This engineering education research initiation grant will support an investigation into how new technologies for gesture and body recognition can help students better learn engineering concepts that are strongly tied to spatial and visual understanding. The project will engage researchers from engineering, computer science, and psychology in a well-structured experiment using validated instruments to test if the new technologies improve learning in biomedical engineering.
The broader significance and importance of this project will primarily be to determine if new, affordable, and commercially available technologies can impact learning of difficult engineering concepts. The strong partnership between researchers in different disciplines will build networks in cross-disciplinary research. Additionally an outreach effort to students traditionally under-represented in STEM at local high schools is planned, which can improve recruitment of these students to engineering programs. This project overlaps with NSF's strategic goals of transforming the frontiers by making investments that lead to emerging new fields of engineering, or shifting existing fields. Additionally NSF's goal of innovating for society is enabled by supporting the development of innovative learning systems.
"A picture is worth a thousand words." Teaching simultaneously with pictures and words is a standard practice in science and engineering but has been shown to be inefficient for learning. In addition, students are required to convert graphical information into language (the phonological loop) instead of directly accessing the visual components of their brains (the visuo-spatial sketchpad). Our research team has designed four educational modules that allow students to interactively explore visual information, such as a cell, and to non-invasively stimulate their visuo-spatial sketchpads. These modules have been programmed with the Unity3D game engine using the Kinect™ device as the interface. Gesturing also has been incorporated, so students can intuitively navigate through the educational contents and connect the visual information with motoric movements. The technology-enhanced learning has been tested with sophomores and seniors at the University of Akron. Although more students have to be tested, the technology-enhanced instruction shows a trend toward more effective learning. For K-12 students, they show significantly better performance on tests using the Kinect interface than traditional instructions. The technology-enhanced learning also shows effectiveness regardless of the school’s socioeconomic status. The results, as expected, seem to be more pronounced for sophomores and K-12 students and suggest technology-enhanced learning may work better at an earlier age. One likely explanation is the prefrontal cortex (the area of the brain typically associated with executive function, the phonological loop, and the visuo-spatial sketchpad) is underdeveloped. Thus, the impact of technology-enhanced instructions seems to be greater with brains that have more potential for plasticity.
