CHS: Medium: RUI: Collaborative Research: Making the Invisible Tangible: Reimagining Science Education in Kindergarten through Reality-Based Interfaces

最近对人机交互(HCI)的研究产生了广泛的交互方式，这些交互方式从桌面扩展到新的物理和社交环境。这些新兴的交互方式通常被称为基于现实的界面(RBI)，它们利用了用户的发展能力，如幼稚的物理、空间、社交和运动技能，并提供了思考抽象现象的具体方法。在这项工作的基础上，出于我国进一步让儿童参与STEM的需要，这项研究调查了如何设计适合年龄的、基于现实的界面，让幼儿参与科学调查、生物设计和工程。该项目需要开发新的人机界面，鼓励儿童在生物工程领域内进行探索和设计，同时促进以具体方式学习抽象概念。这一方法旨在促进对幼儿STEM课程的重新审查，以包括新兴和跨学科主题。该项目的范围包括为幼儿设计、实施和评估支持合作探索生物工程的RBIS。所调查的研究问题集中在如何应用基于现实的交互技术来使无形的东西变得有形。具体地说，如何设计新颖的交互技术，在生物学的时间和规模之间架起一座桥梁？如何通过集成不同规模的计算设备来设计和实现支持结对和更大组内协作的接口？如何支持宏观和微观级别的信息之间以及跨多个设备的无缝过渡？最后，打分能让幼儿掌握以前被认为对他们的年龄和发育阶段来说过于复杂的抽象概念吗？该项目的成果有助于四个领域的研究：1)有形和有形的互动，2)计算机支持的协作学习，3)儿童的互动设计，以及4)STEM的幼儿教育。

Recent research in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) generated a broad range of interaction styles that move beyond the desktop into new physical and social contexts. These emerging interaction styles, that are often referred to as Reality-based Interfaces (RBIs), leverage users' developmental abilities such as naive physics, spatial, social and motor skills, and offer concrete ways to think about abstract phenomena. Building on this work and motivated by the need of our nation to further engage children in STEM, this research investigates how to design age-appropriate reality-based interfaces that engage young children in scientific investigations, bio-design, and engineering. The project entails the development of novel human-computer interfaces that encourage children to explore and design within the domain of biological engineering, while facilitating learning of abstract concepts in a concrete way. This approach intends to promote a re-examination of the early childhood STEM curriculum to include emerging and interdisciplinary topics. The project scope includes the design, implementation, and evaluation of RBIs for young children that support collaborative exploration of biological engineering. The research questions investigated focus on how reality-based interaction techniques can be applied to make the invisible tangible. Specifically, how to design novel interaction techniques that bridge the time and size scales of biology? How to design and implement interfaces that supports collaboration within both pairs and larger groups by integrating computational devices of different scales? How to support seamless transition between macroscopic and microscopic levels of information and across multiple devices? And finally, can RBIs allow young children to grasp abstract concepts that were previously considered too complex for their age and developmental stage? The outcomes of this project contribute to four areas of research: 1) tangible and embodied interaction, 2) computer supported collaborative learning, 3) interaction design for children, and 4) early childhood education in STEM.