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Move with whom? A framework for analyzing collaboration within embodied learning activities

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Abstract

Enabled by technological innovations and evolving theories of cognition, embodied learning designs have proliferated over the last few decades. Collaborative tasks in particular offer rich learning opportunities as learners overtly coordinate and negotiate their work. However, less attention has been paid to the ways in which social relationships among participants—be they strangers, friends, or family members—can shape and constrain their movement and learning opportunities. I propose a five-part framework to characterize participants’ physical proximity, a marker of familiarity. I demonstrate the efficacy of this framework by using it to analyze video recordings of 41 dyads of families, friends, and strangers as they work on a body-scale geometry and spatial reasoning exhibit at a science museum. Findings suggest that all dyads established successful collaborative movement patterns, though strangers shared space and established physical touch markedly less than family members and friends. Considering these patterns in the design of other collaborative embodied learning activities could create a more comfortable and supportive environment for learners to move and learn together. The analytic framework could also inform the design and evaluation of other movement-based collaborative educational activities.

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Notes

  1. Vossoughi et al. (2020) pursues this research direction, though they focus less on design implications.

  2. As Goodwin (1995) notes, co-operation does not always imply a shared goal, such as when children compete against one another or raise a dispute.

  3. All names are pseudonyms.

  4. *So long as the dyad played additional levels, practice levels lasting less than 1 min were not counted as a first round of play. Six dyads were were affected.

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Acknowledgements

Geometris was collaboratively designed and created by Elena Durán-López, Ganesh V. Iyer, and Leah F. Rosenbaum, with significant guidance from Professors Kimiko Ryokai and Noura Howell. The ideas presented in this paper were workshopped and refined with Professor Dor Abrahamson and members of his Embodied Design Research Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley. This work is indebted to members of the exhibit staff at the Lawrence Hall of Science as well as to the anonymous reviewers whose feedback helped focus and improve the manuscript.

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    Leah F. Rosenbaum

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Rosenbaum, L.F. Move with whom? A framework for analyzing collaboration within embodied learning activities. Learning Environ Res (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10984-023-09483-9

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