Locast H2Flow: Contextual Learning through Mobile Video and Guided Documentary Production

Liselott Brunnberg, Pelin Arslan, Amar Boghani, Federico Casalegno, Steve Pomeroy, Zoe Schladow
Mobile Experience Laboratory @ Massachusetts Institute of Technology 20 Ames Street, Cambridge, MA 02142 {liselott, parslan, amarkb, casalegno, spomeroy, schladow}@mit.edu
ABSTRACT

In this paper we present the design considerations of Locast H2Flow, an educational tool created to guide learning in a local urban space. In particular, we explore the prospect of utilizing mobile devices to scaffold the learning process. Challenged by missions and guided by templates on a mobile phone, the students construct geo-referenced video reportages and documentaries about sustainable water issues within their community. A deployment with a class of high school students in Italy provides initial user feedback on the learning experience and the scaffolding overall of the learning process.
Author Keywords

Sustainability, mobile learning, narratives, mobile video, contextual learning, location-based application
ACM Classification Keywords

investigate the prospect of using mobile devices for guided video production, with the end goal of furthering students comprehension of water sustainability as it relates to their community. We present the overall design considerations and initial user feedback of Locast H2Flow, an educational tool built around such a purpose. H2Flow embraces a contextualized learning approach in which students discover and explore the topic of water consumption within their school, neighborhoods, communities and city. Students, working in groups and guided by the application, learn through various means by producing video content. They conduct interviews, survey questions to the public, or engage in role-playing scenarios. Through this explorative process, we aim to provide a creative and participatory learning environment.
BACKGROUND

K.4.m Computers and Society [Miscellaneous]; H.5.3 Group and Organization Interfaces [Collaborative computing, Evaluation/Methodology, Computer-supported collaborative work]; H.5.1 Multimedia Information System [Video].
General Terms

Design, Human Factors, mobile media

INTRODUCTION

As mobile devices with high-quality recording abilities proliferate, they are being increasingly utilized by young people to produce media content that is then uploaded, shared, and disseminated on social networks and other online distribution sites, such as Facebook, YouTube, Bambuser, Flickr etc. However, it has been observed that a gap exists between these informal learning activities, and media education occurring in a formal educational environment [1]. The intellectual and creative process inherent in media creation lends itself well towards engaging students within learning experiences, especially those centered on locally oriented topics. In this paper we
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. MobileHCI 2011, Aug 30Sept 2, 2011, Stockholm, Sweden. Copyright 2011 ACM 978-1-4503-0541-9/11/08-09....$10.00.

A characteristic of mobile learning is its ability to allow for students to learn in a more relevant and engaging setting than has been previously possible. By making use of mobile technology, education can be moved from a formalized classroom setting to a physical context, where a learner can relate information gathered to their own personal frame of reference. However, considerations of how to properly guide and scaffold the learning process provide an important challenge. According to Frohberg et. al., [3] these considerations have hardly been dealt with in mobile learning literature. Within a classroom, a teacher has full control over the learning process, and the same degree of control does not apply when the student is outside such a formal setting. Instead, the educational tool has to provide sufficient guidance such that the student can independently make sense of the leaning process and its goals. Pervasive learning games provide valuable insights into how best to scaffold an experience in a physical context where motivation and education are important factors. Pervasive games, such as e.g. Power Agent [4] incorporate the players physical context into the learning experience and provide rules, goals, and challenges to engage the user. Seymour Papert [6] discussed in his Constructionism theory that learning is most effective when the learner is given the opportunity to actively participate in the experience and ultimately construct a meaningful product. Mobile video production in an educational context is explored in the MoViE project [8], a social mobile platform that enables users to create video stories using their mobile phones. A study of MoViE illustrated that students became more

active participators in the classroom, yet also stated that only 16% of the students felt that MoViE inspired them to learn more and fulfill tasks given. We believe that by providing sufficient guidance and well-designed scaffolding, mobile video creation can be used as a powerful tool to engage students within a motivating learning experience by constructing a meaningful product. In the next section we will present H2Flow and its main design considerations.
LOCAST H2FLOW

