One
of the (many) notes sitting on the wall in my building says:
> Humans need to speak
w(?) space → UniTinder (From my wonderful colleague Theresa). We’ve
had a few informal chats about what kinds of location-based tools might
be developed for an on-campus experience, or to support off-campus
learning. Obviously lots of work has gone into augmented reality
services, and location aware apps (e.g. Wikipedia on mobile has/had an
[‘articles nearby’]1 feature). And of course, we (at UTS)
currently buy in to another tool that provides campus mapping (called
campus map), and our google maps coverage is pretty good (e.g. you can
search by building number/name) – this indicates desire for such
services, and potential to build on (or develop from scratch) tools to
connect the local environment with app users and other relevant content
(whether Wikipedia articles, or UTS toilet locations!). In terms of
location-aware-learning through, there are interests beyond this. One is
in how we can use location awareness to develop games that drive
learning behaviours (e.g. including encouraging students to get to know
where important services are on campus, engage in productive
collaboration at a shared event, etc.), as, for example, discussed in
this paper [“Academic Check-ins: Mobile Gamification for increasing
motivation and engagement around the campus”]2. In other contexts,
we might also be interested in how we engage students and the wider
university community (including local residents) in a community of
suggestions, using open tools to develop location aware community based
suggestions, per the [OpenPlans]3 project. I love the potential of
this kind of approach and would be fascinated in any case studies in
university contexts (either that used such location-based
community-sourced suggestions, or that could have done but were in fact
conducted using different methods). Across possible applications though,
there are some social and ethical issues. Not least among these are
issues around connectivity both from an institutional perspective (even
the best university has dead-zones and might struggle to map their wifi
signals), and from a personal perspective (not all students have, or
want, mobile devices), which are of course also connected to privacy
concerns (knowing where you are, when, and where you go is just
creepy!). Nonetheless, something for further exploration, and I’d love
to hear about any current or developing applications!