OMLETH: A multimedia guide for field trips
Booth #04
OMLETH is a map-based learning platform, used in formal and informal educational institutions. It features educational multimedia field trips that allow authentic, location-based mobile learning.
Authors
Christian Sailer, D-BAUG, Institute of Cartography and Geoinformation
Dr Peter Kiefer, D-BAUG, Institute of Cartography and Geoinformation
Prof. Dr Martin Raubal, D-BAUG, Institute of Cartography and Geoinformation
Abstract
Many learning contents and processes of study programs in architecture, civil engi-neering, and natural sciences at ETH Zurich are strongly related to environmental phenomena. However, teaching in these study programs is mostly still limited to lecture halls or flipped classrooms and decoupled from the real world outdoors. Beames et al. (2012) argue that learning outdoors brings curricula alive, helps students to understand the authentic environment and related issues, and that it encourages physical activity. The ubiquity of context-aware mobile phones enables the design of suitable contempo-rary learning environments which consist of mobile education trails outdoors in the real world. The learner becomes mobile and is supposed to connect the surroundings with educational content through interactive multimedia triggered on mobile location-aware apps. This type of mobile learning is often called location-based mobile learning (LBML) (Brown et al., 2010).
Popular learning management systems are still not able to store geo-located contents, though professional technologies for handling and visualizing such content are available (geographic information systems, GIS, see Goodchild, 2011). The mobile web app OMLETH (“Ortsbezogenes Mobiles Lernen an der ETH”), funded through the Innovedum funds of ETH Zurich, bridges the gap between GIS technologies and learning management by enabling the assignment of learning contents to places (Sailer et al., 2015).
