Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Embodied Learning: Somatically Informed Instructional Design

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
Perspectives on Wearable Enhanced Learning (WELL)

  • 560 Accesses

Abstract

Wearable technology is moving closer to and even into human bodies, effectively rendering it invisible. Coined by Weiser as Invisible Computing, wearable technologies now “weave themselves into the fabric of everyday life until they are indistinguishable from it.” While technologies may appear invisible to the naked eye and continue to demand less of our visual attention, our understanding of the world is created not just through our eyes but through our multisensory, corporeal experiences. Therefore, the movement of technologies from our hands onto our skin should, but often does not, account for broader, felt experiences. Entering into the wearable technology design field as a professional dance and somatic practitioner, I place somatically informed practices at the center of the wearable technology design process. This is made possible by handmade rapid prototyping wearable technology bands I designed specifically for pedagogical use. In this chapter, I share my curricular model for engaging somatically informed practices in wearable technology design. More specifically, I provide a brief overview of the field of somatic practices, describe my curricular design methods, and discuss my in-class experiences teaching the curriculum.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 84.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Hardcover Book
USD 109.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    In somatic practices, the body is never seen as truly still. Moments of guided stillness within somatic practices often bring attention to the ongoing movement of our bodies, such as breath, blood flow, and micro-movements of the joints and muscles (Eddy 2016).

  2. 2.

    My last name at the time of publication was Mumford.

  3. 3.

    The RPWTB is setup to accommodate any variable resistor sensor that can be used to create an adjustable voltage divider circuit.

  4. 4.

    Intersectionality is a theoretical framework used to articulate the complex, overlapping, and intersecting systems of oppression. In this, intersectionality both acknowledges and critiques sociocultural categories such as, but not limited to race, gender identity, class, education, ability, sexual orientation, age, and religion. The term originates from black feminist thought, most notably from the early work of lawyer and American civil rights advocate Kimberlé Crenshaw (1989), in which she writes about the unique marginalization experiences of those who identify as both black and female.

References

  • Alexander, F. M. (1923). Constructive conscious control of the individual. London: Methuen.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bales, M., & Nettl-Fiol, R. (2008). The body eclectic: Evolving practices in dance training. Illinois: University of Illinois Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Batson, G. (2007). Revisiting overuse injuries in dance in view of motor learning and somatic models of distributed practice. Journal of Dance Medicine and Science, 11(3), 70–75.

    Google Scholar 

  • Batson, G., Quin, E., & Wilson, M. (2012). Integrating somatics and science. Journal of Dance & Somatic Practices, 3(1–2), 183–193.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Candau, Y., Franoise, J., Alaoui, S. F., & Schiphorst, T. (2017). Cultivating kinaesthetic awareness through interaction: Perspectives from somatic practices and embodied cognition. In Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Movement Computing. ACM.

    Google Scholar 

  • Crenshaw, K. (1989). Demarginalizing the intersection of race and sex: A Black feminist critique of antidiscrimination doctrine, feminist theory and antiracist politics. University of Chicago Legal Forum, 1989 (pp. 139–167).

    Google Scholar 

  • de Lima, C. (2013). Trans-meaning – Dance as an embodied technology of perception. Journal of Dance and Somatic Practices, 5(1), 17–30.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Eddy, M. (2009). A brief history of somatic practices and dance: Historical development of the field of somatic education and its relationship to dance. Journal of Dance and Somatic Practices, 1(1), 5–27.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Eddy, M. (2016). Mindful movement: The evolution of the somatic arts and conscious action. Bristol: Intellect.

    Google Scholar 

  • Erkut, C., & Dahl, S. (2017). Embodied interaction through movement in a course work. In Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Movement Computing. ACM.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fdili Alaoui, S., Schiphorst, T., Cuykendall, S., Carlson, K., Studd, K., et al. (2015). Strategies for embodied design: The value and challenges of observing movement. In Proceedings of the 2015 ACM SIGCHI Conference on Creativity and Cognition. ACM.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hanna, T. (1970). Bodies in revolt. California: Freeperson Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hanna, T. (1988). Somatics: Reawakening the mind’s control of movement, flexibility, and health. Massachusetts: Da Capo Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ingalls, T., James, J., Qian, G., Thornburg, H., Campana, E., Rajko, S., et al. (2007). Response: An applied example of computational somatics. In Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Enactive Interfaces. ACM.

