Certainly across the University of Manchester campus there seems to be plenty of anecdotal evidence suggesting that the student demographic is part of the mobile revolution. Waiting in the queue for coffee there is always someone checking their Facebook account or scanning through the latest tweets to hit their timeline. In an era where multi-tasking is commonplace, even television is becoming surplus to requirements. According to a Childwise survey of 7-16 year olds:

“The way children use media through the day is also changing, says the research, suggesting a push-button, on-demand culture, which is moving away from scheduled television programmes.”

The traditional notion of watching television before school is quickly becoming obsolete, children are more likely to be interacting with their mobiles. The report also suggests that mobile phones and internet usage occupy over 1.5 hours per day on average. Interestingly, this is normally accessed in parallel with watching television or playing computer games. However, obituaries to television should be tempered by the news that much of the content consumed by mobile devices relate in some way to programming of some nature. Televisual content still has a place in this new arena.

It is becoming more evident that the behavioral habits of children in terms of electronic ingest are moving towards a mobile model, the desktop or laptop may still have a place for homework but as John Herlihy, Google’s VP stated in 2010, the …”desktop has about three years before phones replace it.”

Research conducted by Morgan Stanley (8,000 consumers and 50 chief information officers) suggests that tablet users are spending less time on their PCs, this is in part due to the rising adoption of mobile computing devices. Approximately 75% of current PC use is spent consuming (web browsing, watching videos) and sharing content (email, IM, blogging). Increased CPU speeds, high-resolution displays and battery life means that technology now exists on mobile devices to allow users to consume this type of content. PC’s have been reduced to a work tool for specialized tasks such as web development, graphic design and complex modelling.

Indeed, Morgan Stanley forecast that by 2014 mobile internet usage will overtake user access through traditional desktop means. In a world where users want to compare prices while in a supermarket or check flight times in transit to the airport, the mobile experience is set to change the way we manage our lives.

To paraphrase Mark Twain, although reports of the PC’s death are greatly exaggerated, the obituary has already been written.

Just to recap: SCARLET is all about using leading-edge technology (Augmented Reality) to enhance the student experience. It resonates with the University of Manchester’s first two strategic goals – first class research and outstanding learning and student experience. Moreover, it showcases the approach advocated through the Online Learning Task Force’s  Collaborate to Compete report, in developing a ‘Mixed Team’ to work together ‘on the pedagogic and technological elements of online learning to enable institutions to offer innovative, up-to-date, high quality provision. Good Practice must also be shared’ (p.7). As well as sharing good practice the SCARLET team aims to share lessons about what does not work so well, so that others can avoid these pitfalls.

The JISC call from which this project was funded (Learning and Teaching Innovation Grant) sought projects which ‘identify areas of activity suitable for further investment and that will enhance the overall educational experience of students throughout the sector by identifying and solving common problems…’ and are innovative, that is ‘are unique or pioneering – something that has not been done previously’ and ‘use innovative technologies or practice to directly benefit the learner’.   Across six strands of the rolling call, only a handful of projects were funded and SCARLET is only the second to use AR. Critically we are one of the first projects to use AR in teaching and learning, although we are building on work that precedes ours, notably the University of Exeter’s AR: A Different View of Learning project. The remainder of this post collates the feedback from the SCARLET project team based on their reflections of ‘what have we learned so far’.

I asked the team to provide their ‘top lessons learned’ to date. A previous post has encapsulated the student experience based on the first focus group undertaken, with students on the course from the leading academic involved in the project.   The student voice will continue to be captured and we hope to produce a series of case studies based on the student sample in the project. This post is to help understand what we need to consider at an institutional level for the adoption of AR in teaching and learning.

The team’s reflections fall broadly into 3 main areas, which match closely those identified in ‘Mixed Teams’ in the Collaborate to Compete report.

Pedagogical

‘Any initiative aimed at enhancing teaching and learning must have both students and teachers embedded into the project from the outset, rather than librarians and IT specialist presuming to know what they want’. (John)

SCARLET prides itself in bringing together the appropriate groups for this project and there is broad agreement that this has worked well. I would add that having enthusiastic and previous award-winning academics on the project team has helped us build on established success at Manchester.

The approach taken in teaching has differed between the academics involved and it is too early to say whether there is a ‘best practice’ approach. It is true to say however that of the 2 academics who have trialled the use of AR in their classes there has been a different response from their students. Interestingly, where AR can enhance the learning experience by providing additional, in-context information this seems to meet with most approval, and provides most benefit. Simply attaching extant resources to an object is not enough.

‘AR is more effective enhancing physical objects (manuscripts, papyri, books) than signposting to web-based support materials, even if they are mobile specific’.  (Matt)

More about this under ‘Content’ below.

Technological

The story around technology is largely positive but there are some simple lessons to take away, and some thought to be put into working with the university’s IT Services team.

