Transforming Outdoor Places



Transforming Outdoor Places into Learning Spaces is a 4-year design-based research project, funded by the National Science Foundation, that investigates how rural families learn in outdoor places when engaging in mobile learning experiences. Our research transforms the everyday outdoor places visited by rural families into child-centered learning spaces. Rural communities are underserved by indoor museums; however, they are places rich with outdoor trails, parks, and forestlands. SPACES (Supporting Place-based Augmented Contexts for Engaging Science) is a GPS and augmented reality system that adds virtual content to outdoor spaces without ruining the aesthetic experience of being in the outdoors. SPACES partners include rural libraries, outdoor learning centers, and university researchers.  Our objectives are to (1) build knowledge for the informal STEM education field by conducting three iterations of design-based research study investigating how rural families learn about science in their community and (2) have a strategic impact on outdoor education practice with the contribution of empirically-vetted design conjectures for place-based mobile computing to support participatory family science learning.
If you are interested in participating in research testing a SPACES app, go to: https://sites.psu.edu/augmentedlearning/participate/.
If you are interested in reading our research results, please download a paper below!
  1. Zimmerman, H. T., Land, S. M., Faimon, L., & Chiu, Y.-C. (2023, online in advance of print). Mobile augmented reality supporting families’ immersive collaborative learning: Learning-on-the-move for place-based geoscience sensemaking. International Journal of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning. (pp. 1-32).  Doi: 10.1007/s11412-023-09399-9. [Open access] 2023_Zimmerman_Land_Faimon_Chiu_Time_Explorers_IJCSCL
  2. Zimmerman, H. T.,  Land, S. M.,  Chui, Y-C.  & Faimon, L., (2022). Mobile Augmented Reality Supporting Community-based Learning: Families’ Exploration of Land-Water Interactions. 16th International Conference of the Learning Sciences Proceedings.  Zimmerman_etal_2022_ICLSproceedings
  3. Land, S. M., Zimmerman, H. T., Faimon, L., McClain, L., Rossi, N., Masters, B., & Kozlek, B. (2022). Place-based mobile AR: Technological development of mobile apps to support families to see and discuss science outdoors. 15th International Conference on Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning Proceedings. Land_etal_Place-basedCSCL2022 Proceedings
  4. McClain, L. R., Zimmerman, H. T., Land, S. M., Faimon, L.,  Bowles, S.,  Keith, C. A.  & others (2022). Using immersive augmented reality to guide families’ observations. 16th International Conference of the Learning Sciences Proceedings. MClain_etal_ICLS2022 Proceedings
  5. Zimmerman, H. T., Land, S. M., Grills, K., Chiu, Y.-C., Faimon, L., McClain, L. R., & Williams, J. (2021). Mobile Augmented Reality in the Backyard: Families’ Outdoor Spaces as Sites of Exploration about Pollinators. Proceedings of the 15th International Conference of the Learning Sciences-ICLS 2021. Zimmerman_etal_ICLS_2021
  6. Zimmerman, H. T., Land, S. M., Grills, K. E. , Chiu, Y.-C., Jung, Y. J., & Williams, J. (2020). Design Conjectures for Place-Based Science Learning About Water: Implementing Mobile Augmented Reality with Families. In I. Horn & M. G. Gresalfi (Eds.), Proceedings of the 14th International Conference for the Learning Sciences (pp. 1125-1132). Memphis, TN (virtual): International Society of the Learning Sciences. Zimmerman_Land_etal_ICLS_2020_NSF_pdfa