A multi user tabletop display with enhanced mobile visuals for teaching and collaborative training: faculty poster abstract
Advances in technology provide access to cost effective user interfaces that change the way people interact and carry out their daily activities. Massive use of smartphones, tablets, and other portable computing devices is reshaping the world of learning. Novel educational tools provide means to visualize and interact with compelling media, creating a virtual and augmented reality that can greatly enhance the knowledge transfer [5] Education is also benefiting from various collaborative scenarios where students work together to overcome challenges while improving cognitive and social skills [3] Indeed, as a way to improve learning, Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has already become an indispensable component of modern educational systems [2] ICT brings a wealth of online features such as short messaging and chats, forums and groups, IP voice and video calls, cloud based interactions and shared storage, etc. but it also forces students to focus on the screens of their computing devices and use the content to perform instruction bound and other tasks. Therefore, despite all benefits that ICT brings to education, it could also have a negative impact on the learning process as it might restrict natural interactions thus isolating students and limiting their experience [1] Here, we investigate the effectiveness of using heterogeneous computing paradigms (mobile devices and tabletop computers) in a collaborative learning environment.