Exploring the role of the body in digital learning environment

The increased availability of advanced technologies, such as touch screens, Kinect, and mobile technologies, raise important questions about their role for children¹s interaction and learning. In particular they reconfigure embodied forms of interaction, where physical context, bodily action, and sensory experience are brought to the fore. This highlights the need for research to adopt an analytical focus on the body in order to expand and extend non-language based methodological approaches to understand meaning making in these spaces.

Drawing on examples from my research I will present a set of studies that address this need by combining a multimodal analytical approach with quasi-experimental methods to examine bodily interaction in digital environments. Through the research findings I will explore the benefits of this approach to understanding bodily interaction in emergent digital learning environments as well as challenges for future research.

Biography

Sara is a Reader at UCL IOE. She has a background in Psychology, with extensive experience in Human Computer Interaction (HCI). Her research interests focus on the role of digital technologies for learning, teaching and training in school and health related education. Much of her work involves the design, development and evaluation of emerging digital technologies (mobile, tangible, sensor), exploring ways in which they can enhance learning through mediating new forms of thinking and reasoning; and the development of methodological approaches in HCI.