Musex: A System for Supporting Children’s CollaborativeLearning in a Museum with PDAs

Koji Yatani,1 Mayumi Onuma,2 Masanori Sugimoto,1 and Fusako Kusunoki2

1Department of Frontier Informatics, Graduate School of Frontier Sciences, University of Tokyo, Kashiwa, 277-8583 Japan

2Department of Information Design, Faculty of Art and Design, Tama Art University, Hochioji, 192-0394 Japan

SUMMARY

In recent years, handheld devices have been playingan important role in children’s learning. How to utilizemobile devices such as handheld devices to support col-laborative learning has been an important research topic ofComputer-Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL).Educators in Japan are seeking an educational system struc-ture that supports “integrated courses,” which have beenintroduced due to the revision of National CurriculumStandards. We focused on a museum as one of the appro-priate locations where “integrated courses” are held andconstructed a system named Musex for supporting chil-dren’s learning with two personal digital assistants (PDAs).Musex provides children with opportunities to answerquestions related to exhibitions collaboratively. We per-formed an experiment on Musex in a science museum anddiscuss the results in this paper. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals,Inc. Syst Comp Jpn, 35(14): 54–63, 2004; Published onlinein Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI10.1002/scj.10696

Key words: computer-supported collaborativelearning; handheld device; museum; edutainment.

1. Introduction

As computer technology is commonly used in vari-ous situations, computers and the Internet have also beenused in educational situations. In particular, some research

projects have been conducted in recent years to explorepractical application of handheld devices not just as per-sonal information management tools, but as tools for sup-porting children’s learning because they are less expensive,easier to carry, and easier to handle than personal computers[1, 2].

In Japan, due to the revision of National CurriculumStandards, “integrated courses” have been introduced [9].The goal of the courses is to tie together individual knowl-edge of each subject that children obtained in classroomlectures so that the knowledge can be applied in an inte-grated manner. Schools have been required to provide chil-dren with new methods of learning that differ fromtraditional learning using textbooks or drill books. To ac-complish this, many schools and teachers are turning theirattention to museums for providing a different learningenvironment than schools.

A museum can provide an ideal learning environmentfor “integrated courses” because it is an institution thatenables learning by actually viewing and touching exhibitsand performing educational activities not utilized in aschooling framework. However, there are some points thatwe believe need to be improved to sufficiently make prac-tical use of a museum a learning environment. One problemwe noticed as a result of actually going to museums andobserving the circumstances involving children there wasthat the exhibits end up being divided into those that thechildren find interesting and pay attention to and those thatthe children are not drawn to. An example of an exhibit thatchildren do not pay attention to is one that presents an

© 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Systems and Computers in Japan, Vol. 35, No. 14, 2004Translated from Denshi Joho Tsushin Gakkai Ronbunshi, Vol. J86-D-I, No. 10, October 2003, pp. 773–782

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explanation on a panel or video tape recorder (VTR). Theseoften are exhibits that only present information unilaterallyand do not allow any response from the child to the exhibit;in other words, they are exhibits with poor interactivity.Opinions expressed by museum staff indicated that theybelieved it was unrealistic to make all of these exhibits intohighly interactive exhibits that children would pay attentionto because of the extremely high costs involved in installa-tion and maintenance. However, we believe that these kindsof exhibits, which also contain leading-edge topics andexplain them in plain words, are useful as learning materialsof “integrated courses” and must actively be put to practicaluse.

We proposed a system which utilizes handheld de-vices as one means of enhancing interactions with thosekinds of exhibits that have low interactivity. Supportingcollaborative activities with mobile devices is an importantresearch topic in the field of computer-supported coopera-tive work (CSCW) [15]. However, systems using handhelddevices in museums often are personal guide systems thatcan be used inside museums, and there has been practicallyno research done using handheld devices in systems forsupporting collaborative learning in museums.

