Exploring Multi-Sensory Interaction to Enhance Children' Learning Experience

Embodied learning creates a range of opportunities for children to find new ways to develop their learning by engaging in stimulating activities. This PhD project leverages capabilities offered from multi-sensory environments (MSEs) to amplify children's interaction and the learning experience. With a goal to achieve the following overarching research question: How capabilities offered from multi-sensory environments can improve the interaction and learning capacity of a system? The first step of the PhD project (that is in the write-up phase), is a literature review that provides a comprehensive basis of theoretical and empirical knowledge in the area of MSEs and children's learning. The second step (that is underway) is a qualitative research study with a focus on child's support sphere stakeholders (e.g., parents, teachers, caregivers). Therefore, a series of interviews have been conducted with teachers with experience in employing MSEs to support children's learning. The results of this study will provide insights on how to design and develop an efficient MSE that takes into consideration stakeholders' needs. The next, is the development of a conceptual framework on how multi-sensory interaction can support children's learning; alongside with the respective prototypes. The last step consists of a series of iterative (co-re)design-develop-test cycles, that will allow the refinement of the framework and the respective prototypes, based on the empirical evidence collected from children's experience. By the end of the PhD project, the necessary prototypes, empirical and conceptual knowledge will give us all the necessary components for enabling multi-sensory capabilities to reinforce children's interaction and learning. The methodology includes qualitative and quantitative data (e.g., log files, observations, interviews and surveys), collected during in-the-wild studies with children and their support sphere (e.g., teachers and parents).