Body and didactic mediation: experimental use of a Sense Wear Armband in a university context

Abstract

The aims of this study was to understand whether instruments used for motion analysis can detect significant information about the processes of learning and teaching. Moving from Enactivism and the awareness of the embeddedness of the brain in the body and world during cognition, we tested a tool that provide data related to caloric and energetic expenditure of subject (Sense Wear Armband) in a non specialistic school setting, to understand if it is possible to detect the effective bodily participation during cognitive processes (in our experiment, during didactic mediation). For starting the experiment within using a Sense Wear Armand we monitored the activity of didactic mediation done by the professor to detect the energetic expenditure, compared with the other kinds of activities during the day; we also monitored two volunteers students that followed the lectures. Data of every lecture were then elaborated by the specific Sense Wear Software and shown through graphs that we analyzed. Graphs showed that didactic mediation developed as a succession of dynamic and static moments, with different levels of energetic expenditure; what we found interesting is that a minimal but not negligible component of metabolic activity seem to be involved even in essentially intellectual activities. This paper describes only the first step with the first results of our work. The analysis performed here has only an exploratory value and we think it might be useful to the development of the experiment; we don’t believe we have obtained definitive results, but only useful information for the development of the survey. We hope to move forward as soon as possible.