Tabletop Technology for Collaborative Learning

Tabletop technologies can promote group learning and interaction using multi-touch and multi-user systems to support collaborative activities. Our research focus is on how tabletop technologies can facilitate students to work on group projects and allow students to explore various scientific and mathematical concepts. 

When working in collaboration, students can work on projects as a group and find better use of working in groups using the touch screen.  The students get to learn such skills as observing, inferring and experimenting.  They gain experience as they are encouraged to ask questions, construct explanations and communicate their ideas to others. In this way, they can develop their understanding of science by combining scientific knowledge with reasoning and thinking skills.

To demonstrate the potential of multi-touch in the classroom, we are deploying interactive simulations for science labs on them. We also are developing a low cost portable tabletop which is particularly important in school settings where cost is the major issue.