Learning and Experience: Teaching Tangible Interaction & Edutainment

This paper shares our learning and teaching experiences carried out during a course of Interactive Communication Project delivered at the Department of Design, IIT Guwahati (India). The course focused on tangible user interaction and edutainment and enrolled diverse mix of undergraduate and graduate students. The course was conducted as a part of academic collaboration between IIT Guwahati, India and University of Calabria, Italy. Although the course was conducted in India, one of the two course instructors conducted lecture and critique sessions from Italy. Parallel sessions of lectures and studio components were conducted during the course. This approach fostered theoretical knowledge and its application through hands-on learning. With a time period of hardly 20 days, students have created novel designs on tangible user interaction and edutainment. We discuss and explain the course details, followed methodology, three student projects, problems and challenges faced delivering the course.