Design of teaching materials informed by consideration of learning-impaired students

The general aim of this project is to fundamentally re-think the design of teaching materials in view of what is now known about cognitive deficits and about what Howard Gardner has termed ‘multiple intelligences’. The applicant has implemented this strategy in two distinct areas, the first involving the writing of an English language programme for Chinese speakers, the second involving the construction of specialized equipment for teaching elementary logic to blind students. The next phase (for which funding is sought) is to test the effectiveness of the logic device, because in theory – the one to be tested – materials the design of which is informed by the above rationale will provide a richer learning experience for non-impaired users

Visualizing and Analyzing the Structure of AspectJ Software under the Eclipse Platform

Software is naturally intangible and abstract which makes the understanding task difficult. There is a growing need for visualizations that improve the comprehensiveness of its structure, behavior and evolution. Graphically visualizing abstract concepts provides a way to raise the abstraction level and therefore, to reduce the software complexity. The graphical synthetic view that gives a quick idea of its content, logic, structure and its entities' relationships. It is widely accepted that it can represent a valuable support during the development and maintenance processes. As AspectJ is a relatively new language with powerful specific constructs, it deserves support tools to visualize its software systems. This paper presents our recent work in software visualization with respect to analyze and visualize the AspectJ software structures using graphical elements well-known from daily life such as the Polymetric View and the City Metaphor to conduct various powerful analyses and permit an intuitive understanding of a given visualization and therefore, to get quickly an overview of a huge and complex software. VizzAspectJ-2D and VizzAspectJ-3D are two tools support we have built on top of the Eclipse platform respectively for the 2D and 3D visualizations

EEGLAB, SIFT, NFT, BCILAB, and ERICA: New Tools for Advanced EEG Processing

We describe a set of complementary EEG data collection and processing tools recently developed at the Swartz Center for Computational Neuroscience (SCCN) that connect to and extend the EEGLAB software environment, a freely available and readily extensible processing environment running under Matlab. The new tools include (1) a new and flexible EEGLAB STUDY design facility for framing and performing statistical analyses on data from multiple subjects; (2) a neuroelectromagnetic forward head modeling toolbox (NFT) for building realistic electrical head models from available data; (3) a source information flow toolbox (SIFT) for modeling ongoing or event-related effective connectivity between cortical areas; (4) a BCILAB toolbox for building online brain-computer interface (BCI) models from available data, and (5) an experimental real-time interactive control and analysis (ERICA) environment for real-time production and coordination of interactive, multimodal experiments

From Intricate to Coarse and Back A voxel-based workflow to approximate high-res geometries for digital environmental simulations

Digital environmental simulations can present a computational bottleneck concerning the complexity of geometry. Therefore, a series of workarounds, ranging from cloud-based solutions to machine learning simulations as surrogate simulations are conventionally applied in practice. Concurrently, contemporary advances in procedural modelling in architecture result in design concepts with high polygon counts. This leads to an everincreasing resolution discrepancy between design and analysis models. Responding to this problem, this research presents a step-by-step approximation workflow for handling and transferring high-resolution geometries between procedural modelling and environmental simulation software. The workflow is intended to allow designers to quickly assess a design’s interaction with environmental parameters such as airflow and solar radiation and further articulate them. A controllable voxelization procedure is applied to approximate the original geometry and therefore reduce the resolution. Controllable in this context refers to the user’s ability to locally adjust the voxel resolution to fit design needs. After export and simulation, 3d results are imported back into the design environment. The colour properties are re-mapped onto the original highresolution geometry following a weighted proximity technique. The developed data transfer pipeline allows designers to integrate environmental analysis during initial design steps, which is essential for accessibility in the design profession. This can help to environmentally inform generative designs as well as to make simulation workflows more accessible when working with a wider range of geometries. In this, it reduces the perceived discrepancy between the concept and simulation model. This eases the use and allows a wider audience of users to develop co-creation processes between computation, architecture, and environment

Building Occupants' Comfort Levels Identified with POE and Visualized by BIM

Creating and maintaining a comfortable indoor environment is crucial for energy-efficient building operation. However, there is often a disparity between defined comfort conditions and occupants' perceived comfort. To address this, collecting occupants' feedback and evaluating building performance through post-occupancy evaluation (POE) surveys are essential. Building Information Modeling (BIM) can enhance the visualization of survey results by providing a digital representation of the building. This study aimed to utilize POE surveys, Dynamo, and Revit add-ins to identify, visualize, and communicate factors contributing to discomfort for building occupants. A POE survey was conducted with 51 respondents, assessing aspects such as temperature comfort, indoor air quality, visual comfort, acoustic comfort, and space adequacy. Results indicated that occupants were most dissatisfied with indoor air quality in summer and most satisfied with space adequacy. Dynamo, a visual programming tool, was employed to create a script that imported the survey results into each room, colorizing them based on the survey aspects. Additionally, Revit add-ins were developed using Microsoft Visual Studio and the C# programming language to import and present data from Excel files within the Revit model. This facilitated the visualization of sensor data in the same BIM environment. By conducting the POE survey, comfort levels were identified, and Dynamo scripts colorized the rooms in Revit to represent the comfort levels. The Revit add-ins further enhanced BIM's role as a unified and digital database, allowing the import and reading of sensor data. In summary, this research aimed to use POE surveys, Dynamo, and Revit add-ins to identify, visualize, and communicate factors contributing to discomfort for building occupants. The combination of these tools provided valuable insights into comfort levels and facilitated efficient visualization and communication of survey results within the digital building model