

A lot of stuff out there right now.

I imagine that it's going to use computer vision to do object recognition.

So is your background in cognitive psychology?

Yes. My first degree is in Psychology, and I did a DPhil in Psychology, but it was kind of Cognitive Science/Psychology. I did a post-doc on Equator, which focused on exploring ubiquitous computing for supporting play and learning.

My DPhil was on external representations – animations – for supporting students learning about dynamic processes in biology. And it was very external representation-focused in terms of how the properties of the representation help you to think about things in different ways. It showed how different features facilitate as well as hinder interpretation - there were instances in which children misinterpreted as well as made good interpretations.

So that's the kind of concept I'm bringing over to this project. I'm going to be looking at particular properties of the connections between tangible and representation - whether learners generate inferences that make sense, or whether they misinterpret things, and how the representations and activity work in helping them understand a concept. That aspect comes from my DPhil. The work that I've done on Equator with ubiquitous computing has given me experience in working with tangible environments. So we will doing iterative design while we're building the environment initially, and draw on things we learned from those projects. So this work really brings together both of my main projects quite nicely.

I guess an issue that you will deal with is external representations, versus learners' internal representations, and how or whether they'll link those together.

As part of it we'll be looking at what kind of understanding children have before they work in the environment. And then some kind of understanding afterwards. We've got a series of phases we'll be doing. They're divided into the features of the framework. One of them is location. So whether the representation is located in the object or on the table or on a screen will form the basis of one set of experiments, which will look at the effect on children’s understanding according to different ways of combining things with the representations at different locations. And it will also look at the effects of combining differently located representations. So, for example, if you have some representation here and over there, where do they pay attention, and does it confuse their inferences, or does it enrich their understanding?

Are you mainly concerned with cognitive aspects, or will you look at all at any social aspects?

We’ll be focusing more on the cognitive aspects. I'm not saying the social is not important, it's just a matter of trying to focus the work down. So it will be more on the cognitive aspects. And action. The other thing we're interested in is how you can make explicit what you're doing through action. That's a kind of an externalisation as well. One of the things you look at is how children are talking, what they're externalising verbally. But also with a tangible environment you externalise physically as well.

Are you working on anything else?

I'm involved in three other projects at the moment. One is the Learning Skills for Science project, with Michael Reiss and Magda Kolokitha That started about a year ago, and is an evaluation project of a teaching program for secondary school science.

The other two things I'm just working up at the moment. One is a project with Carey Jewitt and David Mitchell. We have just been piloting some work in schools looking at children's learning with Google Earth and digital worlds, and are interested in how learners learn with these kinds of representations - geographical information systems. There's a lot of work, as far as I understand, on teachers and teachers' development - how they're integrating it into the classroom, but not looking at whether it's effective for learning.

I'm doing some other work with Steve Hinske and Matthias Lampe from ETH Zurich, in the pervasive computing department, where they have developed an augmented toy environment, using RFID embedded into Playmobil figures and scenery, on a tabletop environment. The environment is designed for children age six to seven, and they are interested in evaluating it for ‘playful learning’ and supporting pretend play. In collaboration with Dr. Nicola Yuill, from University of Sussex, we are carrying out a number evaluation studies early next year.

What's really interesting in all of these is that there is lots of research on technology out there, but it's always technology-led. Whereas what's nice about your work is that you're actually looking at whether and how people are learning. That relates to this place - do you like it at LKL? It seems a good atmosphere for exactly this type of project, because we have the technical capabilities in house as well.

Its an excellent place to be because of the multi-disciplinarity. From the point of view of being able to collaborate with people from Birkbeck too, it's great - it's ideal for somebody like me.