‘Good wireless provision is crucial. The lack of wireless connectivity in parts of the building has impacted on the classes already run’. (Andy)

‘The need for integration work between the AR and Library systems have been negligible due to existing web interfaces.’ (Andy)

‘SCARLET aims to pull together content from diverse sources but some technologies may be more easily integrated than others.’ (Jo)

The last point picked up on ease of use with accessing content from the University’s image bank on the iPads used. It was echoed in the following comment:

‘Integration into university systems architecture – we need to ensure we work closely with IT Services (ITS). In a future project we would probably want to have someone from ITS on the team’. (Lorraine)

There is also the matter of local storage of content on the AR app compared to the live access over the internet re-stating the point above concerning wireless access.

Content

It is important to remember that the objects used in the project are rare and valuable materials, such as 15^th Century Dante editions and St John’s Papyri held in the Special Collections of the John Rylands University Library.  Investigating AR as a way of enhancing learning based around these physical objects is the primary aim of SCARLET.

‘SCARLET enables the development of teaching in a Special Collections context, showing new routes and possibilities. The key here is to mine the enormous potential SC have for augmenting our teaching and the student experience’. (Jerome)

Several members of the team commented on the content developed around the objects to enhance the student experience.

‘I think my number one lesson learned is that the SCARLET app, to be as useful as possible, needs new content to be specific to the objects….their favourite part of the content was my videos. The lesson learned is [the] need to make more specific ‘live’ content’ (Guyda)

‘..we just showed something I’ve developed with Matt (the fragment of John pilot). What I’m planning now is to involved my advanced Greek class in the developing of a pilot on another a papyrus (on Luna)….I think there are amazing potentials …on making papyri more accessible to the wider audience (public engagement)…and will engage the students in creating AR objects next year.’ (Roberta)

The co-creation of content with students is an interesting idea and one that chimes with current work elsewhere (Exeter’s AR project; work in JISC/HEA OER Strand 3). Supporting the need to get others involved with content development was a common theme:

‘The amount of time for academics to create or plan content should not be underestimated … we need to define how to effectively support academics in developing content and document the workflow’. (Jo)

Two other elements featured prominently in the feedback; capturing impact, and sustainability. On impact:

‘We need to be able to communicate (to students, library and teaching staff) where SCARLET/AR can most effectively add value and also highlight the limitations of AR’ (Jo)

‘We need to find robust measures of the impact of augmented reality on teaching and learning.’ (Lorraine)

Our evaluation of impact to date has been through focus groups, and more to come on this in 2012. We recognise the limited nature of activity through a pilot project and would not wish to overstate the findings from this work, but within a £50K project there is naturally only a ‘scratching of the surface’ that can be achieved.

As the world starts to wake up to the potential of AR (not just in teaching) and as AR takes off in the US and the UK (see the Olympic Countdown), the SCARLET project is well positioned to build on the lessons learned in the library and take these into other areas of the University and beyond that could benefit. Museums are an obvious audience, as are other academic disciplines like medicine.

The clip here is a media training showreel produced at the Open University’s Media Training Course (not recorded in the John Rylands University Library – yet). It’s time for us to start shouting a little louder about what we are learning, and how we are developing SCARLET as we move into the remainder of the project activity.

The final word has to be on sustainability for SCARLET which forms the theme of our project meeting this week. If you have thoughts or opportunities we can work with you on please contact Jo (Jo dot Lambert at manchester.ac.uk) or me (Jackie dot Carter at manchester.ac.uk).

CC: http://www.flickr.com/photos/aussiegall/316350537/

As an information professional, there are many things that appeal to me about this project. I like the fact that it’s about people using their smart phones/tablets to research. The number of people using smart phones etc. is growing exponentially. Mimas has recently questioned focus groups on their use of mobile devices for research. It was similar to research we did in 2009. In only 2 years, the landscape has completely changed. In 2009 hardly anyone was using their phones for research – ‘they were too flaky’ but in 2011 ‘even my mum has a smart phone’.

So researchers are using smart phones and tablets to do their research and the SCARLET project is taking advantage of this. Increasingly researchers want online materials. No matter what we say, or how many sessions we teach explaining about the benefits of using primary source materials, they want online access to ‘stuff’…and they want it NOW. SCARLET allows researchers to view primary sources online whilst still giving them a sense of the real item. It allows them to examine the item in context. Something which is often lost when something is simply digitised.

Through SCARLET, researchers are introduced to primary source materials. These are researchers, who possibly wouldn’t have used them ordinarily. It could mean that as they are shown the value of primary source materials for their study, that they are more likely to visit an archive at a later date. It seems to me that there is a real opportunity to engage with new audiences here.

