Animettes: A design-oriented investigation into the properties of tangible toolkits that support children’s collaboration-in-making activities

Abstract

Open-ended tangible technology toolkits provide unique ways to engage students, yet there remains a need for the development of tools to better support students’ collaborative practices in creative problem-solving. This paper presents a study that was conducted over two years, investigating how properties of such toolkits can be better designed to support students’ collaboration. In the final stage of this study we deployed Animettes: novel, configurable puppets that integrate with microcontrollers and sensors, enabling students to develop characters and spontaneously story-build. We analyzed students’ collaborative interactions, in an after-school technology club using six analytic heuristics: autonomy, role-sharing, planning, novelty, group achievement and explanatory questioning. We found that the combination of the open-endedness of Animettes and the interactive possibilities of the microcontrollers encourage young learners to tackle shared problem spaces through story-building, doing so in ways that develop their possibilities for collaboration. Animettes leveraged students’ natural abilities to tell stories through a character-building platform; this provided intrinsic motivation for students to persist in working through problems encountered with the technology. We found such toolkits supported collaboration through the following properties: (a) configurable, open-ended structures that prompt shared problem spaces; (b) form elements that can be stylized​ to be appropriated by students; (c) separate but interconnected tasks that enable students to take ownership and role share. We discuss further possibilities for technology toolkits to develop symbiotic relationships between humanities, language, and technology curricular areas.