A student-led comparison of techniques for augmenting the field experience

Priestnall, Gary; Brown, Elizabeth; Sharples, Mike and Polmear, Gemma (2009). A student-led comparison of techniques for augmenting the field experience. In: mLearn 2009 Conference, 26-30 Oct 2009, Orlando, Florida, USA.

URL: http://www.lsri.nottingham.ac.uk/ejb/preprints/pri...

Abstract

We report a study in which 30 university geography students compared five techniques to enhance the experience of visiting outdoor locations. The techniques were: a pre-prepared acetate overlay of the visual scene; a custom-designed visitor guide running on a PDA; the mScape location-based software running on a GPS-enabled mobile phone; Google Earth on a tablet PC; and a head-mounted virtual reality display. The students were given the assignment as part of their assessed coursework for a field trip to the UK Lake District, where they had to evaluate the techniques and propose improvements or future designs to enable tourists or students on field trips to gain an enhanced understanding of their surroundings. The paper describes these techniques, reports the process and results of the student assignment, and concludes with a discussion of some broader issues emerging from the project.

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About

  • Item ORO ID
  • 29887
  • Item Type
  • Conference or Workshop Item
  • Extra Information
  • Some of the development work, in particular the bespoke PDA application, was undertaken as part of the HEFCE-funded SPLINT project (www. splint-cetl.ac.uk).
  • Keywords
  • mobile technologies; visitor experience; field trip; geography; student comparison; evaluation
  • Academic Unit or School
  • Institute of Educational Technology (IET)
  • Research Group
  • Centre for Research in Education and Educational Technology (CREET)
  • Copyright Holders
  • © 2009 The Authors
  • Depositing User
  • Elizabeth FitzGerald
CORE (COnnecting REpositories)

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