I think that the project could help archivists in a variety of ways, not just uncovering previously hidden treasures and showing their value. It could help provide an impetus to get collections digitised. It could be such great advertising for the collection that archivists are then able to get funding or projects started to digitise. Materials that are digitised then get more use, whilst simultaneously preserving the integrity of the original artefact. After all, some materials are incredibly fragile and this would mean fewer hands (albeit probably gloved) touching the item.

I really like the fact that the project is driven by learning and teaching rather than being technology driven. It makes it easier for archivists, particularly those in higher education, to get buy-in from their teaching staff. With my training hat on, I can see that offering different ways into collections, other than the normal route can appeal to different learning styles, and offers researchers more choices. This means a wider number of people could come into contact with primary source materials. All of this, as well as tapping into the new expectations from the so-called ‘google generation’ or next generation of researchers.

SCARLET is going to create a toolkit so that others can create similar applications using the project’s experiences and expertise. Archives and archivists don’t always have the resources that are available to other institutions, so it will allow archivists who aren’t necessarily particularly techie to create something fantastic that might allow them to reach a whole new audience.

It really is a brave new world. So, go on. Why don’t you have a go? What would Amy Pond do?

Lisa Jeskins, Archives Hub.

Many of the students had some interesting initial worries about how a technology like the SCARLET app and AR might work in a class where the primary text is meant to be the focus and purpose of their work throughout the term.  They warned that it is often the case that we invite various nuances into the classroom, simply because they are novel and seemingly cutting-edge, whereas the reality is that they detract from the essential exercise of getting students engaged in the material.  Despite this warning, these students simultaneously showed a critical awareness, not just of the course aims and objectives, but of the usefulness and reasons for the marriage between a traditional Special Collections-type experience with the technology.

The biggest suggestion for improvement came from the criticism that the app almost seemed superfluous because the information was available in quite a few different places, i.e., the videos of how to use the app were both available on the iPads, as well as in Blackboard.  This criticism is certainly one that the SCARLET team have taken on board.  Our job is to show, not just how integrative the app can be with university study, but that it has an inherent value of its own, which cannot be duplicated in other forms of distance learning.  As a piece of software engineering, the app should not stand alone without the contexts of primary research; it is meant to work in conjunction with the texts in a specific context of research, not simply provide something that removes the student from the exercise and experience.  One student systematically called attention to the fact that he never wanted a technology to replace his own unique experience with the physicality of the book and primary research, which is exactly what the project did not want to remove.  The relationships within the physical spaces, and with the thing itself, in some form, remain integral to the purposes behind the development of the app in a Special Collections setting.

The eight students also indicated that they were satisfied with the project so far, and anticipated that it would have an additional future benefit, particularly when they turned to writing their essays (to date, they have only produced a case study, which meant they have not yet had to use the app for very long).  They pointed that the experience was not the same as “being with the book”, but that it was satisfying in a different way.  And finally, they also realised the importance and potential necessity in learning and conducting research with AR and the app, in part because they sensed that investment in AR and technology like the SCARLET app are part of the future direction in education and pedagogical practice.  When asked if they would recommend this type of module to their friends, the answer was a qualified yes: as long as the technology was integrated well with the material and its use was understandable and relevant to the study, it would be a good idea.

Overall, the evaluation was largely positive, illustrating the recognition that one purpose of the SCARLET project was to help the students to, in Dante’s vision, “follow virtue and knowledge”, by highlighting the uniqueness of one type of textual study in a situation where the technology augments and improves on the possibilities of that experience.

The SCARLET team hope to use the valuable feedback gained to inform the next development phase: enhancing the existing content by instilling the technology to the physicality of the book and bringing the two closer together to form a more conjoined user experience.  In changing the presentation mechanisms, the user should become less conscious of the technology and more engaged with the text, reducing the feeling of disassociation that was prevalent in the initial period of user testing.

Using the pilot course, ‘Beyond the Text: The Book and its Body’ we have developed SCARLET content around 10 key editions of Dante’s Divine Comedy. In recent weeks 9 students at the University of Manchester have selected and researched a Dante book from the University’s Special Collections for their first course essay. At the same time they’ve been able to access SCARLET content via iPads in the reading room of the library. Our first opportunity to discover their thoughts on using SCARLET to support their research will be during a focus group session on 16^th November 2011. A discussion about content, usability and use of mobiles for research will help us to assess the strengths and limitations of using AR within the context of teaching within special collections. A future blog post will outline results from the session.

We have also made the SCARLET demonstration channel available so that everyone can sample limited content. We’re eager to hear your views so please take a minute to trial this and respond with comments via our short survey.

Although it is best viewed on a tablet device (iPad2), it has been tested successfully on an iPhone (3GS, 4) and Android devices (Android version 2.1+). It is recommended that you are connected to a wireless network although the content should work well on a medium to strong 3G network.

