Augmenting the landscape scene: students as participatory evaluators of mobile geospatial technologies

ABSTRACT

This paper provides a two-phase study to compare alternative techniques for augmenting landscape scenes on geography fieldtrips. The techniques were: a pre-prepared acetate overlay; a custom-designed mobile field guide; a locative media app on a smartphone; a virtual globe on a tablet PC; a head-mounted virtual reality display, and a geo-wand style mobile app. In one field exercise the first five techniques were compared through analysis of interviews and student video diaries, combined with direct observation. This identified a particular challenge of how to direct user attention correctly to relevant information in the field of view. To explore this issue in more detail, a second field exercise deployed “Zapp”, a bespoke geo-wand-style app capable of retrieving information about distant landscape features. This was evaluated using first-person video and spatial logging of in-field interactions. This paper reflects upon the relative merits of these approaches and highlights particular challenges of using technology to mimic a human field guide in pointing out specific aspects of the landscape scene. We also explore the role of students acting as design informants and research co-participants, which can be mutually beneficial in promoting a critical appreciation of the role of technology to support learning about the landscape.

KEYWORDS:

• Mobile geospatial computing
• location-aware mobile computing
• augmented reality
• mobile visitor guides
• fieldwork
• critical incident analysis

Acknowledgments

Firstly, thanks are due to the students on the ‘Mobile and Field GIS’ module for their enthusiastic participation. Some development work, particularly GeoMoLe, was funded by SPLINT (SPatial Literacy IN Teaching), a HEFCE-funded Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETL). Getmapping provided digital aerial photography (as a drape over certain terrain models and in Figures 1, 2 and 5). The data for the digital terrain was the NEXTmap Digital Surface Model from Intermap, (Figures 1, 2 and 5). A section of the Harvey’s British Mountain Map: The Lake District (reproduced with permission from scanned paper mapping, ©Harvey 2011) features in Figure 3. Ordnance Survey Data (Figures 2 and 8) accessed via Edina Digimap © Crown copyright and database rights [2009] Ordnance Survey (100025252). British Geological Survey Data (Figures 2 and 4) accessed via Edina Digimap. Geological Map Data BGS © UKRI 2009. The development of Zapp was supported by the RCUK’s Horizon Digital Economy Research Hub grant, EP/G065802/1.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Higher Education Funding Council for England;Research Councils UK [EP/G065802/1];