• Journal of the Korean Geographical Society
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• v.46 no.4
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• pp.534-553
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• 2011

Analogical thinking is a problem-solving strategy to use a familiar problem (or base analog) to solve a novel problem of the same type (the target problem). The purpose of this study is to provide new insight into geography teaching and learning by connecting cognitive science research on analogical thinking with issues of geography education and suggest that teaching with analogies can be a productive instructional strategy for geography. In this study, using the various examples of analogical thinking used in geography we defined analogical thinking, addressed the theoretical models on analogical transfer, and discussed conditions that make an effective analogical transfer. The major research findings include the following: a) the spatial analogy, indicating skills to find places that may be far apart but have similar locations, and therefore have other similar conditions and/or connections, can provide a useful way to design contents for place learning; b) representational transfer, specifying a common representation for two problems, can play a key role in solving geographic problems requiring data visualization and spatialization processes; and c) either asking learners to compare/analyze similar examples sharing common structure or providing them examples bridging the gap between concrete, real-life phenomena and the ideas and models can contribute to learning in geographic concepts and skills. The spatial analogy requiring both geographic content knowledge and visual/spatial thinking has the potential to become a content-specific problem-solving strategy. We ended with recommendations for future research on analogy that is important in geography education.

• Science of Emotion and Sensibility
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• v.15 no.4
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• pp.553-564
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• 2012

Tangible user interfaces have been developed in the area of Human-Computer Interaction for the last decades, however, the applied domains recently have been extended into the product design and interactive art. Tangible User Interfaces are the combination of digital information and physical objects or environments, thus they provide tangible and intuitive interaction as input and output devices, often combined with Augmented Reality. The research developed a design guideline for tangible user interfaces based on key properties of tangible user interfaces defined previously in five representative research: Tangible Interaction, Intuitiveness and Convenience, Expressive Representation, Context-aware and Spatial Interaction, and Social Interaction. Using the guideline emphasizing user interaction, this research evaluated installation in a science museum in terms of the applied characteristics of tangible user interfaces. The selected 15 installations which were evaluated are to educate visitors for science by emphasizing manipulation and experience of interfaces in those installations. According to the input devices, they are categorized into four Types. TUI properties in Type 3 installation, which uses body motions for interaction, shows the highest score, where items for context-aware and spatial interaction were highly rated. The context-aware and spatial interaction have been recently emphasized as extended properties of tangible user interfaces. The major type of installation in the science museum is equipped with buttons and joysticks for physical manipulation, thus multimodal interfaces utilizing visual, aural, tactile senses etc need to be developed to provide more innovative interaction. Further, more installation need to be reconfigurable for embodied interaction between users and the interactive space. The proposed design guideline can specify the characteristics of tangible user interfaces, thus this research can be a basis for the development and application of installation involving more TUI properties in future.