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Few investigations of museums have examined the potential of varying displays as related to learning outcomes. This study focused on two museum spaces, presenting different historical events and featuring different objects' characteristics and arrangements, as related to seventh- and eighth-graders' learning and experiences during a self-guided visit. Students responses to pre- and post-visit questionnaires were analyzed qualitatively and via some statistical measures. Three major factors emerged related to students performance: (a) the relevancy of the represented topic to students' personal world, (b) the use of large and dominant objects as centerpieces that form a framework for processing the assembled information, and (c) the split-attention effect. Implications are discussed for objects' characteristics and arrangements in the museum space that promote learning.

Technology advancements such as smart glasses offer novel opportunities to interact with technology on-the-go. This study examined use of two types of smart glasses (Everysight Raptor and Vuzix m100) for reading during walking and compared to a mobile phone. Fifty-two healthy adults performed single-task and dual-task walking and reading in one of two environments. Objective measures included gait speed and variability and reading speed and comprehension, and subjective measures included workload and usability. Results indicated that when using smart glasses, participants walked slower and with larger gait variability, read less text and had lower comprehension scores across both environments. Participants perceived the glasses as less usable and more demanding than the phone, with no differences between the two types of glasses. This work provides a benchmark for the negative impact of using smart glasses during walking indoors and outdoors. Potential implications are higher risk for community ambulation, suggesting a need for consideration of human attentional capacity when designing smart glasses interfaces and future urban environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many lecture halls today have two or more screens to be used by instructors for lectures with computer-supported visual aids. Typically, this additional screen real estate is not used to display additional information; rather a single stream of information is projected on all screens. We describe a controlled laboratory study that empirically assesses the effect on students learning of using the increased classroom screen real estate to project an additional stream of information. We measured how well participants learned from a two-stream presentation compared to a one-stream presentation duplicated on both screens. Data indicate that using extra screen real estate can indeed improve learning. In particular, learning was most improved when pertinent prior information was shown alongside currently explained information. There is also evidence that visual comparisons were improved with parallel viewing using extra screen real estate. Subjective data gathered from participants showed a strong preference for learning with two streams of content over a regular one-stream presentation. (Contains 7 tables and 4 figures.)