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: 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 .
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: Factoring out the potential contributions to learning of physical observation versus physical control is not only of scientific interest (e.g., when can embodied cognition be evoked --with or without physical activity), but is also of practical importance. 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.