Rationale Behind Forecast

Usage of Mobile Devices for inSight

According to a 2022 study by the Media Technology Monitor group:

60% of children between 2-17 have used a cell phone in the past month
41% of children between 2-17 own their own cell phone
Children between 2-17 are almost twice as likely to use cell phones (71%) for multitasking purposes as they are to use a computer (38%)

Additionally 79% of adults aged 18-24 report owning a smartphone that they use in an educational context (Stowell, 2015).

Mobile device ownership has made it one of the most accessible ways for people to get online. With many students bringing devices daily to their learning environments, it becomes practical for educators to attempt to incorporate personal mobile devices into their teaching practices.

Mobile devices are increasingly being incorporated into an educational context for a variety of reasons, including:

Consistent Updating of Resources

With internet connectivity, resources are constantly updated with new information or alternate resources, unlike traditional textbooks.

Information exists in a variety of forms beyond written, meaning learners can find resources that best match their learning style.

Accessibility

Mobile devices take advantage of a user's preferences, making their experience more personalized and enjoyable. This reduces the learning curve needed and allow for integration of already existing accessibility features, such as voiceover or inverted colourblindness colours.

Connectivity

Being able to take a mobile device anywhere means that students can engage in new learning any place and any time that is convenient for them.

Having on demand information allows exploration of any topic that strikes an interest, promoting a culture of curiosity and inquiry.

Quantification of Intangible Data using inSight

By using inSight as a mechanism for creating a numerical data set about a student, it is effectively giving a measurable asset to skills that are otherwise intangible, such as reading and interest, by measuring gaze and attention. While there are reading programs that accomplish a similar idea, such as Fountas and Pinnell or the Reading Assessment Database, they are infrequent, require a human administrator, and are time-consuming.

There is inherent value in having a numerical value to represent skills such as reading. Statistics make it possible to construe and understand problems in ways that would not otherwise be possible (Hardy, 2015).

"Statistical tools allow for the discovery or creation of entities that support our descriptions of the world and the way we act on it." (Hardy, 2015)

By incorporating a passive quantification program, such as the theoretical inSight, into the classroom experience, educators are able to see more than they would be otherwise (Lawn, 2013) without any extraneous effort. This would help teachers to get a better understanding of their students and help screen for further supports in a manner that cannot be achieved in today's classroom structure.

Furthermore, having such data available to both user and educator provides a holistic view of the learner attainment of new learning, since progress can be viewed over time, represented graphically and in an objective manner (Hardy, 2015).

Using inSight to Inform UX Design

With the emergence of technological-based tools to supplement educational practices, considering User Experience (UX) is crucial to ensure that a tool is viable for long term usage in an educational context.

Tracking eye movement and gaze using a program that is embedded into a mobile device, such as how inSight would theoretically function, would allow for the ongoing evaluation and improvement of digital education tools.

According to Steffen (2021), UX choices of digital tools not only affect the ability of a user to interact with a program, but also actively shapes the significance of the digital resource on society and the environment. This means that a program with poor UX design will be less meaningful to learners, regardless of the value of the embedded content or learning.

Using inSight to inform UX decisions could:

Alleviate the cognitive load of users by ensuring the UX is aligned with the learning intention and application function by identifying areas of significant visual focus
Use gaze and visual focus to identify features that users find to be valuable (or the contrary) to streamline design and function
Make future developed resources tailored to the needs of learners in an educational context by providing UX feedback to designers
Better understand the concept of attentional anchors, elements that humans use to make sense of new information and the world around them, (Shayan et al., 2017) to maximize the learning potential of digital resources
Capitalize on the understanding that differences in looking ad seeing patterns are directly related to creating deductive and proportional reasoning shortcuts (Shayan et al., 2017)

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