Goals

​In collaboration with experts in higher education and community stakeholders, the Synthesis @ ASU is developing a suite of tools for collaborative, portable, mixed reality environments that free students and teachers from uninterrupted screen use and reintroduce spatial awareness and interaction wherever hybrid teaching methods are needed. Validation of this novel learning experience will require iterative, community-driven design, custom development of low-cost software and hardware, and a pedagogical analysis that leverages but also moves beyond traditional methods of assessment and engagement

This is a multidisciplinary effort that prioritizes:
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• Shared experience in live settings, paying attention to spatial, corporeal, and social affordances to enable ensemble activities.
• Tools that are gesture-based, minimizing fatigue due to extensive use of screen-based technology.
• Accommodating unanticipated pedagogical practices invented by teachers (or students) for specialized needs, which may have distinct gestural idioms and techniques.
• Minimizing content development costs and user cognitive load without compromising the social aspects of learning: body language, a sense of physical presence, tangible affordances, and synchronous interaction between learners and teachers.
• Imbuing media objects (image, video, sound, text, freehand squiggle) with a tangibility that is analogous to that of physical experience.
• Easy incorporation of ad hoc bodily action and movement, and the affordances of physical surroundings and objects into pedagogical activity without requiring additional engineering or apps.

synthesiscenter.net/projects/telematic-embodied-learning