EC-TEL 2014: Open Learning and Teaching in Educational Communities pp 434-439 | Cite as
The Design and Evaluation of a Sensor-Based Mobile Application for Citizen Inquiry Science Investigations
Abstract
Despite their advantages of portability and ease of use, mobile devices have not yet been used in their full potential in education to measure and investigate real world phenomena. While some existing applications exploit individual sensors on mobile devices, there is no current toolkit that combines and customises data from the full range of sensors, and makes these data available for import to citizen inquiry science projects. This paper presents such a toolkit, called the Sense-it app, which gives access to all sensors on Android smartphones and tablets and connects to new or existing citizen science projects. We describe the design and formative evaluation of the toolkit in collaboration with students and teachers from a city technology college.
Keywords
mobile phone sensors citizen science projects mobile applicationsPreview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
- 1.Toerpe, K.: The Rise of Citizen Science. The Futurist, 25–40 (July-August 2013)Google Scholar
- 2.Catlin-Groves, C.L.: The Citizen Science Landscape: From Volunteers to Citizen Sensors and Beyond. International Journal of Zoology 2012, Article ID 349630, 1–14 (2012)Google Scholar
- 3.Freitag, A., Pfeffer, M.J.: Process, not product: investigating recommendations for improving citizen science “success”. PloS One 8(5), 1–5 (2013)Google Scholar
- 4.Mueller, M., Tippins, D., Bryan, L.: The Future of Citizen Science. Democracy and Education, 20, 1 -11 (2012) Google Scholar
- 5.Villasclaras-Fernandez, E.D., Sharples, M., Kelley, S., Scanlon, E.: Supporting Citizen Inquiry: An Investigation of Moon Rock. In: Hernández-Leo, D., Ley, T., Klamma, R., Harrer, A. (eds.) EC-TEL 2013. LNCS, vol. 8095, pp. 383–395. Springer, Heidelberg (2013)Google Scholar
- 6.Scaife, M., Rogers, Y., Aldrich, F., Davies, M.: Designing for or designing with? In-formant design for interactive learning environments. In: Proceedings of the ACM SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 1997), pp. 343–350. ACM, New York (1997)Google Scholar
- 7.Anastopoulou, A., Sharples, M., Ainsworth, S., Crook, C., O’Malley, C., Wright, M.: Creating personal meaning through technology-supported science learning across for-mal and informal settings. International Journal of Science Education 34(2), 251–273 (2012)Google Scholar