Fall Semester Final Prototype

GUIDED LESSONS WITH NEWTON

Newton is a companion who will walk the student through guided lessons that employ a trial and error based method. The student will primarily interact with Newton, who will ask questions to guide the student to review material that has been learned in class.

SOLVING TEXT BASED PROBLEMS

Through my research, I found that many students had difficulty solving the word problems that were typically given to them. Even if they tried out a formula, often they were just plugging and chugging without actually understanding why they were using those formulas and concepts. In this first step, the student first scans the homework problem

VISUALIZING SCENARIOS

In this screen below, the student has successfully scanned the problem. The airplane in the question is now visualized in front of the student. In addition, all of the variables attributed to the object are also displayed in tandem with the physical objects.

PROBLEM STEP-BY-STEP BREAKDOWN

In addition to visualizing the problem, Newton makes another appearance, walking the student through what variables they already have, what information they are trying to solve for, and then finally, what formula might help them to achieve this goal. This step by step breakdown makes it easy for the student to think through the problem-solving process by training them to understand how to approach these problems.

MANIPULATING VARIABLES

In addition to lessons and visualizations, I am doing explorations on methods of interaction that would allow students to manipulate characteristics such as mass, gravity, and friction. One possible interaction is a slider interaction, while another is to take an everyday object and create it into a dial.