Keywords

1 Introduction

First wearable computers appeared in the early 1960s (Thorp 1998). In the end of 1990s, Steve Mann created the ‘EyeTap Digital Eye Glass’ that was the one of the first attempts to make a head-mounted display computer (Mann 2012). In 2013, Google started to sell a prototype of ‘Google Glass’, a new type of wearable technology with an optical head-mounted display. The Glass displays information in a smartphone-like hands-free format (Google 2015). In the next 5 years, the importance of wearable technology will significantly grow up and wearable computers will be used by the college-aged students (Johnson et al. 2015). In recent years, researchers have shown an increased interest in the use of different types of wearable computers, such as watches, brain-computer interfaces, body sensors and even digital tattoos in everyday life (Pedersen, 2013).

There is a growing body of literature that recognises the importance of using wearables in libraries, universities and other public spaces. One of the most popular wearable devices is Google Glass and several educators studied the best practices of using Google Glass in the classrooms and learning environment (Boykin 2014; Woodside 2015). This wearable computer allows involving students to team-based research projects (Paterson and Glass 2015) and could be used as real-time assistive teaching tool (Kirkham and Greenhalgh 2015). Nevertheless there are some studies of negative impacts of wearables (Norman 2013; Pedersen 2013).

However, much of the research up to now has been descriptive in the use of wearables in educational purposes. One of the main ideas in these studies is how to provide seamless transition from the use of hand-held devices to hands free wearables in the classroom and outdoor (Clark 2013).

The purpose of this paper is to review recent studies into the theoretical and practical use of wearable technologies in libraries, medical faculties and universities.

2 Method and Limitations

The method consisted of searching the relevant terms ‘wearable technology (or technologies)’ and ‘Google Glass’ in education, learning and teaching. We have used the numerous databases of peer-reviewed literature: such as ISI Web of Science, Scopus, IEEE Xplore, SpringerLink and EdITLib. The aim of our study was to find and analyse related academic literature in the field of the use wearable technologies in education. The main focus of the search was devoted to the use Google Glass as a teaching and learning tool. We considered the conference papers, reviews, reports, web-documents, magazines and journal articles written in English language in the period from January 2013 to July 2015. In most cases, the findings and materials were based on description of pilots and experiences in United States’ universities. Due to practical constraints, this paper cannot provide a comprehensive review of the use of wearable computers in education.

3 Google Glass in Library Spaces

We start our study from the description and analysis the pilot projects in public and universities libraries. These organisations were one of the first participants of the Google Glass Explorer Programme (Google 2015) and they received technical possibilities to test a new type of wearable devices at learning spaces.

Today libraries remain the important educational sites with providing physical and digital access to information. But the fast development of information technologies reshapes these public buildings into virtual spaces. The use of wearable devices can crucially help library staff to attract new generation of readers. Emerging technologies allow presenting librarian interaction in different formats. For example, the workers of Arapahoe public library (Colorado, USA) used Google Glass as a new tool to access educational information. Locals and their kids started to visit the library for testing wearable devices and suggested the ways how to use these tools in the library spaces (Asgarian 2014).

The different situation is in university libraries. Evidently, there are many students and professors that visit university libraries every day and spend many hours for searching information at these spaces. Many university libraries invest in new technologies and try to improve digital access to learning materials (Table 1).

Table 1. Glassware apps for libraries.
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For example, Miami University Library started to use Google Glass for shelf reading and inventory management. The special Glassware application “ShelvAR” frees the readers from the necessity of holding the mobile phone up to the books. Meanwhile the librarians complained of a difficult work on closed networks with this wearable device and also there was a lot of not secure data passing through Glass (Hawkins 2014).

Access services staff of the Yale University library developed special Google Glass application called “first-person scanner” which allows librarians to fulfill patron scanning requests directly from the library stacks (Patrick 2014).