    Google Scholar 

  • Irrigate, artist-led creative placemaking toolkit. Springboard for the Arts. https://springboardforthearts.org/programs/irrigate/. Accessed February 6, 2017.

  • Kozel, S. (2012). FCJ-150 AffeXity: Performing affect with augmented reality. The Fibreculture Journal, 21, 72–97 (2012).

    Google Scholar 

  • Lee, W., Youn-kyung L., & Richard S. (2014). Practicing somaesthetics: Exploring its impact on interactive product design ideation. In Proceedings of the 2014 Conference on Designing Interactive Systems. ACM.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lerman, L. Blind Lead. The Dance Exchange Toolbox. Liz Lerman Dance Exchange. http://www.d-lab.org/toolbox/view/-Blind-Lead Accessed May 3, 2018.

  • Loke, L., Khut, G. P., Slattery, M., Truman, C., Muller, L., & Duckworth, J. (2013). Re-sensitising the body: Interactive art and the Feldenkrais method. International Journal of Arts and Technology, 6(4), 339–356.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Martinez, C., Mumford, J., Rajko, S., Tolentino, L., Campana, E., Ingalls, T., et al. (2009). HandJabber: An enactive framework for collaborative creative expression. In Proceedings of the Seventh ACM Conference on Creativity and Cognition (pp. 395–396). ACM.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rajko, J. (2018). A call to action: Embodied thinking and human-computer interaction design. In J. Sayers (Ed.) The Routledge companion to media studies and digital humanities (pp. 195–203). Oxfordshire: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rouhiainen, L. (2008). Somatic dance as a means of cultivating ethically embodied subjects. Research in Dance Education, 9(3), 241–256.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Schiphorst, T. (2009a). Body matters: The palpability of invisible computing. Leonardo, 42(3), 225–230.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Schiphorst, T. (2009b). Bridging embodied methodologies from somatics and performance to human computer interaction. PhD Thesis, University of Plymouth.

    Google Scholar 

  • Schiphorst, T., & Andersen, K. (2004). Between bodies: Using experience modeling to create gestural protocols for physiological data transfer (pp. 1–8). New York: ACM Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Schupp, K. (2017). The transgressive possibilities of foregrounding somatic values. Research in Dance Education, 18(2), 161–173.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Shear, J., & Varela, F. J. (1999). The view from within: First-person approaches to the study of consciousness. Devon: Imprint Academic.

    Google Scholar 

  • Shusterman, R. (1999). Somaesthetics: A disciplinary proposal. Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 57(3), 299–313.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Swaminathan, D., Thornburg, H., Mumford, J., Rajko, S., James, J., Ingalls, T., et al. (2009). A dynamic Bayesian approach to computational laban shape quality analysis. Advances in Human-Computer Interaction, 2009(2), 1–17.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Warburton, E. C. (2011). Of meanings and movements: Re-languaging embodiment in dance phenomenology and cognition. Dance Research Journal, 43(2), 65–84.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Whatley, S. (2017). Somatic practices: How motion analysis and mind images work hand in hand in dance. In Handbook of human motion (pp. 1–15). New York: Springer.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

I am very grateful to Stjepan Rajko for co-teaching the course with me at DHSI and for his detailed comments and discussion on this chapter. I am also grateful to Eileen Standley for her contributions to the early stages of curriculum design. Special thanks to the Digital Humanities Summer Institute for supporting and hosting the course.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA

    Jessica J. Rajko

Authors
  1. Jessica J. Rajko
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jessica J. Rajko .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Economics and Social Sciences, Beuth University of Applied Sciences, Berlin, Berlin, Germany

    Ilona Buchem

  2. Informatik 5 (Information Systems and Databases), RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany

    Ralf Klamma

  3. Performance Augmentation Lab, Oxford Brookes University, Oxford, UK

    Fridolin Wild

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2019 Springer Nature Switzerland AG

About this chapter

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this chapter

Rajko, J.J. (2019). Embodied Learning: Somatically Informed Instructional Design. In: Buchem, I., Klamma, R., Wild, F. (eds) Perspectives on Wearable Enhanced Learning (WELL). Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-64301-4_9

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-64301-4_9

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-64300-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-64301-4

  • eBook Packages: EducationEducation (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation