Do Tangible Interfaces Enhance Learning? Paul Marshall

Learning with Tangibles A tangible user interface is one in which interaction with a system is done in a physical way. It is a generally accepted idea that hands-on work in a field of study will significantly improve education. The largest target audience is children.

Six Perspectives on Learning with Tangibles Possible learning benefits Typical learning domain Exploratory and expressive activity Integration of representations Concreteness and sensory directness Effects of physicality

Primary Learning Domains Narratives Programming Molecular biology and chemistry Dynamic systems

Bringing the Physical and Digital Together There must be a happy median. Mixture of concrete and abstract representations can be a beneficial pairing. Physical activity and cognitive activity work together. Recent studies tend towards an opinion that tangible systems support and further learning.

Tangible Weaknesses Empirical studies contrasting tangible and intangible learning are rare. Some of the few comparisons have reported no difference with children. Without actual benefits, physical interfaces are merely wasted space. More evidence is crucial to furthering tangible interface learning

Works Cited Paul Marshall. 2007. Do tangible interfaces enhance learning?. In Proceedings of the 1st international conference on Tangible and embedded interaction (TEI '07). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 163-170. DOI=10.1145/1226969.1227004 http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1226969.1227004