Therefore, we constructed a system named Musexthat is based on an orienteering game, which is an educa-tional activity that traditionally has been performed inelementary schools. Musex is used by a pair of users. Wheneach user visits an exhibit within the museum, a questionrelated to that exhibit is displayed on that user’s personaldigital assistant (PDA). In addition to giving the user anopportunity to pay attention to the exhibit, this enables thatuser to acquire a deeper understanding of the exhibit byanswering the question displayed on the PDA. Moreover,by visually displaying the status of the paired partners onthe PDAs and enabling communications to be performed inreal time, we can expect learning to be accomplished whilethe partners mutually collaborate with each other. In addi-tion, to revisit their experience in the museum and learn forfurther understanding, we provided a Web page that re-flected the results of their answers to the questions.

The rest of this paper is organized as follows. Section2 describes related research and indicates points of differ-ence with our project. Section 3 shows the Musex systemconfiguration. Sections 4 and 5 describe the Musex experi-ment that was performed in a museum and its results, andSection 6 presents a discussion based on those results.Section 7 gives conclusions and future topics of this re-search.

2. Related Research

Various research projects have been conducted inwhich handheld devices were used mainly in classrooms.

The CARDS project [3] proposed a computer-supportedlearning system that used two types of handheld deviceapplications, and the WISE project [4] proposed a systemfor supporting inquiry learning. Also, a system for provid-ing a ubiquitous learning environment by using PDAs [5]and a system for supporting children’s fieldwork by usinghandheld devices as data collection tools [13] have beenconstructed.

How to use highly mobile devices to support collabo-rative learning continues to be an important research topicof Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL),and several systems have also been proposed for providingan environment for collaborative learning with handhelddevices. A system using a small device equipped withcommunication functions called the Thinking Tag was con-structed with the aim of understanding the infection processof a contagious disease in a participatory simulation [6].Use of the Thinking Tag’s peer-to-peer communicationfunctions gave rise to communication and cooperative workbetween children. Although similar attempts have beendescribed in Geney [7] and Folk Computing [8], none ofthese research projects aimed to support collaborativelearning in a museum.

Several systems that use handheld devices in muse-ums have also been proposed. The earliest major research,which was based on ubiquitous computing, was used as atour guide [10]. Other research included a project for inves-tigating whether a ubiquitous system could enhance thevisitor’s experience [11] and a system that attempted toincrease the quality of the visitor’s experience by havingthe visitor use an electronic guidebook on a handhelddevice [12]. In these research projects, the handheld deviceswere used mainly as tools for guiding visitors within themuseum or outdoors and not as tools for supporting col-laborative learning, which is the objective of our research.

Several research projects for applying handheld de-vices to CSCW in various locations and situations have alsobeen conducted [15, 16], and there has also been researchon systems intended for applications in museums. An ex-ample of such a system is a portable audio guide systemcalled Sotto Voce. In Ref. 14, the authors discussed aware-ness effects after analyzing users’ behavior when pairs ofvisitors to a museum used this system. Our current researchdiffers from Sotto Voce in that our system aims to supportcollaborative learning by children and increase awarenessthrough visual effects.

3. System Configuration

Figure 1 shows an overview of Musex. Musex wasdevised based on orienteering, which is one of the educa-tional activities that traditionally have been performed in

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elementary schools. Musex is used by a pair of users. Eachuser carries a PDA and transceiver to explore the museum.

Figure 2 shows the main screen of the software run-ning on the PDA. Musex provides 12 questions related toexhibits. Each exhibit corresponds to one of the 12 squarepanels shown in Fig. 2. At first, this screen is entirelycovered with white panels. When the children correctlyanswer a question related to an exhibit, the white panelcorresponding to it is removed, and part of the hiddenphotograph becomes visible. However, when a question isanswered incorrectly, the white panel corresponding to itchanges to a gray panel, and the relevant part of the photo-graph will no longer be visible. A photograph related to acertain exhibit is hidden beneath the 12 panels. When allquestions are answered, a final question is displayed at thebottom of Fig. 2. The photograph hidden by the 12 panelsprovides a hint for this question. The users search for therelated exhibit with the photograph hidden by the 12 panelsas a clue, and when they answer this final question, the useof the system ends. For each answer to a question, eitherthe corresponding panel is removed and part of the photo-graph becomes visible or the color of that panel changes.As a result, the users are motivated to correctly answer asmany questions as possible while enjoying the sensation ofa game.

