Designing Multi Sensory Environments for Children’s Learning: An Analysis of Teachers’ and Researchers’ Perspectives

Abstract

Embodied learning offers new opportunities to enhance learning effectively, and engage children with stimulating educational experiences. Multi Sensory Environments (MSEs) are spaces that allow for several interaction modalities that stimulate users’ senses and allow the collection of multimodal data. In educational contexts, they provide opportunities to support children’s learning in a playful manner. The use of MSEs is usually carried out with the collaboration of teachers; their perspectives and responsibilities are crucial for the children’s experience. The goal of our research is to uncover evidence-based challenges and opportunities, while considering teachers’ experiences. We conducted fourteen semi-structured interviews with teachers (n = 6) and researchers (n = 8) experienced using MSEs’, and analysed the identified challenges and considerations during a workshop with four Child-Computer Interaction (CCI) experts. We offer a series of implications for consideration when designing and/or using MSEs to support children’s learning.