Are the architecture students prepared for the use of mobile technology in the classroom? David Fonseca Arquitectura La Salle Campus Barcelona, Universitat Ramon Llull C/ Quatre Camins 2 08022, Barcelona, Spain (+34) 932 902472 Fonsi@salle.url.edu Ernesto Redondo ETSAB, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya Barcelona Tech Avda. Diagonal, 649 08028, Barcelona, Spain (+34) 630 983439 Ernesto.redondo@upc.edu ABSTRACT A mixed-methods study evaluating the motivation and satisfaction of Architecture degree students using interactive visualization methods is presented in this paper. New technology implementations in the teaching field have been largely extended and developed; however, these innovations require approval validation and evaluation by the final users, in our case the students. In this paper, we will discuss the advantages and disadvantages of applying mixed evaluation technology in a case study centered in the use of interactive and collaborative tools for the visualization of 3D architectonical models, the evaluation of the motivation and the students’ degree of satisfaction using friendly technology as mobile phones and Augmented Reality. Categories and Subject Descriptors H.5 [Information Interfaces and Presentation]: Multimedia Information Systems – Artificial, augmented, and virtual realities; Evaluation/methodology. User Interfaces – Graphical user interfaces (GUI); User-centered design. J.5 [Arts and Humanities]: Architecture. K.3.1 [Computers and Education]: Computer Users in Education – Collaborative learning, Computer-assisted instruction (CAI), Distance learning. General Terms Design, Experimentation, Human Factors. Keywords User experience, mixed method research, teaching innovation, learning analytics. 1. INTRODUCTION The current paper is based on three main pillars. The first pillar focuses on teaching innovations within the university framework that cultivate higher motivation and satisfaction in students. The second pillar concerns how to implement such an innovation; we propose the utilization of determinate tools of so-called Information Technologies (IT), so that students, as "digital natives", will be more comfortable in the learning experience [1]. Finally, the study employs a mixed analysis method to concretely obtain the most relevant aspects of the experience that should be improved both in future interactions and in any new technological implementations within a teaching framework [2]. While the three pillars mentioned above are not innovations themselves, their integration into an experiment gives them a clearly innovative character, and there are few similar examples today [3-4]. In addition, the design of the study focuses on the university level, specifically Architecture studies and the complementary areas of Building Engineering (the name of the degree is currently under revision, as Sciences and Building Technologies is the degree accepted at the governmental level) and Design, where spatial comprehension is very important and IT (Information Technologies) elements are very helpful. Thus, this work is both novel and justified. In this paper, a mixed-methods study evaluating the motivation, satisfaction and academic performance of degree students is presented. The methodology is both quantitative (through a structured test) and qualitative (using the Bipolar Laddering, BLA [5]), and it is based in the use of Augmented Reality (AR) to present, visualize and discuss an architecture project realized using CAD tools (Computer Assisted Design). Whether this type of exercise can help students understand and improve their 3D skills will be evaluated. As a starting point, students will work on their assignment and compare two ways of doing so: the traditional system that uses printed plans and conceptual mock- ups and the method of using 3D interactive model visualizations on mobile devices with different generation techniques. The working hypothesis to be confirmed is whether students who invest less time in the assignment will obtain better academic results because they are more motivated and satisfied than they are under the classic working system, taking into consideration that, today, the architectonic teaching field is based almost 100% on digital drawings and photomontages of 2D and 3D images. Our secondary objective is to ascertain through a mixed-methods analysis of quantitative and qualitative data the most positive and negative aspects of the experience, with the aim of adapting the implementation method in future iterations and for other subjects. Section 2, of this paper includes an overview of academic performance using IT and discusses how this kind of technologies can improve students’ 3D spatial skills. Section 3 is focused to describe the method and its implementation is showed in Section 4. Section 5 includes the research results, which are discussed in Section 6. Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from Permissions@acm.org. TEEM '13, November 14 - 15 2013, Salamanca, Spain Copyright 2013 ACM 978-1-4503-2345-1/13/11… $15.00 http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2536536.2536610