Spatial Design in Online Teaching: Environmental Metaphors for Empowerment, Participation, and Influence

Paper: RAY LC (City University of Hong Kong)

Abstract

In-person learning uses the context of the classroom setting with the instructor’s positive encouragement to enable students to actively participate in the paradigm, take intrinsic motivation over their own projects, and work in the constraints of available technology in thematic sessions. Online learning makes each of these affordance more difficult to achieve due to the lack of contextual understanding of the classroom and the purposive actions encouraged in in-person formats. To investigate how to mimic classroom-like affordances in online formats, we compared discussion and presentation scenarios in a video meeting-only format (Zoom) and spatially situated video meeting format (Ohyay) in 2D scenarios. The difference in engagement and perspective taking found suggests interaction strategies based on spatial design for modeling common classroom-based tasks such as group discussion, interactive demos, and watching presentations. Zoom meetings have been found in the research literature to be demotivating and confining for idea generation (Wiederhold, 2020), and is particularly unsuitable for intrinsically motivated tasks in the classroom such as building circuits and collaborative storytelling, which require student-empowered initiative to figure out problems and common points of interest, relying on fast interactive feedback from classmates and instructors (Liguori & Winkler, 2020). To enable an environment of interaction and feedback for technical exercises and storytelling and discussion tasks for art and design education, we used the platform Ohyay, which allows students to use spatial localization to access resources, chat with particular students and instructors, and provide a spatially interactive environment to explore a pre-rendered background that attempts to mimic the analogous situation in real classrooms. In comparing Zoom and Ohyay formats in the discussion-based format, we found that participants had greater engagement with those farther away in digital space and greater empathy with those closer-by, when in the Ohyay as opposed to the Zoom format. There was also greater self-awareness in Ohyay over Zoom. These differences in self-reported engagement and empathy was not due to different patterns of participants speaking in the two situations. These findings suggest the design of 2D video-based e-learning based on spatial design that optimizes student engagement and participation. The placement of students in Ohyay can be used to indicate the scenario for interaction in the equivalent classroom context, for example viewing of a common presentation, debugging of circuits, separated group discussion, etc. Although less powerful than 3D tools like Mozilla hubs and Altspace VR, these simpler 2D formats still influences student perception of the context of the learning activity, and produces greater engagement than static Zoom-like interfaces. Moreover the result of spatial effects in the Zoom scenarios suggests that we should be more careful even in seemingly non-spatial setups in Zoom, since putting students in particular areas of the screen like corners and the middle of the frame, leads to counter-productive consequences like hiding and unwanted spotlighting. Together this set of research highlights the need for spatial considerations during design of 2D video format teaching scenarios that accounts for students’ perception of spatial metaphors.