The students of the Claremont University tried to create several Glassware apps for enhancing learning and providing different ways of accessing information. New applications allow examining speech techniques and tracking eye patterns in public speaking from the first-person perspective (Thomas 2014).

Together these examples provide important insights into using Google Glass and other wearables in the nearest future. How many university’s libraries across the globe will demonstrate the possibilities of emerging technology for readers and visitors. Probably, the results of pilot projects are still not enough scalable for further implementations.

4 Wearables in Teaching and Learning

The first serious discussions and analyses in the use of wearable technologies in teaching and learning emerged during the last three years (2013-2015). Some studies have examined the relationship between mobile learning and the use of emerging technologies (including big data and wearables) in higher education. For example, Bower and Sturman (2015) investigated educational affordances of wearable technologies in teaching and presented wearables as a new generation of mobile learning tools. In another study, Llorente and Morant (2014) reported that modern wearable computers allow students and professors to communicate with big data resources in higher education environments.

There have been a number of pilot studies involving wearables for efficiency and effectiveness of using Google Glass in learning environment (Coffman and Klinger 2015). For example, Knight et al. (2015) reported that the use of Google Glass as a teaching tool can replace existing equipment and help to broadcast learning information onto mobile devices of the students. Also the Glass allows teacher to share information in various modes of interaction including flipped classroom (Parslow, 2014). Salamin (2014) describes the method of the use Google Glass to enrich printed books and strengthen students’ motivation for learning by intertwining wearables and traditional textbooks.

Burke (2014) argues that one of the important features of Google Glass is to present text based translations in real time. This wearable computer can be helpful in mobile-assisted (or wearable-assisted) language learning and students would have the benefits of real time decoding in different languages.

All of the studies reviewed here support the idea that Google Glass can be successfully used in several educational directions – mobile learning, flipped classroom, mobile-assisted language learning and even the use of big data. But we want to consider practical examples of the use Glassware apps in possible learning situations. There are three Glassware prototype applications presented on Table 2, which allow using its in different educational goals.

Table 2. Glassware applications for teaching and learning.
Full size table

In their application prototype ‘gPhysics App’, Weppner et al. (2014) presented the tool for finding relationship between the frequency of the sound generated by hitting a water glass and the amount of water. The other researchers, Suarez et al. (2014) introduced the design and functionalities of a prototype for Inquiry-based learning (IBL) providing a more seamless learning experience. And the last example, Silva et al. (2014) demonstrated ‘Glassist App’ for helping teachers’ management tasks. This tool can recognise students face and display relevant information about them.

Contrary to expectations, this study did not find a significant difference between the Glassware applications, because firstly all presented apps are still on testing stage and secondly these prototypes were realised in the local spaces without wide introduction.

5 Google Glass in Medical Education

In recent years, there has been an increasing amount of literature on using wearable technologies in medical education. The generalisability of much published research on this issue is problematic. The most of the studies were conducted only in one country with limited amounts of participants. The medical faculties and schools of the United States’ universities started to use wearables in early 2013 and almost all these pilot projects were involved in Google Glass Explorer Programme. Meanwhile, there were some enthusiastic expectations of the revolutionary changing in medical education, but later the limitations of spreading the device required a pragmatic assessment in its use. Nevertheless the first use of Google Glass and other wearable devices in medical education slightly changed the vision of healthcare and shortened distance between the patient and caregiver (Nosta 2013). Today, there are three main directions in medical education that can be identified for successfully use Google Glass as a teaching and learning tool. We tried to describe how to use wearable devices for studying different disciplines such as surgery, cardiology and anatomy.

5.1 Surgical Education

There is a small volume of published studies describing the role of wearable devices in surgical education. But the study by Bola and Brighton (2015) offers probably the most comprehensive analysis of using Google Glass as a surgical training tool. The authors defined the three main ways of using the Glass for surgical practice:

  1. 1

    Tool for self assessment.

  2. 2

    Evidence for annual review of competence progress.

