Designing Enhanced Learning Environments in Physics: An Interdisciplinary Collaborative Approach Producing an Instrument for School Success

Abstract

Parallel, an innovative teaching and learning tool, was designed by a multidisciplinary team gathering together university and college professors, post-graduate students, teachers, as well as young adults and college students. The creation of Parallel, made possible fruitful collaboration between students, teachers and researchers. The collaborative experience was part of an effort to understand how a serious game on a mobile platform using augmented reality could be exploited in a formal educational context to overcome the difficulties encountered by physic’s college students. Up to now, 60 % of these students have been failing the course as they are being taught the laws of electromagnetism. As Lave, points out, “too often, school lessons are fraught with difficulty and failure more many students” (Lave, Anthropol Educ Q 16:171–176, 1985, p. 174). We will discuss how we arrive at the conclusion that Parallel can act as a potential instrument for student’s mastery of their own relationships with society and allow them to reinvest their learning with youth and the elderly. Although the empirical study we are presenting pinpoints a specific aspect of physic’s learning, it opens new horizons for cross-generational and age-oriented digital game-based learning from childhood to older adulthood.