Hi everybody, my name is Franca Garzotto from Politecnico di Milano in Italy and I will
present our research on Interactive Multisensory Environments for Primary School Children.
What is an interactive multisensory environment? It is a physical space that has computing,
sensing, and actuation capabilities, by means of connected digital devices embedded in the
environment and physical objects. An interactive multisensory environment enables
multi-modal full body interaction based on gestures, movements and manipulation of physical
materials, and provides visual, auditory, tactile and olfactory effects that stimulate
all senses. Our interactive multi-sensory environment
is called Magic Room. The Magic Room has been designed for children
with and without disability and has been developed in the context of LUDOMI, a project of POLISOCIAL
- The Social Responsibility Program of our university
In the Magic Room, children with and without
disability can perform many game-based activities, individually or in group, with the supervision
of their caregivers, for educational or therapeutic purposes.
Together with special educators and therapists, we have defined eight design patterns of activities
that address different goals, such as promoting cognitive and social skills, developing autonomy,
or helping children to relax. At the moment, the Magic Room offers more than one hundred
activities that instantiate these design patterns with multimedia contents and tasks, at various
levels of complexity. A unique feature of the Magic Room is its
capability of empowering caregivers and children by enabling them to personalize the experience.
Children can create their own visual characters and make them appear as animated avatars in
the Magic Room. Caregivers can customize contents and complexity
of each activity according to the characteristics of the children group.
They can organize the sequence of activities within a session and control the experience
flow at run time, for example stopping or repeating the ongoing activity, according
to the children’s needs. The Magic Room is currently installed in four
locations: two primary schools near Milan and two care
centers for children with disability in Milan and Rome.
One additional installation, at a center for autistic children in Milan, is in progress
and will be completed as soon as possible, depending on the current outbreak.
The following video describes the Magic Room installed at one of the local primary schools
Our current research focuses on exploring the effectiveness of the Magic Room in primary
school education. We performed two empirical studies at the
two schools where the Magic Room is installed, involving mixed groups of children, i.e.,
children without and with disability, and their teachers
The two studies had different goals. In study 1 we evaluated the usability of interactions
and of digital and physical contents and the children’s likeability of the activities.
We also investigated organizational aspects such as the size of the user groups and the
session duration for an optimal educational experience.
In study 2 we focused on the effects of the Magic Room for improving children’s well-being
and behaviour. The participants in the first study included
39 children aged from seven to nine, and ten teachers
22 children were neurotypical and 17 atypical; 21 were male and 18 female
We organized them in 3 groups: Two were mixed groups, one composed of eleven
typical children and eight atypical children and the other was composed of eleven typical
children and six atypical children The third group was composed of three atypical
children only Each group of children used the Magic Room
four times, twice a week, along a two weeks period, for a total of four sessions.
For the first three sessions we predefined the set of activities, configuring them at
a basic complexity level, and assigning the same activities to all groups.
In the last session, children were asked which activities they wanted to do, and performed
the ones they selected For data collection, we involved five researchers
from our team. They participated as observers during sessions
and filled a structured paper-based Observation Form during and at the end of each session;
they also managed a final focus groups with teachers
In addition, children filled a “Likeability questionnaire” at the end of the fourth
session. The questionnaire was designed according to a typical instrument used in empirical
research among children, that is a Smiley-o-meter on a four points scale
The observations during the sessions indicate that both children without disability and
children with disability interacted easily with the digital and physical contents of
the Magic Room, had no problem in performing the required gestures, movements, and manipulations.
The focus group with teachers supported these observations, and provided additional insights.
Teachers suggested that groups with atypical children only should include no more than
4 subjects, while mixed groups can be much larger, up to twenty-two children, that is
the entire class. Relaxation activities are particularly appropriate
for large groups. In contrast, groups should be smaller for activities that involve many
movements and actions of multiple children, such as the Grocery Game.
When groups are large or comprise more than 2 atypical children, the presence of at least
2 teachers is needed. During the study, sessions lasted a minimum
of thirty-five minutes and a maximum of fifty-eight. Teachers suggested that the optimal duration
is forty-five minutes, also considering that a typical classroom lesson is sixty minutes,
and some time is needed to move from or to the classroom, and to organize children before
entering the Magic Room. The data from the questionnaire filled
by children show that likability levels were good or very good, with scores ranging between
three and four. The Association and Classification games had
the lowest score, probably because they have less gamification features with respect to
the other activities. The Grocery Game and the Immersive Game were
the most liked ones, probably because they exploit - more than the others - the multisensory
features of the Magic Room. As shown in the table, a one-way ANOVA was
computed to validate these findings and a Bonferroni test was performed, which confirmed
a statically significant effect on likeability for both the overall experience in the Magic
Room and five of the eight types of activities. The data emerging from the questionnaire filled
Moving to study 2, we have explored two research questions
1 - Do the experiences in the Magic Room affect children’s well-being?