The panel status shown in Fig. 2 is shared betweenthe pair of users. In other words, if one user answers aquestion correctly, the corresponding part of the photo-graph also becomes visible on the screen of the other user’sPDA. Conversely, if one user answers a question incor-rectly, the corresponding panel also changes to gray on theother user’s PDA. Although the photographs hidden under

the panels are related to the same exhibit, they differ at eachPDA. Also, a question that has already been answered byone user cannot be answered again by the other user regard-less of whether the question was answered correctly orincorrectly.

This mechanism enables a user to know, for example,whether the other user has answered a certain questioncorrectly or incorrectly according to the change in an indi-vidual panel. Also, the speed at which the panels changeenables a user to know the speed at which the other user istackling the questions, or in other words, whether that useris sequentially tackling the questions one after another or isstanding and thinking at a certain question. Therefore, the12 panels shown in Fig. 2 support visual awareness betweenthe users, and we expect that the communication betweenthe users will be more active as a result.

The users may also use transceivers to cooperativelyanswer the questions while consulting with each other. Asa result, we expect that various kinds of collaborative learn-ing by the pair of users will be observed. Also, sincedifferent photographs are displayed on the two PDAs inrelation to the final question, it is expected that the pair ofusers will find it simpler to deduce the correct answer bytackling the final question cooperatively such as by discuss-ing the question while looking at each other’s photographs.Therefore, it is expected that collaborative learning behav-ior will also be observed in the final question.

Radio frequency identification (RFID) tags are pre-viously installed on the exhibits in the museum. An ID isuniquely assigned to each RFID tag to associate that tagwith an exhibit. An RFID tag reader is attached to the PDA,and when the PDA is brought in close proximity to an RFIDtag, the PDA reads the ID of the exhibit from the RFID tag.The PDA uses that ID as a key to query the server for aquestion related to the corresponding exhibit and displaysthe question and four choices on the PDA as shown at theleft side of Fig. 3. Children read the question and choicesand refer to the exhibit and accompanying explanation infront of them to select the one choice they believe to be the

Fig. 1. System overview of Musex.

Fig. 2. Main screen of the PDAs.

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correct answer from among the four choices. The buttonscorresponding to the choices have been created to be some-what large. The reason for this is to enable the children toselect a choice by touching it with their fingers, not by usingthe stylus that is provided with the PDA.

When a user selects an answer, the PDA sends theanswer to the server via a wireless LAN and displays thecorrect answer screen (middle of Fig. 3) if the answer iscorrect or the incorrect answer screen (right side of Fig. 3)if the answer is incorrect. Both the correct answer screenand incorrect answer screen contain an explanation of thequestion, and the user can review the question that was justanswered by reading the explanation at the exhibition site.

For each user, a history of the choices that the userselected together with the unique ID that was assigned tothat user are stored on the database server. As a result, if auser can no longer use the system because of a problem dueto an illegal operation, for example, by entering the user’sID in another PDA, the data related to that user can beacquired from the database server to return to the state thatthe system was in prior to the problem. Also, all data in thedatabase can be suitably managed from a Web browser.

In addition, a user’s answers to the question can bereviewed at home via a Web page. This Web page containsa photograph of the exhibit that was visited for each ques-tion or a summary of its explanation as shown in Fig. 4, andthe user can review the question or learn for further under-standing by reading this page.

4. Evaluation Experiment

We performed an experiment using Musex in theNational Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation[18]. The experiment spanned a 3-day period that includeda holiday in November 2002. Before the experiment, wediscussed the design principles for questions related to theexhibits with the museum staff. As a result, we decided that(1) the level of the target audience should be elementaryschool pupils (6 to 12 years old), (2) the exhibit mustcontain the contents that the designer wants the pupils topay the most attention to, (3) the answer or a hint to theanswer must be hidden in the explanatory text that has beeninstalled together with the exhibit, and (4) the experimentshould target exhibits that visitors have not paid muchattention to and are exhibits that are useful as learningmaterials for computer-supported learning. We prepared 13questions for the experiment (12 corresponding to the pan-els shown in Fig. 2 and 1 corresponding to the photographthat was hidden under the panel). Below is an example of aquestion that was used in the experiment and its explana-tion.

Question: Which part of the brain is the most differentbetween the human brain and cat brain?

