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Smartglasses as Assistive Tools for Undergraduate and Introductory STEM Laboratory Courses

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Perspectives on Wearable Enhanced Learning (WELL)

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Abstract

Learning is known to be a highly individual process affected by learners’ individual previous experience and self-directed action. Especially during laboratory courses in university science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education, all channels of knowledge construction become relevant: students have to match their theoretical background with experimental hands-on experience, leading to an intensive interaction between theory and experiment. Realizing augmented reality scenarios with see-through smartglasses allows to display information directly in the user’s field of view and creates a wearable educational technology, providing learners with active access to various kinds of additional information while keeping their hands free. The framework presented here describes the use of augmented reality learning environments in introductory STEM laboratory courses aiming to provide students additional information and real-time feedback while sustaining their autonomy and the authenticity of their action. Based on principles of the cognitive-affective theory of learning with media (CATLM), we hypothesize that this tool can structure students’ hands-on experiences and guides their attention to cue points of knowledge construction.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Further information about the theoretical rationale can be found in the original publica tion by Moreno (2006).

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Acknowledgment

Support from the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) via the projects Be-greifen and gLabAssist is gratefully acknowledged.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physics, Physics Education Research Group, Technische Universität Kaiserslautern, Kaiserslautern, Germany

    Martin P. Strzys, Michael Thees, Sebastian Kapp & Jochen Kuhn

  2. Institute of informatics, Human-Centered Ubiquitous Media, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Frauenlobstr, München, Germany

    Pascal Knierim & Albrecht Schmidt

  3. German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI), Embedded Intelligence Group, Kaiserslautern, Germany

    Paul Lukowicz

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  1. Martin P. Strzys
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  2. Michael Thees
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  3. Sebastian Kapp
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  7. Jochen Kuhn
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Correspondence to Martin P. Strzys .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Economics and Social Sciences, Beuth University of Applied Sciences, Berlin, Berlin, Germany

    Ilona Buchem

  2. Informatik 5 (Information Systems and Databases), RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany

    Ralf Klamma

  3. Performance Augmentation Lab, Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, UK

    Fridolin Wild

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Strzys, M.P. et al. (2019). Smartglasses as Assistive Tools for Undergraduate and Introductory STEM Laboratory Courses. In: Buchem, I., Klamma, R., Wild, F. (eds) Perspectives on Wearable Enhanced Learning (WELL). Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-64301-4_2

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