EMBODIED LEARNING
Design project: Zoom
Design project: Zoom
On average, students sit for 8 hours a day! Of which, a lot of that time is spent at schools. This results in a sedentary lifestyle which will keep developing as they grow older(Hidding et al., 2017). Schools can play a significant role promoting a more healthy physical lifestyle. The Dr.-Knippenbergcollege – a secondary school which identifies itself with an advanced sports education came to us with a design challenge. The goal of the project was to design a curriculum that integrates playful physical exercise with learning, to stimulate 21st century learning goals, as well as make students more motivated to become physically active. The design process is characterized by an user-centered approach, involving the stakeholders from the beginning till the end, resulting in Zoom.
Zoom is a data measurement instrument for educational purposes with a platform for teachers and students. Zoom gives students the opportunity to work with several 21st century skills while doing physical activity.
Team Design Project M1.1 – Play and learn
In collaboration with: Students & teachers at Dr.-Knippenbergcollege
Together with: Mark Rijkers and Imke Beekmans
My key learning points: Designing for children; The dutch education system; User-centered design processes and approaches (scenario’s; persona’s; user interviews); Embodied learning; Theories about learning; User evaluation and analysis with children; Ideation/prototyping through sketches and 3d models; Managing stakeholders and mapping values.
The goal was to design a curriculum that integrates playful physical exercise with learning, to stimulate 21st century learning goals, as well as make students more motivated to become physically active. The design process is characterized by an user-centered approach, involving the stakeholders from the beginning till the end. We started by visiting the students during their regular classes and their physical activity classes. Persona’s were created to emphasize with the users that were inspired from the observations and interviews at their school. Through different sketch and brainstorm sessions that were focused on designing a curriculum that integrates playful physical exercise with learning, Zoom was created.
Zoom provokes physical activity by experiential learning by both gathering and exploring with personal data. zoom consists of a data-station, four different data-collectors and a platform for the students to work with the data. The four different data-collectors can measure different kind of data, such as movement, temperature. sound etc. The data-station ensures the connection and charging of the collectors. The students can work with the data by dragging and dropping different blocks of functions within a digital environment.
The prototype is tested with students in the first, second and third class of the dr.-Knippenbergcollege. The user study shows that students value the hands on experience and the physical exploring aspects of zoom. During visualizing an assignment and real-time experiencing it, students mentioned that they believe they will learn more quickly and remember the theory better with this embodied way of learning than they do with the current system.
