PRELIMINARY EXPERIMENT OF THEATRICAL LEARNING SUPPORT USING DIRECTIONAL SPEAKERS IN LECTUTAINMENT

'Lectutainment’ is a coined term from ‘lecture’ and ‘entertainment’ and aims at increasing students’ learning motivation in a classroom lecture. To realize the Lectutainment, we are making atmosphere like a theatrical performance (stage show) in the classroom lecture by providing audiovisual effects. In other words, we are making theatrical learning support that focuses on senses of exaltation (excitement), joy, relaxation, tension, etc. We developed the prototype system and conducted a preliminary experiment on a small scale. The results of the experiment indicated that the Lectutainment could increase university students’ learning motivation.
We are implementing a new theatrical learning support. It is that a verbal hint is given in a synthesized whisper that only a particular student can hear. For example, when a student is requested to answer a quiz (question) by a teacher but has difficulty in answering, the verbal hint will help the student to find the answer. The prototype is connected to directional speakers (parametric speakers), whose directions are adjusted to the answerer’s position by controlling two servo motors (pitching and yawing) via the USB interface. The verbal hints are converted from the text sentences inputted by the teacher and then sent to the student.
Prior to the implementation, we conducted a preliminary experiment to survey how the students hear the verbal hints through the directional speakers. In the experiment, 18 participants were divided into 2 groups and every participant (9 participants in each group) sat on all the 3x3 seats by rotation. We prepared two experiment settings: one speaker and two speakers, expecting that the two speakers could focus the verbal hint on a particular student (a target student) better than the one speaker. The results showed that the two speakers were totally better than the one speaker because the verbal hint can be crossed at the particular student and become clearer for him/her. Therefore, we conclude that the theatrical learning support using the directional speakers can be adopted in the Lectutainment.
The paper we are going to submit will schematically illustrate the Lectutainment prototype, report the results of the preliminary experiment, and consider the feasibility of the theatrical learning support using the directional speakers.