Collaborative Research: Use of Haptics in a Virtual Reality Environment for Learning Nanotechnology

该奖项是根据2009年美国复苏和再投资法案（公法111-5）资助的。该工程教育研究奖授予佛罗里达大学与弗吉尼亚联邦大学合作，将雇用研究人员开发具有触觉反馈的交互式虚拟现实模块，以改善学习并促进对纳米技术概念的兴趣。这些模块将用于支持正常视力和视障学生的主动学习，通过低成本的触觉提供不依赖视觉的反馈。纳米技术和纳米尺度物理概念对学生来说很难掌握，高中学生使用这些模块将增加对这一重要且快速发展的技术领域的兴趣。此外，评估虚拟现实仿真模块中触觉反馈的好处可以导致对非基于视觉的反馈的教育用途的新理解。这将适用于广泛的工程课程，并可以增加为工程工作做好充分准备的成功工程学生的数量。

This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5) This engineering education research award to the University of Florida in collaboration with Virginia Commonwealth University will employ researchers to develop interactive virtual reality modules with haptic feedback to improve learning and promote interest in nanotechnology concepts. The modules will be used to support active learning for both normally sighted and visually impaired students with low-cost haptics providing feedback that does not rely on vision. Nanotechnology and nano-scale physics concepts are difficult for students to grasp, and use of these modules by high school students will increase interest in this important and rapidly evolving area of technology. In addition, the assessment of the benefit of haptic feedback in virtual reality simulation modules can lead to new understanding of the educational use of feedback that is not vision-based. This will have application to a broad range of the engineering curriculum and can increase the number of successful engineering students who are well prepared for engineering jobs.