Wearable Technologies in Education: A Design Space

Abstract

Wearable Technologies have a tremendous potential to improve education, empowering students as well as instructors in their teaching and learning experiences. Beyond the affordances of head-mounted displays to present information and of smartwatches to passively monitor students, the variety of form factors and sensors available enable a large number of applications to be developed. Their features range from data collection and monitoring of students’ behaviors and affective states, to timely delivery of personalized notifications, alerts and reminders. This paper provides an overview of how wearable technologies have been applied in educational settings in recent years. Drawing on insights from students’ feedback and analysis of the literature, we discuss opportunities and challenges involved when enhancing teaching and learning using wearable applications. Based on findings from a user study, we report what students would like to have available from wearable applications. Lastly, we identify actual concerns related to wearable technologies and point out the major challenges and design implications for next-generation devices.