Please help the SCARLET team gain valuable evaluation by completing this very short survey.

http://www.survey.bris.ac.uk/mimas/scarlet

A close-up session typically involves a curator and an academic selecting up to a dozen items to show to a group of students. The items are generally set out on tables and everyone gathers round for a discussion. It is a real thrill for students to see Special Collections materials up close, and in some circumstances to handle the items themselves. The material might be papyri from Greco-Roman Egypt, medieval manuscripts, early printed books, eighteenth-century diaries and letters, or modern literary archives: the range of our Special Collections is vast.

Dr Guyda Armstrong shows her students a selection of early printed editions of Dante.

From our point of view, it’s really rewarding and enlightening to work alongside enthusiastic teachers such as Guyda Armstrong, Roberta Mazza and Jerome de Groot. The ideal scenario is a close partnership between the academic and the curator. Curators know the collections well, and we can discuss with students the materiality of texts, technical aspects of books and manuscripts, the context in which texts and images were originally produced, and the afterlife of objects – the often circuitous routes by which they have ended up in the Rylands Library. Academics bring to the table their incredible subject knowledge and their pedagogical expertise. Sparks can fly, especially when students challenge what they are being told!

This week I have been involved in close-up sessions for Roberta Mazza’s ‘Egypt in the Graeco-Roman World’ third-year Classics course, and Guyda Armstrong’s ‘Beyond the Text’ course on Dante, again for third-year undergraduates. Both sessions were really enjoyable, because the students engaged deeply with the material and asked lots of questions. But the sessions also reinforced my belief that Augmented Reality will allow us to do so much more. AR will make the sessions more interactive, moving towards an enquiry-based learning model, where we set students real questions to solve, through a combination of close study of the original material, and downloading metadata, images and secondary reading, to help them interrogate and interpret the material. Already Dr Guyda Armstrong’s students have had a sneak preview of the Dante app, and I’m look forward to taking part in the first trials of the app in a real teaching session at Deansgate in a few weeks’ time.

For many years Special Collections have been seen by some as fusty and dusty. AR allows us to bring them into the age of app.

With more than 1,000 texts still to be studied and published, it is self-evident how much work is waiting to be done for a papyrologist! However, as I said, papyri are also a fantastic resource for teaching. Despite only a minority of undergraduate students having enough skills to read and decipher ancient Greek papyri, all of them have the ability to observe. You don’t need to be fluent in ancient Greek to study papyri: actually there’s no need for ancient Greek at all. Papyri are artifacts like any other.

SCARLET technologies and resources are designed to improve your observation abilities: let’s have a look how, using the most famous piece of the Rylands collection, the world-renowned oldest fragment of the Gospel of John, as an example. The fragment is an ideal starting point not only because of its importance, but also because it is on permanent public display. In this way we will be able to test the value of the AR application not only with students, but also with the wider audience.

In this video you will have an introduction to the story of the fragment, its content and format, and why it is so important in the history of Christianity on the one hand, and the history of the book on the other hand.

Papyrologists are well aware of the value of technologies, and the John Rylands Papyri collection has recently joined the international project APIS. The Library created a database with images and metadata of about 300 pieces of the collection. While these websites and databases are mostly aimed at scholars and students with a knowledge of Greek and other ancient languages, SCARLET will allow me to engage with a wider audience. I am convinced that manuscripts must be considered as artefacts, and you don’t need to be fluent in ancient languages to learn from these objects. The AR application will enable an enhanced understanding for students and general public of ancient texts.

The direct involvement of the students in the development of the project is a fantastic resource for us as a team, and for them as well. We will have immediate feedback on the SCARLET application, while the students will have the opportunity to participate in the creation and development of an innovative IT application, a great skill to add to their curriculum.

In planning my teaching session it was important to think about how the materials might be used, how the lesson might be organized, and, of course, what the pedagogical purpose would be. The technology has to be harnessed to a clear set of objectives otherwise it will be pointless. That said, the potential for the AR to augment and expand students’ experience of the texts is obvious, and harnessing this is the key.

What I have ended up doing is centering the class around one particular text – Paradise Lost – and the various editions it went through during the period 1667-95. Some of the first printings are nearly identical – some are wrongly dated – so the use of AR will enable the student to distinguish between them and understand the subtle material or contextual differences between texts.

AR will allow the student to look at each text (of 11) and then read supporting materials. These materials furthermore will augment their understanding of the originals, and also of the entire early printing history of Paradise Lost.

Some editions develop the text quite a lot – adding images or prefatory matter – and AR allows the students to consider how this works as well as to do some research about the added materials. In particular they can look at biographical information, information about printing and publishing, work on the reception of the first editions, and work on the images that are added to the later editions.

Once the student has looked at each text they will have an overview, but each individual text-journey can stand alone. This enables the student to think about how each text is unique and to begin to think about the importance of the material conditions of each printed book; it also enables the student to gain an overview of the conditions of printing during the late 1600s.