Experiencing Abstract Science

See It, Touch It, Experience It…Finally Understand It

Do you remember trying to understand physics and chemistry while sitting in a high school classroom? Were there memories of frustration and doubt?

“Would this force even exist for this specific situation?”

“Would this type of reaction actually occur?”

“Is this all even real when we can neither see nor touch it?”

Our perception of the world and abstract scientific principles is based on how we interpret the information we absorbed from class. These interpretations, however, can have varying levels of accuracy; so, we may not have truly understood those scientific concepts.

What if I told you that scientists are trying to develop interactive systems with augmented reality (AR) and tangible user interfaces (TUI) to help students visualize and interact with science to finally understand it? They have developed prototypes Helios, Hobit, and Teegi to enhance learning in the areas of astronomy, wave optics, and brain activity.

Augmented Reality and Tangible User Interfaces

Past scientists experimented with augmented reality to create 3D models; they replicated a building and a molecule to help students visualize concepts discussed in architecture and chemistry class, respectively. This provides students with a visual and interactive experience to connect concepts in the classroom to experiences and structures in the real world.

Augmented reality helps students “see” what they are working with, and a tangible user interface through augmented reality gives them the ability to interact with that material. Some examples of tangible user interfaces include multi-touch/interactive tables and physical blocks that could be used to construct or assemble something. The hybrid of tangible user interfaces and augmented reality makes abstractions touchable. Hybridization creates a learning environment where the content can be augmented and manipulated in many time and space dimensions to enhance the learning process. It serves as a playground that enables students to interact with their classroom material to confirm their understanding of complex scientific concepts, question and overcome their misconceptions, and reflect on what they learned. The learners can act on objects and observe the reaction that follows, increasing their cognition.

There are currently limited examples of this hybridization that have been evaluated in real school contexts; however, researchers have developed three hybrid interfaces in the fields of astronomy, wave optics, and brain activity, which aim to provide high levels of acceptability and usability and overcome learning barriers.

Figure 1. This shows the areas the prototypes considered while enhancing user experience.

Astronomy:

The Helios prototype helps children ages 8–10 understand the influence of sunlight in the Solar System. This interface consists of a laptop, webcam, augmented reality markers on tangible props, and special cards for teaching purposes. Through inquiry-based learning principles, children have to test their own hypotheses by moving the Sun, Moon, and Earth props and cards to see how they perceive light paths. They can see the results of the movement via the laptop that shows an augmented scene. This enables them to understand why there is colder weather in winter or why someone might see a half-moon or other moon phases in a different portion of the world. Helios has been tested in 7 primary classrooms and on more than 150 children, who scored higher on an examination after using it.

Figure 2. This shows the kit and materials provided with Helios. The picture on the far right shows students moving the props and watching the resulting visualizations on a laptop screen.

Wave Optics:

It is difficult for university students to understand wave properties and construct mental images of what is going on; they need a way to experience and touch the theory they learned in their physics classes. The Hobit platform replaces expensive, fragile, and possibly dangerous lenses and mirrors with a 3D-printed replica that has electronic sensors. It enables users to manipulate optical replicas via mechanical adjustment (rotation and translation), as they would do in real-life, and observe their results. A study with 101 students and 7 teachers showed that experience with Hobit raised test scores and enabled them to instantaneously start and reset the experiment, which is impossible with a standard setup.

Figure 3. This shows how students are using Hobit to manipulate the 3D-printed replicas and sensors to observe wave properties.

Brain Activity:

This third prototype has been difficult to test in a classroom setting, but works to help users understand the relationship between the activity in their brain and data recorded from their scalp. The Teegi prototype enables users to see which regions of their brain zones are activated by visualizing that area on a puppet’s head.

Figure 4. The glowing on the puppet at the top left shows the area of the brain that is activated via Teegi.

The hybrid prototypes, Helios, Hobit, and Teegi enable users to understand and realize abstract concepts from different areas of sciences. It is important to note that they do not replace the class curriculum, but rather enhance a student’s understanding of the complex ideas that are discussed.

They provide students the tools to autonomously test their understanding of the subject matter, build upon their basic understanding, and help them understand how it interacts with the real world. They are given the tools and visualizations to experiment with ideas to form more accurate conclusions as to why science behaves the way it does.

Reference:

[1] Fleck, S., & Hachet, M. (2016). Making tangible the intangible: Hybridization of the real and the virtual to enhance the learning of abstract phenomena. Frontiers in ICT, 3, 30