Situated Cognition in Educational Mobile Apps: Does Physical Situatedness Help Learning?

Situated Cognition Theory (SCT) has been widely used to ground designs of technology-based educational interventions. SCT argues that knowledge is inherently tied to the social, cultural and physical context of its acquisition. Hence, learning should be most effective when it takes place in authentic real-world contexts. While SCT has been studied for app design, most literature focuses solely on the social context. This study investigates the physical situatedness aspect of SCT in relation to everyday science learning from mobile apps. A mobile app, Objectica, was designed applying the idea of physical situatedness. A week-long between-subjects study with 56 participants compared Objectica with a control app. Results showed significant differences in learner engagement and motivation between the two apps, but no impact on learning. This study thus provides some evidence for the effectiveness of using SCT in educational mobile app designs based on physical situatedness, but also raises questions about its applicability.