An Augmented Reality Basketball Game for the Environment

The purpose of this presentation is to share a fun and interactive game designed to encourage users to properly dispose of their waste, even those users who might not be particularly interested or passionate about the health of the environment. Using augmented reality technology with mobile devices, the application will be based on the game of trash can basketball where the user is rewarded for properly disposing of different types of waste a basket. The game will automatically record the throw and it will keep track of the times they successfully ‘throw’ the trash in the basket versus when they miss. This is in the hopes of awakening the competitive spirit among players, giving them a stronger purpose to keep disposing of waste in a more frequent manner while still having fun. While simple, this project is important because it offers users entertainment and satisfaction of contributing in a positive way to society. Finally, this project will offer me the opportunity to improve my expertise to take on bigger, more influential developer projects in the future

Usability Study for Designing Efficient Blackboard Course Sites

Across the Boise State University (BSU) campus, instructors from all disciplines struggle with creating an efficient Blackboard design for their courses so that students can direct their focus on learning the content and not the tools. The purpose of this study was to investigate how to help design learning experiences using Blackboard, the predominant learning management system at BSU. Using high-fidelity biometric sensors that record where users\u27 eyes are focused and the emotions they experience, this study examined college students’ behaviors completing standard learning tasks in Blackboard such as uploading assignments and contributing to class discussions. This study employed a qualitative research design in order to organize data into categories, and identify patterns and relationships among the categories. The biometric data was triangulated with surveys and checklists. This research is important because by understanding how students navigate and operate in Blackboard, instructors can gain a better understanding of how to design their courses toward a more positive learning experience. This study is still in progress, therefore, the major findings and conclusions will be presented during the poster presentation

Mobile Augmented Reality for Validating Embodied Learning Agents

Recent research suggests that Augmented Reality (AR) is an emerging technology that can help students learn important concepts about complex subjects. The purpose of this study is to explore the impacts of this new innovative technology for teaching concepts in a classroom environment. Specifically, the study is motivated by an interest in exploring educational applications of AR combined with mobile technology that could potentially provide engaging contextualized learning for understanding concepts related to STEM careers; more specifically statistics education. This research Is important because it aims to better understand if AR can help support either deep or surface knowledge acquisition approaches to learning. This study is still in progress, however, the major findings and conclusions will be presented during the poster presentation

CogSketch: An Intelligent Tutoring System Designed to Enhance Engineering Free Body Drawing Ability

Lacking from current engineering education, students often struggle to find resources to help support their ability to learn the important problem solving skill of free body drawing. CogSketch is a new intelligent tutoring system designed to provide problem solving practice with feedback. To assess the efficacy of the tool, we conducted a study to compare student’s performance using CogSketch to a human tutor. To measure performance, we used biometric sensors to detect students’ behaviors and emotions while being tutored. The sensors include eye-tracking and facial expression recognition. This research is important because an intelligent tutoring program can later be used as another way to develop a better learning outcome for engineering students. This research is still in progress, however, we will share current results and conclusions during the poster presentation