Mobile Learning and Spatial Learning

For my doctorate, I aimed to address an urgent need in Art Education to find ways of incorporating digital technologies in ways that enrich teaching and learning. The meaningful and effective integration of technology has long a preoccupation of mine as an artist, educator, and human. Thus, I was driven to find ways of using everyday technologies such as smartphones in art classrooms for the purpose of encouraging youth to notice and pay attention to their everyday environments. My approaches to this was inspired by the research of my supervisor, Dr. Castro, and my collaboration as a research assistant with the MonCoin research team (Castro, 2019). MonCoin was a multi-year educational research project conducted in several Montreal area high schools in collaboration with art teachers and students. The MonCoin curriculum was “designed to incorporate the ubiquity of mobile media and social media practices in the lives of young people with the formal art curriculum” (p. 10). The curriculum involved creating peer-learning networks by asking participating students to create Instagram accounts with an anonymous pseudonym and then follow only the accounts of their classmates. Within this network, we circulated Missions, which are visual and textual prompts that ask learners to photograph different aspects of their surroundings.

Peer-learning was an essential part of the MonCoin curriculum. Castro (2019) argued that while peer-learning has long been fundamental to visual arts education, social media offers unprecedented abilities for students to view their peers’ artwork asynchronously. Castro’s (2012, 2015) research has focussed on harnessing the relational and collective nature of learning that occurs on social media for art educators in their classrooms to create dynamic, decentralized networks online. Akbari, Castro, Lalonde, Moreno, & Pariser (2016) explained, “A key objective of our curriculum is to amplify the already existing peer learning networks and harness the collective intelligence of the class to expand the space of possibility in creative ideation” (P. 20). The notions of peer-learning networks and collective learning were integral for MSP and COSM. Collective sensory networks can enable groups of learners to share their multiple perspectives of everyday places.

Spatiality was another pertinent theme in the MonCoin curriculum (Castro, et la, 2016; Akbari, 2019a). I examined how the combination of asynchronous connectivity of a mobile curriculum and physical in-classroom interactions was essential to students’ engagement and learning during the project (Akbari, 2019a). I posited that a key to the success of MonCoin was “in creating opportunities for students to actively engage with their immediate physical space in their online network through photography” (p. 103). I provided the examples of the school walks and neighbourhood walks as instances when students taught and learned from each other about their everyday surroundings and photography. Going on walks provided students with a chance to be together and move through the space of their schools and neighbourhoods.

Students were motivated by being together with peers in familiar spaces for the purposes of taking photographs, and by sharing these photographs online. Being together in physical space and asynchronously viewing photographs taken by peers reinforced students’ engagement and learning.

Spatial learning is another critical component of MSP and COSM. This term refer to the transformation that occurs in the perceptions of learners about their surroundings as a result of sensory photography and mapping. In MonCoin, Spatial missions were particularly effective tools for priming learners to observe and pay attention to their surroundings, and also to engage with their surroundings, bodies and senses, in ways that differ from their automatic and habitual ways (Akbari, 2019b).

Examples of spatial missions included “My Neighbourhood,” “My School,” “Change,” “Paths I Take,” and “Notice.” These missions became a catalyst for youth to notice and move through their everyday environments in different ways.

One consistent finding in the research on the spatiality in MonCoin was that face-to-face and online interactions complemented and reinforced each other. This highlighted the importance of planning, scaffolding and coordinating the in-classroom activities with the posting of missions online. This finding was critical to the curriculum I developed for integrating MSP and COSM. For instance, I used Sense Walks in conjunction with Sense Missions to explore the theme of the senses. Sense Walks involved going on walks within the spaces of the school while focusing on one sense at a time. Sense Mission prompted learners to seek and photograph sounds, tastes, smells, sights and textures around them to share with peers. I presented these Missions after we went on the Sense Walk and invited the group to photograph their observations. The strategy of scaffolding the activities so that students first observed, then discussed, and then photographed proved effective and productive.

