Mixed Reality System for STEM Education and the promotion of health-related careers

Project Summary/Abstract Proposed is a system to combine and leverage the advantages of existing medical props with interactive media to provide engaging and cooperative group STEM learning experiences. Significance: The PowerPoint lecture style has become the standard method for teaching groups of students. Unfortunately, this style does not emphasize student-instructor or student-student instruction, and in fact seems to have made students even less engaged than before. Broad agreement exists in the field of science education that more engaging pedagogies benefit students in introductory classes. A variety of teaching aids, for example plastic medical props and mannequins are available to support more engaging learning exercises. Despite their substantial benefits, physical props are fundamentally limited as they are primarily static (e.g. fixed coloration, disease depiction), their internal structures (with limited exceptions) often bear little resemblance to actual human anatomy, and they are passive objects. Hypothesis: A system which can provide more engaging interaction with physical props will be able to improve student retention and increase interest in STEM related subjects. Specific Aims: To prove the feasibility of the proposed system in Phase I IDL will 1) Determine stakeholder requirements through round table discussions; 2) Create prototype system hardware andamp; software to augment learning with physical props; and 3) Validate the prototype system through a pilot study. The overall Phase I effort will demonstrate the ability of the proposed system to augment learning with physical props. In the Phase II effort IDL will ready the system for commercialization by 1) Developing production-quality software, hardware, and user interfaces; 2) Developing a set of comprehensive curricula for the system; and 3) Validating the system through human subject testing.Project Narrative Passive learning methods, i.e. PowerPoint lectures, have become the standard method for teaching groups of students topics including Anatomy and Physiology in spite of broad agreement in the field of science education that more engaging pedagogies benefit students in introductory classes. A variety of teaching aids, for example plastic medical props and mannequins are available to support more engaging learning; however, these props are fundamentally limited.