Developing Augmented Reality Applications for Chemistry Laboratory

该项目将利用新兴的增强现实技术，为学生提供一个交互式工具，以访问他们需要了解实验室仪器的信息，正是当他们意识到他们需要帮助。实验室仪器在现代科学发现中起着至关重要的作用，因此本科课程中的实验室经验有助于学生获得知识和舒适的仪器是至关重要的。这种对仪器的学习发生，而学生也与新的科学内容搏斗，所以他们在实验室课程中遇到的挑战被放大。学生将使用他们的设备（手机或平板电脑）上的摄像头，并捕捉实验室仪器。然后，软件在仪器上方叠加一个界面，增强现实世界的仪器。 然后，学生将使用提供的链接来学习他们需要知道的关于如何使用仪器或如何提供的信息可以用来理解正在探索的化学。除了设计和测试应用程序，还将进行研究，以了解使用这一新工具如何影响学生的知识积累，无论是关于仪器还是仪器帮助学生探索的科学。该项目将开发一个新的增强现实界面，使用Unity和Vuforia开发套件对选定的实验室仪器进行基于摄像头的识别。可用性测试将用于优化该接口的设计参数。一旦该软件的高级测试版开发完成，将在普通化学实验室进行测试，不同的学生群体将访问该应用程序进行不同的实验。两个队列的测试将探讨增强现实对仪器使用的程序和信息透明度的影响，以及对实验室化学内容概念理解的影响。

This project will take advantage of emerging augmented reality technology to provide students with an interactive tool to access information they need to understand laboratory instruments, precisely when they realize they need the help. Laboratory instrumentation plays a vital role in modern scientific discovery, so it is critical that laboratory experiences in the undergraduate curriculum help students gain knowledge and comfort with instruments. This learning about instruments takes place while students also grapple with new science content, so the challenges they encounter in laboratory courses are amplified. Students will use the camera on their devices (a cell phone or tablet) and capture a laboratory instrument. The software then superimposes an interface above the instrument, augmenting the real-world instrument. Students will then use the provided links to learn what they need to know about how to use the instrument or how the information provided can be used to understand the chemistry being explored. In addition to designing and testing the application, research will be conducted to see how access to this new tool influences student knowledge gains, both about the instrument and the science that the instrument helps students explore.The project will develop a new augmented reality interface that incorporates camera-based recognition of selected laboratory instruments using the Unity and Vuforia development suite. Usability testing will be used to optimize the design parameters of this interface. Once development of a high-level beta version of the software has been completed, testing will be carried out in general chemistry laboratories with different cohorts of students accessing the application for different experiments. Testing of both cohorts will probe the effect of augmented reality on both the procedural and informational transparency of instrument use and its impact on conceptual understanding of the chemistry content of the labs.