Choices: Cerebrum, midbrain, cerebellum, and di-encephalon

Explanation: The correct answer is cerebrum. Let’slook at the exhibit. If we compare the human and cat brains,it is apparent that the human brain has developed intricately.

No order for answering the questions is specified.Therefore, the children can freely visit an exhibit andanswer the question related to that exhibit. Also, since thechildren can answer the questions at their own pace, no timelimit is assigned for answering each individual question.Regarding the method of using the PDA, we decided that astaff member should accompany the children and teachthem how to operate the PDA when the children answeredthe first question. The only information given the childrenat this time was related to operations for displaying aquestion by placing the PDA close to an RFID tag andoperations performed when answering a question. No hintrelated to the question was given at all. The method of usingthe transceiver was also explained before the children beganusing the system. We used digital video cameras to recordsituations in which the children used the PDAs or transceiv-ers. After the children finished using the system, we asked

Fig. 3. Screens displayed on the PDA (left: questionscreen; center: correct answer screen; right: incorrect

answer screen).

Fig. 4. Web page related to an exhibition.

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them to answer questionnaires. We also issued an ID to eachuser so that the user could reference his or her own answersfrom a Web page.

5. Results

There were 50 participants (33 males, 17 females) inthe experiment comprising 25 pairs. Among these, 13 pairsconsisted of a parent and child and 12 pairs consisted ofsiblings or friends. The participants were people wholearned about the experiment through posters or an-nouncements after visiting the museum. None of them waspersonally acquainted with the authors or the staff runningthe experiment and they had no knowledge of the system.Table 1 shows the age distribution of the participants.Figure 5 shows situations involving participants during theexperiment. The Appendix presents a protocol descriptionof a situation in which a participant was working on aquestion. In the experiment, we were able to watch situ-ations in which the children actively observed the exhibitin front of them and worked on the question. We alsoreceived the following comments from museum volunteerswho participated as experiment support staff.

• I think the transceivers were useful because theywere used to exchange questions and answerswhen a parent and child were separated.

• If this kind of system could be given to each groupof visitors, I think it would enable the visitors toexplore the museum freely without the childrenpulling their parents around by the hand or theparents worrying too much about their children.Since the exhibit or field that a visitor has aninterest in differs according to the visitor’s age orsocial environment, I think that this system wouldenable the visitors to move about the museum attheir own pace.

Figures 6, 7, and 8 show results from tabulating thequestionnaires. Figures 6 and 7 indicate that Musex enabled

Table 1. Age distribution of the participants in theexperiment

Age Number of people

≤ 5 years old 4

6–9 years old 21

10–12 years old 10

13–24 years old 0

25–34 years old 3

35–44 years old 6

≥ 45 years old 6

Fig. 5. Musex in use.

Fig. 6. Questionnaire results (was Musex enjoyable?).

Fig. 7. Questionnaire results (did the questionsfacilitate your learning?).

Fig. 8. Questionnaire results (was the PDA ortransceiver more enjoyable?).

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the children to learn about the exhibits while they wereenjoying themselves. Figure 8 indicates that the enjoymentof the system was primarily due to the PDA.

6. Discussion

We investigated various characteristics related toMusex based on users’ behavior observed during the experi-ment. The following sections present discussions dividedinto interactions between users and the system or users andexhibits and interactions between the users themselvesbased particularly on the children’s behavior. Another sec-tion discusses improvements we believe should be made toMusex.

6.1. Interactions between users and the systemor users and exhibits

First, this section presents various characteristics ofMusex by discussing the kinds of interactions users hadwith the PDAs or the exhibits in front of them.

• Musex enabled users to view exhibits interactivelyby using PDAs and presented opportunities that caused theusers to look at the exhibits: As shown in the Appendix, wewere able to observe a situation in which the child repeat-edly looked back and forth between the exhibit and the PDAwhile working on a question and a situation where the childlooked at the exhibit again after the question was finished(Appendix 2:21 and 2:31). We believe that these situationsare due to the interactivity produced by Musex, and thatinteractivity is involved in attracting the children’s attentionto the exhibits. In addition, it was apparent that the childrenactively approached the exhibits to trace through the ex-planatory text or figures with their fingers (Appendix 0:17,2:14, and 2:31), and they were highly engaged with exhibitsthat had poor interactivity. From the above, we can con-clude that Musex had been able to present opportunities fordirecting the children’s attention and further motivate thechildren’s learning in a museum.

