Abstract:

Engaging students as active participants in their learning has attracted considerable attention in higher education research. Activities that engage students in the learning process are shown to be valuable in terms of keeping students’ attention, increasing motivation, problem-solving skills, and achieving higher order cognition. This paper discusses the application of active learning strategies to two project-based postgraduate courses in interactive systems design. Through the lenses of the scholarship of teaching and learning, action research is carried out for continuous improvements of the teaching and learning process, based on student feedback, learning performance as well as teachers’ self-reflection. One of the courses, “Interaction Design” runs in the first semester and the other course “Virtual and Augmented Reality” runs in the third semester. Each of the courses typically has a class size of 15 – 25 students. In the first course, students worked on a relatively simple mini project, consisting of easy user interface design tasks to increase their self-efficacy, motivation, and engagement in learning. The mini project helped students to understand the key intended learning outcomes on a high level as well as get familiar with the course structure. Thereafter, students worked on a larger design project, with more demanding tasks also covering in-depth theoretical concepts. In the second course, students also worked on two projects, with the first one being easy, and the second one having more demands from a technical skills perspective. In both courses, students chose their own design topics and decided on the approaches as well as necessary tools to solve the design as well as development challenges. Both courses applied peer-learning, on-demand teaching, student curriculum contribution, and adaptive teaching in an active learning classroom setting. In the "Virtual and Augmented Reality” course, we applied student-led teaching strategy, in which two student assistants co-designed and run development workshops, through which fellow students apply the learnt skills to their projects. In addition to using a learning management system (LMS) provided by the University, the students self-organised into virtual third places, creating Discord servers, where a lot of synchronous and asynchronous peer-tutoring took place. Both courses are supported by a state-of-the-art Future Interaction Lab, equipped with powerful computers as well as the latest Augmented Reality & Virtual Reality equipment (AR Smart Glasses, VR Head mount devices and 6-DOF motion simulator) for students. The results show a high level of student motivation, engagement, and overall satisfaction with regards to the learning environment as well as the achievement of the intended learning outcomes. Even though attendance to classes was not compulsory, student participation was high, especially in the AR & VR course. Students invested more working hours into the courses than the estimated 200 hours per course, given that they were generally more ambitious, setting their own targets beyond the course requirements.

Keywords:

Active learning, Interaction design, Mixed reality design, Student engagement, Self-motivated learning.