Research Initiation Grant: Interactive Learning to Stimulate the Brain's Visual Center and to Enhance Memory Retention

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This engineering education research initiation grant will support an investigation into how new technologies for gesture and body recognition can help students better learn engineering concepts that are strongly tied to spatial and visual understanding. The project will engage researchers from engineering, computer science, and psychology in a well-structured experiment using validated instruments to test if the new technologies improve learning in biomedical engineering. The broader significance and importance of this project will primarily be to determine if new, affordable, and commercially available technologies can impact learning of difficult engineering concepts. The strong partnership between researchers in different disciplines will build networks in cross-disciplinary research. Additionally an outreach effort to students traditionally under-represented in STEM at local high schools is planned, which can improve recruitment of these students to engineering programs. This project overlaps with NSF's strategic goals of transforming the frontiers by making investments that lead to emerging new fields of engineering, or shifting existing fields. Additionally NSF's goal of innovating for society is enabled by supporting the development of innovative learning systems.