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Experiential and Kinesthetic Learning in the Modern Classroom

Ed Tech

From its earliest roots in modern educational philosophy, most notably championed in the early 20th century by John Dewey, experiential learning has permeated throughout schools, universities, and in the workforce, and is now recognized as a core approach in how we can best make sense of the abstract, to absorb and retain new information.

This may not seem to be too controversial a statement, as even stalwart defenders of rote memorization and repetition can make room for the value of adding opportunities for the learner to gain first hand experience of what they are learning. When we further consider kinesthetic learning as the tactile branch of experiential learning, employing more of one's five senses when scaffolding understanding of a concept, a more holistic view of the learning experience comes into focus.

Had John Dewey lived to see how education has manifested in the 21st century, it would be fascinating to get his take on “screentime”. It wouldn't be a stretch to assume he’d be a strong proponent of having students close their devices in favor of opportunities to physically engage within the learning environment. Would his view of what it means to experience new information change if he were to observe how technology has become a bridge, breathing life, perspective, and context into written text and two dimensional figures through accompanying modalites like audio and video? Or would the 20th century promoter of “learn by doing” still challenge the rise of educational technology as reinforcing a sedentary learning environment? This becomes an interesting conversation when evaluating what defines the experience within experiential learning.

Mixed reality, specifically augmented reality, has steadily become a most intriguing medium when considering how 21st century learners can leverage the best of educational philosophies. As school leaders, we owe it to our students (and perhaps also to the educational theorists who helped shape modern education) to provide the 21st century learner with opportunities to experience, visualize, and contextualize the abstract; augmented reality might just be the most powerful vehicle in our hands today to bridge educational philosophies and approaches.

VR Headsets: A Distraction?

Of course augmented reality is not a brand new medium in education (see top medical schools where training using 3D models is increasingly commonplace). However, AR has been slower to gain traction in K-12 classrooms for a variety of reasons. One of the more prominent factors for its slower adoption can be connected to the general conflation of all mixed reality being a single medium. Classroom management wary educators can’t be faulted for taking pause as they picture their students encased in VR headsets while they attempt to retain their traditional role of guiding the lesson. Apple’s recent unveiling of Apple Vision Pro should have any AR (spatial computing) enthusiast exceptionally excited about this hardware and how it too will evolve.

That said, augmented reality being associated with a headset will further challenge the pursuit of convincing the more “techxhausted” classroom teachers that AR is not the same as VR. From their perspective, if each student is effectively wearing their screen, the teacher’s ability to guide the learning becomes a true logistical barrier, and can reaffirm those fearful of further losing students to “digital distraction”. Still, the enhancements within these headsets are intriguing and there are promising possibilities for platforms to emerge that will help teachers monitor individual student experience from a single dashboard; teachers will perhaps even hold the controls to be the digital tour guide for all (*Oh how we miss you, Google Expeditions).

Collaboration with AR

However, until these platforms are developed to make headset hardware in the classroom viable, there is significant added value to AR being viewed through existing classroom tablets and mobile devices. These are the devices that can be readily observed while the teacher retains traditional classroom management strategies. Devices where students can narrate a screen recorded snapshot of their 3D layered learning to submit to their teacher or embed into a digital portfolio. When students aren’t tethered to their own view, partnered collaboration and shared learning become additional advantages of handheld over headset.

Cost and access have also been obvious barriers to AR being integrated more broadly in K-12 classrooms. However, school leaders need not wait for a future when classroom sets of hardware such as Apple Vision Pro become affordable and accessible. It is certainly time for any classroom with access to capable tablets or mobile devices (most released within the past 5 years are) to leverage the medium with their students. For the aforementioned reasons, even when headsets become more affordable, it is reasonable to argue that tablets and mobile devices will remain the preferred hardware for integrating AR into the classroom. 

AR Builds a Student's Perspective

At its fundamental core, a model experienced in augmented reality offers an enhanced visual of information. In the hands of a student, an object that can be rotated, enlarged, and incorporated into the physical space builds perspective. That student is no longer just viewing new information, they are experiencing that information. Just as proponents of handwritten work are supported by neurological research linking pencil movement to better retention, the same can be said of physically examining a 3-dimensional model, incorporating more of their senses as they activate gross/fine motor control. This highlights an important area where AR has evolved further, beyond the learner merely being a consumer of prepackaged content. Students (and teachers) can instead leverage a growing number of platforms that allow them to become the creators of AR.

The ability to quickly scan physical objects and create digitized 3D models is increasingly at our fingertips. Teachers can download 3D files of museum artifacts and place them around the classroom. They can place holograms with information around a campus, to give their students a supercharged scavenger hunt. They can create virtual timelines where centuries can be represented by distance along a hallway, as their students listen to audio-accompanied images that can be unlocked as they progress down the hall. Families can tour virtual exhibits created by their child in a way that shows their learning, immersed in the physical environment.

Using AR to Enhance Understanding

With the meteoric rise of generative artificial intelligence and its increasingly dominant presence in conversations (justifiably so) pertaining to its own role and impact in education, one key consideration is how we influence students to use these tools to advance their understanding, rather than outsource learning to their new digital assistants. Experience, context, and perspective (and the empathy born from them) remain key differentiating factors between human and machine learning. As empathy and experience are symbiotically associated with one another, any and every opportunity should be given to humans, particularly the ones in our classrooms, to “learn by doing”… or rather “empathize by experiencing”.

Conclusion

Whether the student experience come in the form of 3D models that can be rotated, magnified, and examined to add context and perspective, or transporting museum artifacts and landmarks from halfway around the world, augmented reality is quickly becoming one of the more powerful tools in education - and is already at the fingertips of our teachers and their students. AR as a medium is itself a growing tree, rooted in experiential and kinesthetic learning, with branches that cut across subject area and grade level.