Heather Zimmerman (LDT), Chris Millet (Asst. Director, ETS), and I were funded in January 2015 by Penn State’s Center for Online Innovation in Learning (COIL) to study iBeacons and multi-touch foil displays to support community engagement and learning in Penn State’s public spaces. The development effort for the project is being led by Chris Millet and ETS to further prototype Penn State Places, an integrated mobile app and CMS platform for creating and deploying iBeacon content for Penn State faculty, staff, and students.

Using Places, we are building a series of app-based tours that will support visitors to explore science within the Penn State Arboretum that are customized to particular locations, objects, and specimens within the various gardens. We assume that place serves an important role in learning by establishing a common ground that binds people, communities, histories, social interactions, interests, and conversations in meaningful ways (Oppeggard, 2014). We use iBeacons and mobile devices to support sensory and tangible explorations that are responsive to visitors’ proximities to objects (Feki et al., 2013), with the goal of affecting observations and conversations about science in the space. The project seeks to create opportunities for learning in ways that blend location, family, friends or other people, physical objects, and digital media in innovative ways.

• PSU IT News story on the project: https://news.it.psu.edu/article/learning-beneath-trees

• RFID Journal News Roundup feature on the project: http://www.rfidjournal.com/articles/view?13513/5

• COIL announcement.  http://coil.psu.edu/blog/using-ibeacons-mobile-technologies-and-multi-touchfoil-displays-to-support-new-forms-of-community-engagement-and-learning-in-penn-state-public-places/

• YouTube Video of Land discussing the project:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFTL55slSbk

Case Study 1: Exploring the biodiversity of Tree Fruit.  We tested iBeacon-triggered digital resources designed and delivered via Places at the Penn State Arboretum during a field trip event with over 80 fourth graders.  Our project sent children on a “way finding” activity throughout the arboretum to observe biodiversity of trees’ fruit, and photograph evidence of their observations by visiting trees augmented by Gimbal iBeacons. The iBeacons deployed as designed, and we will soon be writing up the results of our findings.

Abstract of our findings presented at AECT 2015 Presidential Session: Emerging Technologies Showcase:

This research employs bluetooth low energy (BLE) iBeacon technology to create opportunities for youth to engage in place-based learning in a university arboretum. Our work conceptualizes how proximity-based technologies enable youth to engage in fine-tuned, localized observations and conversations about science in their community. We situate our work within three literatures: Learning outside of school, place-based learning, and context-sensitive mobile learning to inform the design of IoT systems to support scientific observations in outdoor spaces. We present data from an iBeacon-enabled mobile learning experience to support wayfinding and learning about the biodiversity of tree fruit with 84 youth (4^th graders) participating on a school field trip. Data collected include log files, observational field notes, and learners’ photographic artifacts of their observations. Our findings point to personalized routes learners used to navigate the space, usability considerations, and evidence of learners making accurate observations and connecting observations to broader scientific ideas such as tree life cycles. We seek to provide insights into learner-centered mobile computing experiences that move beyond providing just-in-time content to creating a blended physical-digital space to support learners to engage with technology, each other, and natural objects in their local environment.

Case Study 2: Exploring local hydro-geological concepts of land-water transformation in a Children’s Garden.  We created a second learning tour for the PSU Arboretum using iBeacons in the Children’s Garden.  We ran a multi-day research study with 26 children (ages 6-10) to explore how water and land transform each other within Karst geological landscapes like those found in our local Central PA region.  Specifically, we focused on how caves and sinkholes form by fostering playful learning experiences for children to explore, represent, connect, and create models of interacting local landscape features like groundwater, surface water, limestone rock, and our local watershed. We used iBeacons for one part of the study to support children to explore several physical models of our local geology that were present in the Children’s Garden: limestone and sandstone rocks, model cave, dry stream bed, model stream, and sculptures of fossilized coral.  We used the beacons to trigger mobile resources that illustrated what these physical models represent geologically and how they are all connected in the formation of our local landscape.