2 - What is the behaviour of neurotypical and atypical children in the Magic Room, and how does it evolve?
In Study 2, we involved sixty-eight children
aged seven or eight, and twelve teachers. 31 were atypical children
37 were neurotypical children Children were organized in seven groups:
Six were mixed groups and comprised typical and atypical children
One group was composed of two atypical children only
To measure well-being, we adopted QBS 8-13, a standard questionnaire-based tool used in
the Italian education system to assess Perceived Well-Being at School
Children and teachers filled the questionnaire immediately before and after the study.
To measure behaviour, two observers in each session recorded behavioural signals using
a simple tablet application. The application was co-designed with a group of experts in
pedagogy, psychology, and disability. They defined two behavioural signals schemas – one
for atypical children and one typical children. Each observer in the room focused on observing
a specific population, and recorded signals by tapping on items of the corresponding behavioural
signals table in the tablet. We organized four sessions per group, one
session every five days, along a period of three weeks.
Together with the teachers, we pre-defined a set of activities at a basic level of complexity,
differentiating the activities according to the group’s size and the subjects’ cognitive
level. The order of the activities was counterbalanced
to ensure correct randomization. Concerning the results on Perceived Well-being,
the QBS tool provides an aggregate measure called General Score.
The analysis of the difference Delta between the values of the General Score after and
before the study shows a modest but significant increment for the entire population.
Still, there are some differences between atypical and typical children. Atypical subjects
manifested a significantly higher increase of their general wellbeing after the experience
in the Magic Room, while the positive effect is less strong in neuro-typical children.
The QBS tool also provides finer grained well-being measures on a composite scale addressing five
different dimensions. For all children, the highest positive effect
was achieved on Emotional Attitude, the dimension that concerns mutual empathy.
Again, different results emerge when data analysis distinguishes between atypical and
typical children. For atypical children, we measured a significant
improvement in four of the five well-being dimensions, namely: relationship with teachers,
relationship with peers, satisfaction, and emotional attitude.
For neurotypical children, only the value of Emotional Attitude improved significantly.
Our analysis of behavioural data highlights that for all children,
the level of engagement was high and was maintained along the time, regardless of what was happening
in the Magic Room; there were no relevant differences between sessions.
All children manifested a higher number of positive behaviours w.r.t. negative ones
Some behavioural differences emerged between atypical and neurotypical subjects.
In general, the variety of behavioural signals was smaller in atypical children with respect
to the other children; this might be related to the behavioural and cognitive rigidity that is
associated to many disabilities; still, new positive behaviours emerged along the time,
highlighting that the Magic Room experience might have a stimulating effect on unlocking
rigidity. In the first session, atypical children manifested
stress and anxiety. These findings are consistent with the characteristics of this population,
for whom any novel situation is intrinsically complex to manage and increases the cognitive
load. Still, stress tended to disappear with time,
also when new activities were proposed: according to teachers, this progressive relaxation seldom
occurs in classroom activities, and indicates that children felt progressively more comfortable
and more engaged in the Magic Room. In summary:
our research has explored the use of the Magic Room in real educational settings for mixed
groups of neurotypical and atypical children, performing two empirical studies involving,
in total, one hundred and seven children, 45% atypical and 55% neurotypical.
We have evaluated the usability of the Magic Room and explored its educational benefits,
highlighting two main aspects: First, the Magic Room seems to be usable and
engaging for both typical and atypical children, organized in large or small groups
Second, even a relatively short experience in this interactive multisensory environment might
influence positively the children’s well-being, behavior and mutual empathy, and ultimately
improve inclusion. In addition, in our studies, we elicited some
organizational guidelines that might be helpful for the school adoption of the Magic Room
as well as other interactive multisensory environments.
Investigating complex technologies in real educational contexts is always difficult and
challenging, and our empirical studies certainly have several limitations.
Still, they are unique for their design, duration, number of participants, and the characteristics
of the children involved. Our overall findings, although preliminary,
suggest that interactive Multi-Sensory Environments like the Magic Room have an educational potential
for inclusive education. And we hope that our research could inspire future studies
from other researchers in the field to confirm this potential.
Thanks for listening!
Good-bye!