EXP: Fostering Collaborative Drawing and Problem Solving through Digital Sketch and Touch

网络学习和未来学习技术计划资助的努力将有助于展望下一代学习技术，并促进我们对人们在技术丰富的环境中如何学习的了解。网络学习探索(EXP)项目通过设计和构建新的学习技术，并研究它们促进学习的可能性和有效使用它们的挑战，来探索新类型的学习技术的可行性。该项目的技术创新是一套用于多点触摸平板电脑和桌子的素描工具，允许小组和整个班级之间的协作素描和共享。素描通常是一种计算和表达人们对一个机制如何工作或一个过程如何随时间发展的理解的方法。协作性草图绘制支持学习者协作地理解机制或过程。虽然存在协作注释草图的技术，但支持协作理解需要其他机制，而这些机制在当前工具中是不可用的。这样的理解对于在许多不同的STEM领域发展领域的专业知识非常重要。研究目标包括设计和探索不同的草图绘制和共享工具的好处，以及更好地了解使用绘图和草图进行交流和理解的好处。PI正在设计和开发下一代协作草图工具，重点是这些工具在意义产生的背景下支持协作草图和共享所需的功能。还有一个重点是引进这类工具，即需要纳入课堂活动的活动类型，以促进共同参与和学习围绕草图进行协作。这些工具将允许创建草图、恢复到早期版本、缩放以进行细化、选择和更改草图大小、选择用于细化、参考的部件以及与其他部件组合；这些工具将支持工程产品的部件-整体关系，并允许对每个部件和系统级进行分析、移动和重新组合。目前正在试验三种交互条件，并比较它们在培养学习方面的承受能力和有效学习面临的挑战：许多用户围坐在一台平板电脑周围，一次只输入一种输入；每台平板电脑上有一名用户与其他拥有平板电脑的用户一起工作；以及许多用户在一张允许多个输入的桌子前工作。这项工作的基础是关于空间推理、发展领域专业知识的草图、表征流利性、协作学习和计算机支持协作学习(CSCL)的文献。当学习者使用这些工具时，对语篇的分析是理解如何最好地设计协作性草图工具以及协作性草图在联合意义形成中所起作用的重要因素。该团队将分析这一讨论以及学习者的草图行为，因为他们调查了草图工具如何影响小组成员的学习结果，它们如何支持协作问题解决和草图交互，协作草图对理解解决问题的潜在广度和解决方案路径的影响，以及支持协作草图的工具设计原则。

The Cyberlearning and Future Learning Technologies Program funds efforts that will help envision the next generation of learning technologies and advance what we know about how people learn in technology-rich environments. Cyberlearning Exploration (EXP) Projects explore the viability of new kinds of learning technologies by designing and building new kinds of learning technologies and studying their possibilities for fostering learning and challenges to using them effectively. This project's technology innovation is a set of sketching tools for multi-touch tablets and tables to allow collaborative sketching and sharing between small groups and a whole class. Sketching is often a means of working out and expressing one's understanding of how a mechanism works or how a process develops over time. Collaborative sketching supports learners collaboratively making sense of a mechanisms or processes. While technology exists for collaboratively annotating sketches, support for collaboratively making sense requires other mechanisms that are not available in current tools. Such sense making is important in developing domain expertise across many different STEM fields. Research goals include designing and exploring the benefits of different sketching and sharing tools and better understanding the benefits of using drawing and sketching for communicating and understanding. The PIs are designing and developing the next generation of collaborative sketching tools, focusing on the functions those tools need to support collaborative sketching and sharing in the context of sense-making. There is also a focus on the introduction of such tools, i.e., the kinds of activities that need to be embedded into classroom activities to foster joint engagement and learning to be collaborative around sketching. The tools will allow sketch creation, reversion to earlier versions, zooming for refinement, selecting and changing sketch size, choosing pieces for elaborating, reference, and combination with other parts; the tools will support part-whole relationships of engineered products and allow both per-part and system-level analyses, moving, and recombining. Three interaction conditions are being trialed and their affordances for fostering learning and challenges to effective learning compared: many users around one tablet with one input at a time, one user per tablet working with others who also have tablets, and many users working at a table that allows multiple inputs. Foundations for this work are in the literatures around spatial reasoning, sketching for development of domain expertise, representational fluency, collaborative learning, and computer support for collaborative learning (CSCL). Important to understanding how to best design collaborative sketching tools and the roles collaborative sketching plays in joint meaning making is analysis of the discourse as learners are using the tools. The team will analyze that discourse along with the sketching behaviors of learners as they investigate how sketching tools impact learning outcomes of group members, how they support collaborative problem solving and sketching interactions, effects of collaborative sketching on understanding of the potential breadth of solutions and solution paths while solving problems, and principles for design of tools that support collaborative sketching.