• We observed attitudes in which the children ac-tively worked on the questions: Excluding situations inwhich it was difficult to continue the questions because ofa problem with the PDA, no child quit early during theexperiment. Nearly every child actively tried to work on thequestions, and many even said they wanted to try again.According to the questionnaire responses in Fig. 6, we canconclude that the majority of the users had a positiveimpression and that Musex is a system that is acceptable tochildren. In addition, even when adults used the system, weobserved active participation in the questions similar to thatof the children.

• No children were confused about system opera-tions: We observed no children who were confused aboutthe operation of placing the PDA close to the RFID tag orthe operations for answering the questions. We believe thatthe operation of the PDA software could be easily learnedbecause we took into consideration that the Musex systemshould be able to be operated as simply and intuitively aspossible.

• The Web page had been checked after the experi-ment: After working on the questions in the museum, someusers also referred to the Web page at home. As a result, webelieve that solving the questions related to the exhibits inthe museum is a start that can support additional learningafter the child returns home through the combination of theMusex system and a Web page.

6.2. Interactions between users

In this section, we discuss interactions between usersvia the PDAs and transceivers.

• The team members allotted the questions to beanswered between themselves: A girl in one team used thetransceiver to tell her partner, “I got No. 5.” The partner whoheard this worked on a question other than No. 5, and thetwo partners told each other which number question theyhad found so that they could avoid searching for the samequestion as much as possible. Also, in one pair of partici-pants, a partner cooperated with the other partner to searchfor other questions by looking at the PDA screen andsaying, “Since numbers 4, 7, and 10 are finished, we mustsearch for other questions.” Many participating pairs an-swered the questions by skillfully allotting those questionsbetween the two members while looking at the status of thephotograph on the PDA screen and conversing using thetransceivers.

• The team members answered the final question bycooperatively searching for the exhibit related to that ques-tion: The final question is displayed on the PDA screen afterthe initial 12 questions were answered. We observed situ-ations in which every team cooperated by using the photo-graphs displayed on the PDA screens as clues to search forthe exhibit related to the final question. Many teams eithergot together and discussed how to proceed before beginningto search or they searched separately while exchangingappropriate communications over the transceivers and thengot together by notifying their partner if they found thetarget exhibit. The correct answer for the final question wasalso deduced through mutual discussion.

• When a child encountered a question they couldnot understand, they asked their partner for help: Whenpairs consisting of a child and their parent used Musex, weobserved situations in which the child used the transceiver

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to ask their parent for help when the text of a questioncontained a kanji the child could not read or when the childencountered a question that was too difficult to answer.When the child still could not solve the question after acertain amount of interchanges over the transceiver, thechild asked the parent to come to the child’s location andthen they worked on the question together.

• The partner’s situation could be known from thePDA: For a pair consisting of two children, when the motherof one child looked at the PDA screen and said, “Look,Sayaka (the partner of this girl) has answered so manyquestions,” the child pointed to the PDA screen and said, “Ialso have answered so much!” The PDA screen shown inFig. 2 not only enables users to verify which questions theyanswered themselves, but also which questions their part-ners answered and whether or not the questions were an-swered correctly. We observed that partners could knoweach other’s status easily by using only the PDAs, not justthe transceivers, and they could use that status as a clue tofacilitate mutual communication. Therefore, we can con-clude that Musex was able to support awareness throughvisual effects using the PDAs.

Also, one pair had mistakenly thought that correctlyanswering 6 questions (half of the 12 questions) fastermeant that they won. One child in that pair said, “I’ll winwith this question!” when answering the sixth question.This kind of behavior can be considered to be providing anopportunity for the children to look at exhibits, whichdiffers from the collaborative learning effect that the currentresearch aims to achieve.

6.3. Musex improvements

Through this experiment, we found the followingpoints that should be improved.

