Integrating Technology-Enhanced Collaborative Surfaces and Gamification for the Next Generation Classroom

We place collaborative student engagement in a nontraditional perspective by considering a novel, more interactive educational environment and explaining how to employ it to enhance student learning. To this end, we explore modern technological classroom enhancements as well as novel pedagogical techniques which facilitate collaborative learning. In our setup, the traditional blackboard or table is replaced by a digitally enabled interactive surface such as a smart board or a tabletop computer. The information displayed on the digital surface can be further enhanced with augmented reality views through mobile apps on student smartphones. We also discuss ways to enhance the instructional process through elements of game mechanics and outline an experimental implementation. Finally, we discuss an application of the proposed technological and pedagogical methods to human anatomy training.