ITS in the classroom
Emma Mercier, Steve Higgins, Elizabeth Burd, James McNaughton · 2012
Using interactive surfaces in a classroom requires an understanding of multiple users and stakeholders. While research on how students using tables provides some insight, exploring the roles and needs of the teacher, and the interaction between groups in a classroom, adds an additional dimension to this design challenge. We summarize three years of design and research in a multi-touch classroom, to illuminate some of the issues involved in placing interactive surfaces in the classroom environment. Results indicate that the tables can be used to support joint cognition, that the arrangement of tables in the classroom may influence collaborative interactions, and that allowing the teacher to project content from student tables to a shared interactive whiteboard (IWB) for whole group discussion can facilitate progress within the groups.