Musex: A system for supporting children's collaborative learning in a museum with PDAs

Abstract In recent years, handheld devices have been playing an important role in children's learning. How to utilize mobile devices such as handheld devices to support collaborative learning has been an important research topic of Computer‐Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL). Educators in Japan are seeking an educational system structure that supports “integrated courses,” which have been introduced due to the revision of National Curriculum Standards. We focused on a museum as one of the appropriate locations where “integrated courses” are held and constructed a system named Musex for supporting children's learning with two personal digital assistants (PDAs). Musex provides children with opportunities to answer questions related to exhibitions collaboratively. We performed an experiment on Musex in a science museum and discuss the results in this paper. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Syst Comp Jpn, 35(14): 54–63, 2004; Published online in Wiley InterScience ( www.interscience.wiley.com ). DOI 10.1002/scj.10696