• Skipping explanations: As Fig. 3 shows, Musexpresents explanations for the questions as text. We noticedthat some of the children tended to not pay attention to thoseexplanations after they answered the questions. Since re-viewing questions that the children answered themselves islinked to an increase in the learning effect, we need anothermeans for attracting the children’s attention to explanations.We believe that an effective method would be one that couldinteractively present information related to the question asthe children manipulated the PDA instead of just presentingtext information once on the PDA screen.

• Only one user can answer each question: In Musex,a user cannot answer a question that the other user an-swered. As a result, we observed cases in which users didnot pay attention to exhibits corresponding to questionsthey could not answer. To solve this problem, we mustimprove Musex so that both users can pay attention to all

exhibits either by enabling the user who has not answeredthe question yet to answer it or to enable that user to displaythe question contents even if they cannot answer it.

• Some children were uneasy with kanji: Particu-larly among younger children, we observed situations inwhich the children were at a loss because they had difficultyreading kanji in the exhibit or in the question text andchoices displayed on the PDA screen. To solve this prob-lem, we considered attaching furigana to the question.However, in the experiment, even children who could notread many kanji worked on the questions by asking theirparent or a staff member for the readings of the kanji. As aresult, we can conclude that situations in which childrenactively answered questions while asking for peripheralassistance even when this felt difficult corresponded tobehavior that indicated extreme interest, which was ob-served through the use of Musex.

• The PDA response time was too slow at times:When the PDA was placed near an RFID tag installed nearan exhibit or when a choice button was pressed, it some-times took too long for the screen to switch on the PDA. Inthis case, we observed situations in which the childrenthought that their own operations had been wrong and theyseemed confused. To solve this kind of problem, we con-sidered displaying a dialog until the screen switched, forexample, to clarify that there was no problem and thatprocessing was being performed.

• Some children could not use the transceiver skill-fully: Before having a child participate in the experiment,we explained the methods of using the PDA and the trans-ceiver to them. Although every child understood how to usethe PDA, several children could not carry on a conversationby using the transceiver. We believe that one reason for thiswas that it was difficult to carry on a conversation using ahalf-duplex transceiver. However, even in these cases, weobserved situations in which the children worked on thequestions cooperatively since they were able to know theirpartner’s status through the PDA.

7. Conclusions

In this paper, we described a system named Musexfor supporting collaborative learning in a museum. Throughevaluation experiments in a science museum, we verifiedthe effectiveness of providing children with an opportunityto focus on exhibits that they normally would not pay muchattention to, which was the original objective. We were alsoable to conclude that the system was effective in terms ofincreasing the children’s motivation to learn since itadopted elements of orienteering to enable the children tovisit exhibits with the sensation of playing a game. Inaddition, the results concerning the children’s behavior inregard to the questions together with the effects concerning

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the behavior of paired users showed that Musex was ableto support interaction or awareness between the childrenthemselves, not just interaction between the children andthe exhibits, through the visualization on the PDAs.

The experiments also clarified some points that needimprovement. Currently, we are investigating means ofdealing with such shortcomings as the children skipping theexplanations displayed on the PDAs or questions beingpresented that could not be answered and were not paidattention to because the children had allotted the questions.

We also think that this system can be applied to a largenumber of people such as all of the visitors to the museum.In this case, in addition to techniques like those proposedin this paper, we would need mechanisms for eliminatingbarriers to interactions between children who are meetingfor the first time in order to stimulate learning between thechildren. Although we considered forming communitiestargeting all museum visitors [17], for example, it is neces-sary to promote learning activities for children, not just takecommunities of children who are acquainted, in order toimplement collaborative learning between children. To ac-complish this, we believe that in addition to forming com-munities, it is necessary to investigate such questions ashow we can establish (learning) goals that are common tothose of other visitors.

It was also apparent that there was a desire for themuseum staff to have more opportunities to communicatewith visitors so that the visitors could have a deeper under-standing of the exhibits. We believe that explanations by themuseum staff are extremely effective in supporting chil-dren’s learning because they supplement the explanationsof the exhibits that are already established and they presentthe contents in plain words. Therefore, we can conclude thata system that supports interaction between the museumstaff and the children would be effective. For example, weare considering including a function in Musex that wouldenable the children to directly ask the museum staff ques-tions related to the contents of the questions or explanationsdisplayed on the PDAs or related to the exhibits.

