Vocational students’ visual search patterns while solving a digital proportion task of the Mathematical Imagery Trainer For Proportions application.

Abstract

The aim of this study was to describe cognitive visual search patterns within the MIT-P app for embodied learning; an app based on a proportions task constructed by the Embodied Design Research Laboratory (EDRL), a research group of the university of Berkeley. The app stimulates the concept of proportion by means of visual and sensory motor interactions with four tasks, two parallel pluses or bars and two orthogonal pluses or bars with a 1:2 ratio. To describe visual search patterns, areas of interest and attentional anchors were used. The main research question was: What visual search patterns and hand movements can be found from children in Dutch vocational education during a completed problem solving task in the MIT-P app for learning proportions? The study used eye-tracking videos and log file data of Dutch vocational education students (n=21). The data was gathered in two Dutch vocational schools using a Tobii-x260 eye-tracker. The study focused on eye- and hand movements. Data was analysed by observing videos (n=4) made by the eye-tracker and analysis on areas of interest with Tobii studio (n=21). Results indicate that students have a linear and triangular attentional anchor for the parallel as well as the orthogonal task. Both tasks seem to have ten AOIs. The most important areas are the top of the bars, pluses, the area halfway the right bar, numbers and space in between pluses.