ClassBeacons

[By Pengcheng An, Saskia Bakker, Sara Ordanovski, Berry Eggen et al.]

Reflecting on their performance during classroom-teaching is an important competence for teachers. Such reflection-in-action (RiA) enables them to optimize teaching on the spot. But RiA is also challenging, demanding extra thinking in teachers' already intensive routines.

Little is known on how HCI systems can facilitate teachers' RiA during classroom-teaching. To fill in this gap, we evaluate ClassBeacons, a system that uses spatially distributed lamps to depict teachers' ongoing performance on how they have divided their time and attention over students in the classroom. Empirical qualitative data from eleven teachers in 22 class periods show that this ambient information facilitated teachers' RiA without burdening teaching in progress.

Based on our theoretical grounding and field evaluation, we contribute empirical knowledge about how an HCI system enhanced teachers' process of RiA as well as a set of design principles for unobtrusively supporting RiA.

Related Publications

Pengcheng An, Saskia Bakker, Sara Ordanovski, Ruurd Taconis, Chris L.E. Paffen, and Berry Eggen. 2019. Unobtrusively Enhancing Reflection-in-Action of Teachers through Spatially Distributed Ambient Information. In Proceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ‘19). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Paper 91, 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1145/3290605.3300321 🏅   Best Paper Honorable Mention Award

Pengcheng An, Saskia Bakker, Sara Ordanovski, Ruurd Taconis, and Berry Eggen. 2018. ClassBeacons: Designing Distributed Visualization of Teachers’ Physical Proximity in the Classroom. In Proceedings of the Twelfth International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction (TEI ‘18). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 357–367. https://doi.org/10.1145/3173225.3173243