  3. 3

    Consultant support (video conferencing to other consultants at different sites in cases of unusual anatomy or difficult cases).

Moreover, the Glass can help medical students to efficiently learn in difficult practical situations. For example, when emergency cases where a senior is not available, this wearable device provides communication between the junior and senior surgeon in real- time.

In the same vein, Ponce et al. (2014) in their study mention the usefulness of combining real-time augmented reality and wearable computing devices in the field of surgery. The authors described one of the first surgical cases adopting the combination of real-time augmented reality and the Google Glass. The surgical procedure was integrated with the virtual interactive presence and augmented reality system through Google Glass. This combination allowed the local surgeon to interact with the remote surgeon within the local surgical field.

5.2 Cardiology Teaching

One of the first studies in the use of wearable technology to improve cardiology learning was carried out by Vallurupalli et al. (2013). The authors explored different educational levels in cardiovascular practice for medical trainees. In this investigation, live streaming video demonstrated several practical actions in cardiology via Google Glass. Medical students received and saved learning information on their mobile devices.

The practice of remote and real-time mentorship relationships between students and experienced experts was described in a pilot study by Russell et al. (2014). The authors attempted to use Google Glass for telementoring of cardiac ultrasonography. In this study, medical students were able to obtain adequate imaging through Google Glass to determine a healthy patient’s ejection fraction. These students received real-time telementored consultations through Google Glass via Google Hangout from a remotely located expert.

5.3 Studying Anatomy

A small but growing body of literature attempts to describe the use of the wearables in learning of anatomy. These studies discuss the recent experiences in using Google Glass for teaching of anatomy in medical schools. For example, Benninger (2015) demonstrated the method that melds traditional medical palpation with Google Glass in teaching of human anatomy. The Glass has provided access to a live ultrasound image for viewing anatomical plane while examining the patient. Ciomek et al. (2015) performed a similar study of using the Glass for clinical and educational value within anatomic pathology. The analysis of surgical specimens in pathology requires high quality photographic and video records. Video and photo fixation of the intact and fresh specimens at the time of initial dissection helps students to avoid potential errors in diagnosis and reporting.

The other successful example of using wearable devices for video recording was presented by Tully et al. (2015). In this study, medical students have used the Google Glass to record their first-person perspective for the further analysis and evaluation of their interpersonal communication skills and nonverbal behaviors with the patients.

The studies presented thus far provide evidence that the Glass is considered by the researchers as a tool for transmitting of live video for different practical situations and medical procedures. But sometimes Google Glass helps to improve communication between students and experienced practitioner and allows working in groups. Current stage in development of wearable technologies does not detect any evidence for widely usage the Glass and other devices in global aspect, but we expect that in the next five years the situation will change radically.

6 Conclusion

The main goal of the current study was to determine how wearable technologies are used in education. One of the more significant findings to emerge from this study is that wearables have a big potential for development and attractive opportunities for student and educators. We think that there will be very promising pilot projects on using wearable technologies in libraries. These spaces have much informal approach to learning with less technical (closed network, software incompatibility) and ethics (cyber security, privacy and face recognition) restrictions. Sometimes the use of Google Glass for teaching are considered by the researchers only in the classrooms, but the main potential of the wearables can be effectively used in outdoor spaces. Google Glass is one of the best tools for streaming live video, but with very short battery life. These problems will be solved in the next years and teacher should be ready to easy use wearables in their everyday practice.

We hope that the results of this study complement those of earlier studies. The most of them were based on suggestions and recommendations without significant practical findings. Robust and ubiquitous spread of mobile technologies and fast growth of wearables will lead to transition from handheld to hands-free approaches in learning and teaching in the nearest future. Further research could also be conducted to determine the effectiveness of the use wearable computers in outdoor and workplace learning. A future study needs to examine more closely the links between mature mobile learning projects and new pilots in learning with wearables.