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This paper shares our learning and teaching experiences carried out during a course of Interactive Communication Project delivered at the Department of Design, IIT Guwahati (India). The course focused on tangible user interaction and edutainment and enrolled diverse mix of undergraduate and graduate students. The course was conducted as a part of academic collaboration between IIT Guwahati, India and University of Calabria, Italy. Although the course was conducted in India, one of the two course instructors conducted lecture and critique sessions from Italy. Parallel sessions of lectures and studio components were conducted during the course. This approach fostered theoretical knowledge and its application through hands-on learning. With a time period of hardly 20 days, students have created novel designs on tangible user interaction and edutainment. We discuss and explain the course details, followed methodology, three student projects, problems and challenges faced delivering the course.

Many discipline of multimedia and communication go towards ubiquitous computing, hands-free and touch-less interaction with computers. Gesturing is one possible method. In this paper, we present a study on gestures that are commonly used for manipulating presentations. Human centered design methodology was followed to identify appropriate gestures suitable to the context of classroom presentations. User study was conducted to identify commonly used functions and their associated gestures appropriate for classroom presentation. Identified gestures were benchmarked through memory test, stress test and semantic interpretation test. They were further prototyped and tested with users to measure intuitiveness, fun, distraction and stress. Results indicate that gestures identified through human centered design approach were natural, easy to remember and with minimal physical load. Participants were investigated using Wizard of Oz technique for their perceived experience of manipulating presentation through gestures. Results showed that participants did not get distracted or confused while presenting.

This paper presents a design case defining a shift in teaching methodology. On exploring the different teaching methods adapted by teachers in Indian schools, lack of interactivity and increasing disinterest was exposed. In order to overcome this, the focus was to introduce a fun and interactive environment in schools. While interviewing school students it was found that they face difficulties in visualizing the 3D solid shapes during blackboard teaching sessions. Hence, they are not able to grasp all the facts taught in the class. The design opportunities gathered after primary research lead to the key facts of this project. The target audience was middle school children and the aim was to teach 3D shapes such as cube, cuboid and cylinder using TUI (Tangible User Interface). The design constituted of tokens with fiducial markers, which were used as educational tools on interacting with the tabletop interface. The outcome of the design motivated students for viewing, sharing and presenting the concepts behind the 3D shapes.

In this paper we present ChemicAble, a Tangible User Interface (TUI) for teaching ionic bonding to students of grade 8 to 10. ChemicAble acts as an exercise tool for students to understand better the concepts of ionic bonding by letting them explore and learn. We discuss the instructional content of the system along with its prototyping details. Usability testing conducted with students has been discussed. The system realizes its aim of learning collaboratively with fun.