FROM BUILDINGS THAT LEARN TO E-TEXTILES: INVESTIGATIONS IN SLIDING LAYERS OF UBIQUITOUS GAME-BASED LEARNING

Steward Brand in his influential work on Architectural Design talks about how buildings learn. He conceptualizes buildings to consist of interdependent layers that move against each other. Different layers move at different speeds. For example, the lowest layer consists of “site” for a building that hardly changes. The next layer consists of “structure” of the building that moves in decades. Services layer provides utilities; this layer can change every few years. Space-plan is another layer that can be changed every few months. The “skin” layer represents surface elements that can be easily changed in weeks. Finally, “stuff” layer consist of furniture and similar elements that can change on a daily basis. Good design ensures that these layers smoothly slide against each other as change happens. This paper investigates how Brand’s model can be applied to design of ubiquitous learning games incorporating e-Textiles. Such learning games are based on players wearing clothes or elements that include sewn in or attached microcontrollers, sensors and actuators. In addition, these clothes can communicate with each other using low-power wireless technologies. The games can be self-evolving or guided through a teacher or a director. The clothes worn by players can interact with wireless elements in the environment including trees, art pieces and the like. Since systems are expensive, it is important that, like a building, different layers can easily be stripped off and replaced to create various versions of a learning game without starting from scratch. The site for such ubiquitous learning games consists of pedagogical, domain of learning and technology elements. We restrict the pedagogical site to consist of a paired problem posing and problem solving methodology where players interact with each other and the environment in successive rounds of posing and solving problems. Technology for site is restricted to a class of microcontrollers and sensors including Radio Frequency Identification tags (RFID), accelerometers, gyros, temperature, light and humidity, and flex sensors and actuators like buzzers and servos. Finally, a particular low-power technology like Zigbee is fixed. The domain of learning at the site level can be left open; any domain of learning can be used. The technology structure for such applications is defined by the type of networks (ad-hoc vs. star, for example) and range and types of data transmitted. The pedagogical structure consists of the posing and solution strategies being employed while domain structure is restricted by domain ontology. From a technology perspective, at the services layer, such games may include many services like tracking learners in space and their scores in real time. Pedagogically, Bloom’s framework defines level of assessment services. Domain restricts this layer by specifying the specific learning objectives of the game. The other three layers of the Brand can be applied in a similar fashion. This paper presents a case study of a class of ubiquitous learning games based on e-Textiles and shows how an analysis based on Brand’s framework informs the various design choices for the various layers. The paper investigates how these layers move against other by considering how one ubiquitous learning game based on e-Textiles is morphed into two other different games and how the relative structure of the various layers helps or impedes this transformation.