News Finding: "Mixed-reality games that support physical observation in the real world have a great potential to enhance learning and enjoyment for young children," the researchers say.
Paper Finding: This result suggests that observing physical phenomena (along with mixed reality feedback on whether child predictions and physical results match) may enhance learning and enjoyment.
News Context: They also determined that simple physical controls like shaking the tablet or pushing the earthquake button did little to improve either learning or enjoyment of the game. "Mixed-reality games that support physical observation in the real world have a great potential to enhance learning and enjoyment for young children," the researchers say. They plan to extend their mixed-reality game to different content areas to create a new educational system that bridges the advantages of physical and virtual worlds to improve children's science learning, understanding and enjoyment in a collaborative way.
Paper Context: showed that children observing physical towers in a mixed-reality game learned physics principles better and showed higher levels of enjoyment compared to students interacting with a solely virtual game on a laptop . This result suggests that observing physical phenomena (along with mixed reality feedback on whether child predictions and physical results match) may enhance learning and enjoyment. After all, it is intuitive to attribute potential benefits of tangible computing to physical interaction rather than physical observation.