EDA Sensor-based Evaluation of a Vegetation Succession Learning System

There are many forest problems that need to be solved to move toward a sustainable society; therefore, educating people, especially children, about forest problems is very important. Although schools conventionally educate children through textbooks, children are not expected to learn about forest problems actively from only textbooks. Therefore, this study develops game-type learning material that enables students learn complex mechanisms of vegetation succession and the actual state of succession, while taking interest in forest problems, by performing forest management themselves. For evaluation of the system, we measure the electrodermal activity (EDA) because using a conventional questionnaire can only qualitatively evaluate whether learning using the system is more interesting than when using text. EDA sensors are used to measure physiological response of participants reading texts and those using the system; the interest when using the system is evaluated quantitatively. The experiment shows that the change of EDA increases when using the system, which suggests that using the system is more interesting and can be better for learning than reading text.