Drawing on the haptic side of the brain (in edutainment and pronunciation teaching)

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How is your current "edutainmental quality of experience" (E-QoE), defined as degree of excitement, enjoyment and "natural feel" (to multimedia applications) by Hamam, Eid and El Saddik of the DISCOVER Lab, University of Ottawa, in a nice 2013 report, "Effect of kinaesthetic and tactile haptic feedback on the quality of experience of edutainment applications"? (Full citation below.) EQoE (pronounced: E-quo, I'd guess) is a great concept. Need to come up with a reliable way of measuring it in our research, something akin to that in Hamam et al. (2013).


In that study, a gaming application configured both with and without haptic or kinaesthetic features (computer mediated movement and touch in various combinations, in this case a haptic stylus)--as opposed to having just visual or auditory engagement, employing just eyes, ears and hands--was examined for relative EQoE. Not surprisingly, the former was significantly higher in EQoE, as indicated in subject self-reports.

I am often asked how "haptic" contributes to pronunciation teaching and what is "haptic" about EHIEP. This piece is not a bad, albeit indirect, Q.E.D. (quod erat demonstrandum)--one of my favorite Latin acronyms learned in high school math! (EHIEP uses movement and touch for anchoring sound patterns but not computer-mediated, guided movement--at least for the time being!)

The potential problems with use of gesture in instruction, the topic of several earlier posts, tend to be (a) inconsistent patterns in the visual field, (b) perception by many instructors and students as being out of their personal and cultural comfort zones, and (c) over-exuberant, random and uncontrolled gesture use in general in teaching, often vaguely related to attempts to motivate or "loosen up" learners--or, more legitimately, to just have fun. EHIEP succeeds in overcoming most of the potential "downside" of body-assisted Teaching (BAT).

In a forthcoming 2016 article on the function of gesture in pronunciation teaching, the EHIEP (Essential, Haptic-integrated English Pronunciation) method is somewhat inaccurately described as just a "kinaesthetic" system for teaching pronunciation using gesture, a common misconception. EHIEP does, indeed, use gesture (pedagogical movement patterns) to teach sound patterns, but the key innovation is use of touch to make application of gesture in teaching controlled, systematic and more effective in providing modeling and feedback--and obviously enhance E-QoE--very much in line with Hamam et al (2013).

The gaming industry has been on to haptic engagement for decades; edutainment is coming on board as well. Now if we can just do the same with something as unexciting, un-enjoyable and "unnatural" as most pronunciation instruction. We have, in fact . . .

Keep in touch!

Citation:

Hamam, A, Eid, M., and  El Saddik, A. (2013). Effect of kinaesthetic and tactile haptic feedback on the quality of experience of edutainment applications.Multimedia Tools and Applications archive
67:2, 455-472.

Why multimedia teaching of aerobics (and pronunciation, I'm sure!) is more effective!

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There are times when you read an abstract and you like the conclusion so much that you are actually afraid to read the article! The work reported by Li and Sun (2008) appears to suggest that the virtual reality or video-based version of EHIEP (Essential Haptic-integrated English Pronunciation) could be much more effective than face-to-face. Wow! There are some issues of language in the abstract so I may be misinterpreting the conclusions . . . But judge for yourself:

"The results indicated: (1) the multi-media teaching for sports aerobics, which takes the students' study as the center, pays great attention to the learning environment design is helpful in making the student to establish the correct technical movement concept, and then raise the utilization rate of effective time in class, and increase the teaching information capacity the grades, (2) the sports aerobics received in the experiment group are better than those of the students in the opposite one, and (3) the multi-media teaching has its unique superiority in theoretical knowledge and the technical skill instruction aspects of sports aerobics compared to conventional teaching methods."

And there you have it . . . 

Field independence in haptic pronunciation instruction

As reported in this article by Hecht and Reiner, field dependence/independence cognitive style may have an impact on how readily one is able to "get" the felt sense of a haptically anchored object in virtual reality or through haptic video as well. In HICP terms, that would suggest that the field independent learner should be better able to focus on and recall targeted objects (sounds, words or processes)--without getting too engaged or distracted by any one modality involved or feature of the visual field--bringing as much information and cognitive integration to the event as possible.

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There is a fascinating interplay involved here. The "danger" of haptic-based or other "physical" techniques is that the learner may be so engaged with the somatic experience that the learning objective or structure in focus is lost or at least not well connected. Field independence suggests the possibility of better cognitive/noncognitive balance in the experience. On the face of it, that does seem to explain why some learners (although not many) find haptic work less effective or efficient. For example, they may be able to remember the pedagogical movement pattern (PMP) associated with a vowel but not the pronunciation. Likewise, a learner's over-enthusiastic, dramatic or emotional response in anchoring a targeted expression, not uncommon in field-dependent individuals, may actually be counter-productive, resulting in relatively poor, limited access and recall later.

Effective multiple modality learning requires that information from all senses being brought to the problem "at hand" are represented appropriately and optimally. EHIEP protocols work only to the extent that instructors and students maintain control and maximal attention in the process. Working with body movement there is always the possibility of things getting a bit "out of hand," but that should be avoided to the extent possible--especially for the more field dependent and hyperactive among us.