Another finding in MonCoin was that the Spatial Missions were useful tools for encouraging youth to notice and engage with their everyday surroundings. I anchored my doctoral research in sensory studies to further develop the theme of spatial learning. A sensory approach provided me with strategies to deepen learners’ connections to their surroundings. There is a rich body of literature in sensory anthropology and ethnography that explore place-making.

Emplacement and the Senses

Emplacement, in Howes’ (2005) words, refers to "the sensuous interrelationship of body-mind- environment" (p.7). Emplacement addresses the sensuous subjectivity of individuals in relation to their surroundings. In Pink’s view, the subjectivity, embodiment and emplacement of the ethnographic researcher are essential to doing sensory ethnography. The sensory ethnographer is co-implicated, along with those she studies, in a process of making place. The act of doing research implicates the researcher not only in the practices of others but also the production of place and space.

Pink (2009, 2008, 2007) suggested a number of audio-visual methods for investigating place- making. For instance, Pink (2008) examined various cultural artifacts of the town of Diss in England including a trail leaflet, a historical walk, and two film documentaries. The leaflet used text, images and a map to invite a self-directed walk, the History Walk was an event as part of the city’s history festival, and Pink also watched the films “Something about Diss” and “Something else about Diss.” She described her embodied experiences of studying and experiencing these artifacts as “ways of making place in movement” (p. 12).

Video creation is another important tool for sensory ethnology. Pink (2007) identified the activity of recording video while walking with research participants as an effective tool for attending to “the sensorial elements of human experience and place-making” (p. 240). Pink (2009) highlighted some of the benefits of using video in sensory ethnographic research: Video provides “ways of inviting research participants to use their whole bodies to communicate; reflexive texts that represent the emplacement of the research in the research context; and processes through which to share and collaborate in the production of an ‘ethnographic place-event’ with research participants” (p. 114).

Videos, pamphlets, and films are valuable tools for conducting research that is attentive to the sensorial. However, there is also an important limitation: these media are exclusively visual and auditory. They only capture smell, taste, touch, proprioception, movement, and other embodied experiences through allusions, metaphors, and visual and auditory effects. Pink was able to articulate and experience rich sensoriality at least in part because she is a highly trained expert on sensory research. For the average person, such as a teenager in a high school art class, walking or video documentary may not be enough to engage deeply with one’s environment, develop a sense of emplacement, or sensorially rich experiences. In some cases, it is not enough to create audio-visual representations of places. It also involves priming and motivating individuals to look, listen, smell, taste, and touch. Furthermore, creating audio-visual media that effectively conveys the sensorial experience of place is an art form in itself. It takes a skilled artist to go beyond the didactic and informative in order to convey the sensuality of place in ways that evoke rich sensoriality in the viewer- listener.

For me, this is where Art Education and Sensory Ethnography converge. The value of Sensory Ethnography for Art Education is in addressing issues of emplacement and culture in shaping our fundamentally sensual perceptions, experiences and representations of the world. The value of Art Education for sensory ethnography is in addressing the artistic skills and training needed to create and appreciate textual-audio-visual media in a sensorial rich manner. Art Education can address the skills of producing effective and sensorial photographs, videos, and soundscapes, as well as the proficiencies in observing and interrupting such sensorial media.

Sensory Education

The senses have always played a significant role in the education of the arts, and, in recent years, there has been a growing interest in attending to the sensory in teaching and learning. Gershon (2011) argued that while there has always been an awareness in curriculum studies of “the arts, politics, aesthetics, and experiential ways of knowing and being,” there needs to be more “explicit attention” paid to the senses (p. 2). He called for a sensual curriculum, which draws on Sensory Studies (Howes, 2005; Pink, 2009; Stroller, 1997) and Curriculum Studies to develop approaches to teaching and learning that account for the personal, social and cultural complexities of the sensory experience. Gershon (2011, 2019) was adamant that sensual curricula, by definition, must be political, and warned against versions of aesthetics that “eschew the political and/or racial for examinations of the emotive, developmental, or experiential” (p.8). This assertion hinges, primarily, on the fact that sensory experiences are an amalgamation of the personal and socio-cultural. Individuals filter sensory information through multiple layers of socio-cultural norms and values; and, as such, these norms and values are critical to an individual’s sensory perceptions and actions. Factors such as cultural heritage, class, race, gender, and sexuality are always implemented in sensory education.

