Embodied Cognition and Gesture-Based Learning: ICALT2014: Closing Ceremony Invited Speech

Gesture-based computing has recently received great attention in educational technology. Increasing studies have attempted to integrate its major features-gestures and body motions-into learning activities ranging from physical-related domain to cognitive domain. Despite the rise of gesture-based computing, studies in psychology have long shown that gestures influence the way we learn, think and perceive the world, suggesting learning can be less sedentary. Theories of embodied cognition have been the basis to explain the effect of body on our mind. Thus, this talk attempts to explore the relationship between these theories and technologies by presenting: (1) the overview of the findings from psychology and education and the implementation of gestures/body motions in our own study cases, and (2) potential research frameworks for future studies. It is hoped that this talk could promote more researchers to do study on making learning kinesthetic and designing pedagogically meaningful gesture-based learning systems.