How well do you make use of a learning space?

“Classroom Proxemics” refers to how teachers and students use a learning space. CIC has engaged UTS academics in evaluating a range of visual analytics that make their use of space visible in completely new ways. Does it make sense? Is it ethical?

In concert with making the best use of online learning at UTS, an enormous amount of learning and teaching still happens face-to-face (except when there’s a global pandemic on!). The UTS learning.futures model underpins the massive redesign of our on-campus learning spaces.

The term “Classroom Proxemics” refers to how teachers and students use classroom space, and the impact of this and the spatial design on learning and teaching. While learning analytics is usually thought of in terms of capturing, analysing and feeding back activity that is mediated by a collaborative platform, one can now be teaching and learning face-to-face, whilst also generating digital traces from embodied activity (as well as being online via one or more platforms).

Roberto Martinez-Maldonado (who pioneered our work on multimodal learning analytics to support nursing teams in simulated wards) has developed a new strand of work, on the potential of tracking (with consent of course), how educators make use of learning spaces as they teach. Working closely with academics in the Science and Health Faculties, the results of which are now being published, and demonstrate:

• the process we use to work closely with educators to co-design potentially invasive technologies in ethical ways
• the potential educators see in being able to visualise their teaching practice in this way
• the problems they perceive with such tools if they are used in appropriately

Learn more…

Martinez-Maldonado, R., Schulte, J., Echeverria, V., Gopalan, Y. and Buckingham Shum, S. (2020). Where is the Teacher? Digital Analytics for Classroom Proxemics. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, to appear (Accepted March. 2020).

Martinez-Maldonado, R., Mangaroska, K., Schulte, J., Elliott, D., Axisa, C. and Buckingham Shum, S. (2020). Teacher Tracking with Integrity: What Indoor Positioning Can Tell About Instructional Proxemics. Proceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies (UBICOMP): to appear (Accepted Jan. 2020).

Martinez-Maldonado, R. R., Elliott, D., Axisa, C., Power, P., Echeverria,  E. and Buckingham Shum, S. (2020). Designing translucent learning analytics with teachers: an elicitation process. Interactive Learning Environments: to appear (Accepted: 20 October 2019).

Martinez-Maldonado, R., Echeverria, V., Schulte, J., Shibani, A., Mangaroska, K. and Buckingham Shum, S. (2020), Moodoo: Indoor Positioning Analytics for Characterising Classroom Teaching. In Proceedings of the 21st International Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Education (AIED2020), (Ifrane, Morocco, July 6–10, 2020). Springer, pp.360-373. AIED2020 Best Paper