Harris (2021) examined sensory education in diverse fields from culinary to medical training. For her, an essential part of sensory education was the understanding that “we learn things in life with others and with things” (p. 2). Learning is about engaging in creative and social activities. Thus, Harris advocated for practical hands-on approaches to sensory education that are rooted in making. She invited the readers of her book to engage in “making-reading,” and offered hands-on sensory activities to complement different chapters and themes. Harris is correct in her assessment that artistic, productive, and sensory practices are highly valuable for learners in many domains. My research has been centred on the idea that making enriches learning and engagement. Fortunately, there is extensive literature on practical ways of engaging with the senses in educational contexts.

I drew on a set of studies that offer pertinent insights for integrating the senses for this research. This includes Powel and Uhlig’s (2019) description of a graduate education course on “Sensory Ethnography,” Lee and Duncum’s (2011) call for the integration of the haptic in Art Education, Ceraso’s (2104) theorization of multimodal listening for Music Education. Another important source of inspiration was my research on soundscape compositions in Art Education (2014, 2016, 2020). I was first persuaded of the power of the senses in educational contexts because of my artistic exploration with sound. Listening, recording, and editing the sounds in my everyday environments provided me with a space to reflect on myself, my relationship to the city of Montreal, where I had recently moved, and the people I had met there. These creative practices became the basis for educational interventions that I develop for high school art classrooms (see Akbari, 2016). For this research I learned that paying explicit attention to the senses can connect a group of learners to their everyday surroundings and to each other.

In this literature on sensory education, there are two common themes that are salient for MPS and COSM. First, various authors used the tactic of separating the senses and focusing attention on a single sense at a time. However, in all cases, it was clear that when one is focusing on one sense, many other senses are always implicated. The second critical theme is the relation of the senses to space and place. These studies explored themes such as emplacement and ecology in relation to sensory awareness and representation. They address questions such as how the sensory can inform us about what is it like to be in a place with others, and how one can represent place. These approaches to sensory education share with Place-Based Education the goal of connecting learners to place.

MSP & COSM in High School Art Classrooms

In this section, I describe how I developed and implemented the sensory methods of MSP and COSM, and some key findings. I used the methodology of Design-Based Research (DBR) to integrate these tools in high school art classrooms (Anderson & Shattuck, 2012; Barab & Squire, 2004; Erickson, 2005). I worked collaboratively with two art teachers at two different schools in Montreal to design and conduct a series of educational activities that involved taking sensory photographs of everyday places and sharing these images on social media and online mapping networks. I aimed to combine face-to-face and online interactions so that they would complement and enhance each other. The online component first involved setting up a closed social media network. I asked students to create an anonymous and private social media account, and only connect with other students in the class. Once this closed peer-to-peer learning network had been established, I sent out visual prompts asking them to photograph different aspects of their surroundings. In the first week, we explored spatial themes such as “My City” “Paths I Take,” “Landmaks,” and “Notice.” During the second week we explored the theme of the senses with prompts such as “Sounds” “Touch” “Dark” “Soft” and “Sweet.” In the classroom, the theme of the senses was also explored by going on a Sense Walks. In the third, fourth, and fifth weeks, we explored the themes of walking and creative mapping. Activities included going on neighbourhood photography walks, and developing a collective online map using Google My Maps. Creating the online map involved, first, using the online satellite map to draw the sights, sounds, tastes and smells in the neighbourhood; next, going on a walk and photographing the senses; and finally, posting the photographs on the online map. Classroom time was devoted to creating the maps, and students were asked to go for walks outside school time.

