Christian Sailer has successfully defended his doctoral thesis on 25 May online via Zoom about the topic “Enhancing Knowledge, Skills, and Spatial Reasoning through Location-based Mobile Learning”.
Enhancing Knowledge, Skills, and Spatial Reasoning through Location-based Mobile Learning. In a few minutes I will defend my research of the last 6 years with #omleth. Many thanks for the collaboration @Innovedum @projuventute @SATW_ch @OpenDataZH @CeviSchweiz @schabelera pic.twitter.com/84Pf91TSlQ
— 𝓒𝓱𝓻𝓲𝓼𝓽𝓲𝓪𝓷 𝓢𝓪𝓲𝓵𝓮𝓻 (@csailer80) May 25, 2020
His research describes how an Location-based Mobile Learning (LBML) system utilizing GIS technology enhances the educational learning outcomes with a special focus on the spatial thinking process. Furthermore, this dissertation describes novel approaches of visual analytics with 2D and 3D map web components to produce new teaching strategies during the activities and new metacognitive strategies to evaluate and reflect the activity.
His presentation includes the study of case studies in universities, vocational schools, and informal education environments using design-based research to develop a mobile-friendly interactive mapping platform and the main study conducted in a secondary school under real conditions. Here, the evaluation focused on the impact of the technology regarding the learning performance and the teaching activities before, during, and after the activity. The results reveal a better cognitive learning outcome in classroom exams when a teaching sequence of several weeks includes an outdoor activity of a double lesson. Moreover, there is potential for enhancing learning beyond the outdoor part to improve spatial reasoning. Long-term self-assessment of the learners, however, resulted in no impact, whether cognitively or affectively. The workload for outdoor teaching compared to classroom teaching is higher mainly due to the profound inspections of the location. The findings and their implications for research and teacher education were discussed in order to corroborate the educational value of LBML to motivate educators using LBML strategies for teaching.