Context

'Uit de Oude Doos' is a research project made for the module LABs, in collaboration with primary school de Klinkert. Our main question for this project was: "How can technology be used to create an immersive learning experience?"

We started from a simple observation: most classroom time goes to core subjects like math and Dutch, leaving little room for more creative subjects such as world orientation. When it is taught, it's usually trough traditional means like texts, presentations or worksheets.

Trough research, prototyping and testing this project investigates whether physical materials, storytelling and puzzles can help children remember subjects better and develop their creative skills.

Process

For this project we decided to focus on the importance of world studies. This interest came forth from our own experiences, as both me and my teammate attended a Steiner primary school, where world studies were very important. When visiting de Klinkert, we noticed that much less time was spent on these subjects. Furthermore, it stood out that almost no physical materials were used during their lessons.

From these observations a first hypothesis was formed; do physical materials help children engage more with the material than digital or purely visual ones? Early tests (comparing physical dried leaves to pictures of leaves, and a physical layered pyramid to an audio story) showed a clear pattern; children given something to touch and unpack were more curious, more engaged, and retained the information better. This was tested by giving the children a short test about the information they'd received after each prototype.

The following prototypes continued building on the same principle: children received small pieces of information accompanied by physical attributes. Along the way we tested this against a digital version of the same concept and found the opposite effect. Screens made children more distracted and less likely to collaborate or discuss what they found.

We also introduced a narrative layer: a mystery, in which children had to figure out who sabotaged a medieval tournament using physical clues (a map, disassembled armor puzzles). This encouraged children to combine information across multiple sources rather than passively receive it, and noticeably increased how invested they were in the outcome.

The final prototype combined all of these insights into a small wooden cabinet, where each drawer holds a miniature physical room tied to a piece of the story. Testing this version showed that children remembered the base information significantly better than in earlier iterations, and were enthusiastic enough to suggest testing it with their whole class.