Designing a table-top tangible user interface system for higher education

Tangible User Interfaces (TUI) have garnered significant interest in the past years as a potential solution to embed smarter technologies for education. The intrinsic ability of this technology to engage and intrigue students in active learning pedagogies has recently been successfully proven across all ages using various techniques. Predominantly amongst the effective technologies, has been the development of tabletop approaches. However, these have mostly been bespoke implementations that lack proper formalisation. To this end, this paper construes the requirements to successfully implement TUI technology within higher educational contexts and proposes the design considerations for the smart adaptation of this technology. Following the implementation of the proposed smart system, the developed TUI design was evaluated within an undergraduate university programme for its effectiveness in teaching and learning object-oriented concepts. The obtained results illustrate a significant enhancement of student-experience during utilisation of such technology and quantitively outline the design's potentiation to convey complex concepts in higher education. Detailed blueprints of the proposed architecture are openly available on: http://itc.mdx.edu.mt.