3. Purity - The quality of tap vs. bottled water 4. Cost - The cost of buying bottled water 5. Taste - Taste of bottle vs. tap water 6. Fabrication & Transportation - CO2 emission caused by fabrication and transportation of bottled water 7. Melting Glaciers - The impact of CO2 emission on the climate. Melting glaciers in the region. 8. Future - Global warming and the future. What will happen when the glaciers have disappeared?
The Locast Platform

Locast H2Flow has students use a mobile application to create geo-located video content. This application moderates the learning process by providing missions to complete and video templates that structure the individual videos themselves. Ultimately, guided by these missions and templates, the students are involved in the creation of a larger narrative centered on the overarching subject matter. The created content is uploaded to a backend server, and can consequently be browsed, viewed and commented on through a web interface. The students cooperate in groups of four to five, and conduct interviews, survey questions to the public. They additionally participate in role-playing scenarios, taking the role of reporters, environmental activists or private water company owners. Through this process, students study the topic from a multiple perspectives: private versus public water, CO2 emission, overall climate change, the melting glaciers, as well as the cultural value of water for their local community.
Learning objective

The H2Flow application was implemented around these learning objectives using Locast, a locative-media platform that combines web and mobile applications to allow for mobile geo-located media production and interaction. The Locast platform consists of three main components. Locast Web: the web-based interface, Locast core: the backend and API, and Locast Mobile: an Android-based mobile application. For the H2Flow project the mobile application was rebuilt in order to scaffold the learning process and to create a user experience that would address the needs of students. Administrators were provided a specific web interface to allow them to create templates and the missions. In this way, the system was designed as a general learning platform, and then tailored by administrators to fit the learning objectives. In the following section we will present how the scaffolding has been designed and implemented in the mobile phone application.
The Mobile Phone Application

As an initial step, Locast H2Flow was deployed in Northern Italy, and the experience was thus designed around the circumstances and contexts of this region. Northern Italy has many glaciers in its territory from which snow and ice melt and provide a continuous supply of large quantities of water. Hence, the area is rich in natural water resources as well as high-quality tap water. Regardless, the consumption of bottled water is widespread in the area [2]. This even though bottled water is more expensive and generally not of any better quality than tap water. The fabrication of the plastic bottles and their transport by road means that a great amount of fossil fuel is burned, which in turn contribute to global warming [5]. With an increase in temperature glaciers worldwide are disappearing at an alarming rate. Specifically, the glaciers in northern Italy have during the past 40 years seen dramatic decrease in mass [9]. Consequently, there exists an urgent need to address these issues. This overarching topic is in Locast H2Flow divided in eight different but interconnected subtopics, namely: 1. City of the Silver Treasure - The wealth of natural water resources in the region. Glaciers and their provision of clean drinking water to the town and their role in the production of hydroelectric power. 2. The Desirable Bottle - The extensive consumption of bottled water in Italy and why.

Using the mobile application the above mentioned subtopics were taught, investigated and documented primarily by the means of video introduced missions and template video recording.
Missions

The eight subtopics are presented on the main page of the mobile application within the context of a list of missions. When the user selects a mission, an introductory video presents the subtopic. In the end of each video the student receives a mission to accomplish. The eight missions are: 1. City of the Silver Treasure - Make a small video portrait of water in the town. 2. The Desirable Bottle - Investigate the consumption of water in the town. Do people actually drink bottled water and what are their opinions about drinking tap water? 3. Purity Investigate if the tap water safe to drink or not? 4. Cost Investigate what water is served in the school. If bottled water, investigate how much the school pay for this water during 1 year. If it is not consumed, find out about the schools work towards sustainable water use. 5. Taste - Carry out a blind taste test. How many can figure out which sample is tap water? 6. Fabrication & Transportation - Report about the issue of CO2 emission related bottled water and to make an investigation in the local supermarket. 7. Melting Glaciers - Find out about the glaciers in the

close proximity. What are their current states? 8. Future - Investigate, imagine and report on the prospect of the city in 2050. What will it be like to live there when the glaciers have melted? The missions were designed to be experienced by a student sequentially, progressing through the content in a way that is meant to aid in their understanding of the overall topic of water sustainability in their community. In completing a mission, a student is guided through video creation, and is given the opportunity to communicate their own interpretation and understanding of a topic, ultimately producing individual scenes of a larger narrative. Within each mission on the mobile application, the student records video content by pressing the record cast button and subsequently chooses a video template from a list.
Video Recording Templates

template that best corresponds to their personal comprehension of the mission. Students can optionally make use of several templates to compose more than one video to submit to a mission.

Figure 1. Video recording template consisting of 8 shots

USER STUDY

Video templates were provided as mechanism to provide more granular guidance to students as they create videos, ultimately enabling them to produce higher quality and more coherent content. A video template is comprised of a set of shots, where each shot consists of a direction and duration (see Figure 1). The directions are displayed on the screen of the mobile device while a user is shooting a video, along with a progress bar indicating the time remaining if the shot has a duration limit. The duration can be infinite (), a maximum time ( n) or a set time, depending on the character of the displayed direction. Basing video production around templates has the ability to further provide a specific, contextualized experience for students. Video templates give the ability to dictate creative aspects, such as camera angles, or guide the content of the video itself, giving instructions to students for how to fulfill certain roles or what topics to speak on. Constructivist learning in physical context implies that it is necessary to provide freedom for creativity, while still providing guidance by scaffolding the activities. According to Sharples et al. [7] the level of control is an important challenge for any learning process. Learners are not homogenous, but are individuals who possess different creative abilities and needs for guidance. With this in mind, Locast H2Flow experimented with different types of templates. For each mission, one template is provided that is specific to the mission itself, as well as six generic templates that are available for all missions. Mission specific templates consist of a shot to introduce the topic of the mission, a set of shots to record the investigation and a terminating shot to conclude the results and the mission. The generic templates provide structured yet general directions for certain tasks, i.e. to conduct an interview, make a video montage, to record a Vox-pop (voice of the general public). A mission also includes the option of a freestyle template, which provides no directions or time limitation. Depending on the mission and how a student chooses to approach it, different templates will work better than others; therefore, students are challenged to select a

Locast H2Flow was deployed and evaluated during an educational workshop with twenty participating students. The students were all males, and fourteen years of age. The class was divided into four groups, and each group was given a mobile phone (Motorola Milestone) with the Locast H2Flow application installed. The workshop was not officially integrated into the school curriculum, thus there was limited time for the deployment, which took place over the course of three school days. A researcher shadowed each group to observe and document the groups dynamics, activities, interactions, as well as the students comprehension of the subject matter and the technology. Feedback was collected in a post-experience questionnaire and a focus group discussion, which lasted for approximately 30 minutes.
Results

In general, the teens enjoyed working with mobile phones as tools for learning. According to the questionnaire most of the students believed they learned a lot about water sustainability during the workshop. The focus groups also revealed that most of the students enjoyed learning about water within the context of their city. According to the questionnaire results, the majority of the students found the mobile application easy to use, as sixteen of the twenty students indicated that they were able to learn and fully understand it. Most of the students thought it was easy to film, refilm and watch the videos they created, and they found it inspiring to have the ability to produce content and immediately view the result on the mobile device. In the following section, we present user feedback related to the scaffolding of the learning process, namely the missions and video recording templates.
Missions

Due to the limited duration of the workshop, the students completed six out of eight designed missions: Missions 1, 2, 3, 5, 7 and 8. The first three missions had students exploring their town and recording footage, while other

missions were carried out inside the classroom or on the campus. The questionnaire revealed that 90% of the students felt that they generally understood the missions. According to the questionnaire results, the most interesting missions were number one and two. Both focus groups mentioned that they preferred these missions because they provided opportunity for outdoor exploration. They enjoyed interviewing people and learning about the town. They also mention a preference for the last mission because of the role-playing encouraged by the application.
Video Recording Templates

interaction, and we need to consider options that provide suggestions instead of limitations while recording a shot.
CONCLUSION

According to the results of the questionnaire, more than half of the students found it easy to select a template. During the focus groups, we asked the students what templates they preferred to use during the video recording, and here the test group was rather split. In one of the focus groups the students preferred the mission specific template to accomplish their missions, but in the other focus group only two students preferred using such templates. The rest of the group preferred more freedom when recording their videos and six of the students even mentioned that they preferred to use the freestyle template, which provides no structure at all. However, the use of the freestyle often resulted in relatively long video clips with less narrative content. The observations revealed that the students had difficulties with the limited recording duration set for certain shots, which resulted in frequent re-filming in order to fit within the given time boundaries. Additionally, while inside a template, there was no possibility to view all of the upcoming shot directions at once. Instead, the user had to go through each shot one by one, clicking on the different progressbars (see Figure 1), which made it cumbersome for the students to plan their work beforehand. This issue calls for additional planning support to allow the students to better organize their work before they start recording.
DISCUSSION

In this paper, we have presented Locast H2Flow, a tool for alternative learning through guided video creation. Locast H2Flow provides missions and video recording templates with the purpose to scaffold the learning process. During a three days workshop 20 students used the technology to explore water issues within their local context. Although facets of the process and technology could be reworked to strengthen the experience, by the end of the workshop, students had gained a better understanding of their citys and their own water usage. Overall, Locast H2Flow worked to illustrate how a locative participatory media platform has the potential to strengthen connections between people, places, and information.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This research project "Locast H2Flow", is done within the Green Connected Home Alliance, between MIT Mobile Experience Lab and the Fondazione Bruno Kessler in Italy. We thank our research partner the MTSN Museo tridentino di scienze naturali, and the School ENAIP Trentino, Italy.
REFERENCES

1. Bull,G. et.al. Connecting informal and formal learning: Experiences in the age of participatory media. Contemporary Issues in Technology and Teacher Education 8, 2 (2008), 100-107. 2. Federconsumatori. Acqua in bottiglia:laffare dellacqua 2008, http://www.federconsumatoripisa.it/29-092008/acqua-bottiglia-laffare-dellacqua 3. Frohberg, D., Gth, C. & Schwabe, G. Mobile Learning projectsa critical analysis of the state of the art. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 25 (2009), 307-331. 4. Gustafsson, A. and Bang, M. Evaluation of a pervasive game for domestic energy engagement among teenagers. Proc. Conf. on Advances in Computer Entertainment Technology. ACM (2008), 232-239. 5. IPCC, 2007: Summary for Policymakers. In: Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, NY, USA, 2007. 6. Papert, S. Mindstorms: Children, Computers, and Powerful Ideas. Basic Books, Inc., NY, USA, 1980. 7. Sharples M., Taylor J. & Vavoula G. A theory of learning for the mobile age. In The Sage Handbook of Elearning Research. Sage, London, 2007. 8. Tuomi, P., & Multisilta, J. MoViE: Experiences and attitudes, learning with a mobile social video application. Digital Culture & Education, 2 (2010), 165-189. 9. WWF, World Wide Fund for Nature, http://assets.panda.org/downloads/glacierspaper.pdf

Structuring the learning experience through the use of missions not only improved the students comprehension of the subject matter, but motivated participants to explore the topic in their local environment. It was clear that the teens enjoyed learning about water in their own town as the platform helped them relate to the topic on a more personal level. The results from the study call for recording templates that support varying degrees of creative freedom and need for guidelines. Some teens required step-by-step instructions while others preferred the freedom to improvise and discover by chance. During the video recording, the students sometimes had difficulty with the limited recording durations. Hence, several of the students instead used the freestyle template, which often resulted in relatively long video clips without interconnecting narrative. Accordingly, further exploration of the possibilities for scaffolding the content construction is still needed. We need to provide information and instructions at appropriate times of