Abstract:

As digital and physical environments increasingly coexist in educational practice, studying how learners search, navigate, and solve problems across both contexts requires approaches that integrate cognitive, technological, and methodological expertise. This paper presents an interdisciplinary experience in the design and implementation of a human-subjects study on search activities in real and virtual environments, developed through collaboration between Psychology and Computer Engineering. Beyond reporting the research design and preliminary findings, the paper reflects on the opportunities, tensions, and lessons learned from conducting a joint study across disciplines.

The project examines search performance in a physical room and in a virtual environment implemented through a video game. Participants aged 17 to 25 complete equivalent search tasks in both contexts. The study combines tools and perspectives from both disciplines, including digital questionnaires, direct observation, video recordings, eye-tracking, and measures related to attention, working memory, inhibitory control, and search strategy use. From Psychology, the project draws on expertise in cognitive processes, behavioral measurement, and human-subjects research. From Computer Engineering, it incorporates virtual environment design, instrumentation, data capture, and the technological implementation needed to study interaction in controlled digital scenarios.

The collaboration has generated important advantages. It has enabled a more diverse set of research questions and the design of an experimental setting that neither discipline could have developed as fully on its own. It has also provided students and researchers with authentic exposure to interdisciplinary teamwork, expanding their understanding of how educational research and technology development can inform one another. At the same time, the process has revealed challenges, including differences in terminology, research culture, instrumentation processes, expectations about evidence, and coordination of workflows across teams with different training traditions.

Preliminary findings indicate that participants take slightly longer to complete search tasks in the real environment than in the virtual one. However, the main contribution of this paper is not limited to comparative performance across settings. Rather, it focuses on what was learned from the interdisciplinary process itself: how common goals were negotiated, how methods were integrated, how differences were addressed, and how collaboration improved both the quality of the study and the educational experience of those involved.

This work contributes a practice-based example of interdisciplinary collaboration in research and learning, showing how Psychology and Computer Engineering can jointly address complex questions about cognition, search, and digital environments. The paper offers reflections that may be valuable for educators and researchers seeking to build cross-disciplinary projects that are both methodologically rigorous and educationally meaningful.

Keywords:

Education, psychology, interdisciplinar, computer engineering.