One of the clearest outcomes of this fieldwork was my realization of how important it was to explicitly teach photographic skills in order to enable and empower students to engage with the theme of the senses. The difference between how I conducted the educational activities during phase 1 and phase 2 was particularly revealing in this regard. In the second phase, I placed a much stronger emphasis on teaching practical photographic skills such as turning on the grid in the camera setting, using the grid to compose a photograph, and editing using the mobile application Snapseed. This emphasis on photography had a significant impact on the learners’ engagement with the project.

I found there was a strong symbiotic relationship between artistic photography and sensory engagement with one’s surroundings. The challenge of translating their sensory experiences into photographs gave learners a chance to apply their creativity and skills, and, simultaneously, got them to pay attention and notice their everyday surroundings. Teaching photography composition and editing skills played a significant role in motivating leaners to notice the sensorium of their surroundings.

Moreover, the acts of observing and photographing the senses were always intertwined with the spaces in which these activities occurred.

This relates to another important point about sensory education. The sensory is implicated in the social-political. The students’ reaction during the Sense Walks to the prompt smell was quite revealing in this regard. During the walk in phase 1, students kept talking about the smells of their schools in disparaging ways, and were reoccupied by smells more than any other sense. During the walk in phase 2, the Sense Missions inspired some to photograph unflattering aspects of their school such as clogged toilets and litter. I was surprised by the students’ enthusiastic and critical responses to the prompt of smells. Using this prompt in the context of the schools required an openness to having uncomfortable but worthwhile conversations about the spaces within the school. The profound role of odours in social life, culture, and power is understood in Sensory Anthropology. Classen, Howes, and Synnott (1994), for example, showed that in Western societies smells, and smell neutrality, often serve to divide humans along ethnic, gender, and class lines. Smell is fundamental to social life, and therefore, spatiality. It is, however, an uncomfortable topic because sometimes odours can be unpleasant, and also sometimes talking about smell requires addressing issues of ethnicity, gender, class and socio-economic status.

What if the school curriculum attended to the senses of the youth in their schools? The cases above show that attending to the senses, in general, and smells, in particular, can reveal a great deal about students’ attitudes and relationship to the environment of their schools. In some cases, students pointed out issues within their school environment that they felt should be addressed. In other cases, students pointed out sensory experiences that define their daily experiences at school. “It smells like teenagers here” is an utterance I heard at both schools during the Sense Walk. In my view, these findings validate many of the points raised by Gershon (2011, 2019) including the inseparability of the sensory from the political, and the value of explicitly attending to the senses in schools for dealing with critical issues.

Conclusion

In this paper, I have described and provided background in the literature for the sensory methods of MSP and COSM. The Sense Missions and Sense Walks were essential components of MSP. MSP combined the face-to-face and physical activity of going on walks while noticing the senses with the online circulation of images that represented students’ observations of their surroundings. This combination of physical and online interactivity among a group of learners led some students to report noticing and paying attention to their environments, and learning new things about their peers. In addition, students reported peer and spatial learning as a result of engaging in the activities of creating Sense Maps to guide walks, going on the walks to photograph, and posting their sensory photographs on the Collective Online Sensory Maps.

There are some key implications of these findings for applying MSP and COSM in Sensory Design. First, I found that there a symbiotic relationship between doing artistic photography and sensory engagement with one’s surroundings. Learning about and apply photography composition and editing skills is valuable for engaging with the sensorium of a place. Secondly, I found that sensory awareness in art classrooms led in some instances to critical conversations about the spaces of the school. I see great potential in the possibility of having uncomfortable conversations about what we smell or do not smell in a space, for instance. What we sense around us and our feelings about these sensory stimuli are deeply intertwined with who we are and how we relate to others in space. MSP and COSM provide an entry point for critical conversations about places. Third, collectivity is a highly valuable element of MSP and COSM. Online platforms are useful for providing spaces for sharing sensory photographs and, by extension, the multiple perspectives of the people who inhabit a place. I found it productive to create such online spaces that would allow individuals to share and encounter the multiple perspectives of others of physical spaces.

A model MSP can be found here.

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