Acknowledgments. We thank the staff of the Na-tional Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation fortheir advice in designing this system and their cooperationduring the system experiments. We also thank the studentsof the University of Tokyo and Tama Art University forproviding support for the experiments using this system.

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APPENDIX

Example of an Utterance Protocol during theUse of Musex

0:00 Presses the PDA against the tag. A question isdisplayed on the PDA. “...where does the .... flow to throughthe heart?” (reads question text).

0:09 “where it goes?” Looks at the explanatory panelin front of him.

0:17 Traces with his finger through the explanationwritten on the explanatory panel.

0:28 Stops tracing through the explanation with hisfinger. Looks at the picture of the human body drawn to theright of the explanatory panel.

0:36 Looks at the PDA screen. Continues to pay closeattention to the PDA screen.

1:03 Stops looking at the PDA screen. Moves to theright side of the exhibit. After moving, reads the explanationwritten on the explanatory panel.

1:31 Operates the demonstration ventricular assistdevice.

1:37 Observes the water that represents the bloodmoving as the ventricular assist device operates. “Ah, thisis the heart. It’s beating.”

1:42 Looks at the PDA screen again. His hand keepsoperating the ventricular assist device.

1:51 “...the ventricular assist device, where does the... pass through...” (rereads the question text).

2:00 Moves in front of the explanatory panel to theleft of the ventricular assist device.

2:14 Traces with his finger through the exhibit’spicture of the heart.

2:17 “This is it.” Presses an answer button on thePDA.

2:19 The response for an incorrect answer is dis-played on the PDA.

2:21 Looks at the explanatory panel in front of him.Looks back and forth between the PDA and the explanatorypanel several times.

2:31 “Ah, this is it. This is from the left auricle.”Traces with his finger from the left auricle toward theventricular assist device on the part of the picture related tothe ventricular assist device that is drawn on the explanatorypanel.

2:38 Leaves the area in front of the exhibit.Notes: The following symbols were used in the pro-

tocol above.“ ”: Utterance...: Indicates that something was being said even

though we could not hear it because of ambient noise, (comma): Indicates a pause of less than 1.0 second

during a single utterance. (period): Indicates a falling intonation at the end of

a word?: Indicates a rising intonation at the end of a word as

in a question( ): Supplemental explanation related to the utterance

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AUTHORS (from left to right)

Koji Yatani (student member) graduated in information science from the Department of Engineering at the Universityof Tokyo in 2002 and enrolled in a master’s course in the Department of Frontier Informatics. His research interests arehuman–computer interaction, computer-supported collaborative work, cognitive science, entertainment computing, and com-puter-supported learning.

Mayumi Onuma graduated from the Department of Information Design at Tama Art University in 2002. Her researchinterests are human–computer interaction, interactive design, and learning support.

Masanori Sugimoto (member) graduated from the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, University of Tokyo, in1990, completed his doctoral course in 1995, and became a research associate at the National Center for Science InformationSystems (currently, The National Institute of Informatics). In 1997, he was a visiting scientist in the Department of ComputerScience, University of Colorado. In 1999, he became an associate professor in the Information Technology Center at theUniversity of Tokyo. Since 2002, he has been an associate professor in the Department of Frontier Informatics at the GraduateSchool of Frontier Sciences. He is engaged in research on human–computer interaction, computer-supported collaborativelearning, information retrieval, information visualization, database systems, and the like. He holds a D.Eng. degree, and is amember of the Association for Computing Machinery, IEEE, Information Processing Society of Japan, Japanese Society forArtificial Intelligence, Japanese Cognitive Science Society, and Japan Society for Science Education.

Fusako Kusunoki (member) completed her doctoral course at the University of Tokyo in 1997 and joined the Departmentof Information Design at Tama Art University as a lecturer. She has been an associate professor there since 2001. From 1998to 2001, she was a researcher with the PRESTO program (Sakigake 21), “Information and Knowledge,” of the Japan Scienceand Technology Corporation. Her research interests are human–computer interaction, cognitive science, and computer-sup-ported learning. She holds a D.Eng. degree, and is a member of the Association for Computing Machinery, InformationProcessing Society of Japan, Japan Society for Educational Technology, Japanese Cognitive Science Society, and Japan Societyfor Science Education.

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