Body and didactic mediation. Experimental use of a Sense Wear Armband in a university context

The aims of this study was to understand whether instruments used for motion analysis can detect
significant information about the processes of learning and teaching. Moving from Enactivism and the
awareness of the embeddedness of the brain in the body and world during cognition, we tested a tool that
provide data related to caloric and energetic expenditure of subject (Sense Wear Armband) in a non
specialistic school setting, to understand if it is possible to detect the effective bodily participation during
cognitive processes (in our experiment, during didactic mediation). For starting the experiment within using
a Sense Wear Armand we monitored the activity of didactic mediation done by the professor to detect the
energetic expenditure, compared with the other kinds of activities during the day; we also monitored two
volunteers students that followed the lectures. Data of every lecture were then elaborated by the specific
Sense Wear Software and shown through graphs that we analyzed. Graphs showed that didactic mediation
developed as a succession of dynamic and static moments, with different levels of energetic expenditure;
what we found interesting is that a minimal but not negligible component of metabolic activity seem to be
involved even in essentially intellectual activities. This paper describes only the first step with the first
results of our work. The analysis performed here has only an exploratory value and we think it might be
useful to the development of the experiment; we don’t believe we have obtained definitive results, but only
useful information for the development of the survey. We hope to move forward as soon as possible