Multi-modal Learning for Enhanced Engagement and Presence

嗅觉在人们如何驾驭许多常见的工作场所环境中起着核心作用。尽管如此，现代教育方法直到最近才开始探索使用嗅觉来改善教育，而多媒体学习的研究几乎完全忽略了它。随着研究人员、政策制定者和教育工作者不断扩大数字化教学平台，未能理解气味等情境线索所起的作用，威胁到在数字环境中实施STEM学习的有效性。这个综合性的跨学科项目汇集了来自工程学、计算神经科学、神经生物学、教学科学和社会科学的见解，以促进对嗅觉在虚拟学习环境中学习中所起作用的理解。为了研究嗅觉在虚拟学习环境中的作用，该项目团队将设计软件平台，该平台集成了对硬件的控制，该硬件将物理嗅觉刺激传递到实时3D虚拟环境中。该项目将通过以下方式推进学习和教学技术：（i）开发便携式硬件和软件系统，通过小型化的物理设备可靠地合成虚拟气味，（ii）设计易于使用的虚拟气味空间设计开发工具的原理，以及（iii）开发云动力系统来模拟复杂的气味传播。本计画旨在增进对外显嗅觉训练在提升学习者辨识、定位及描述气味能力上所扮演角色的了解。通过探讨气味如何影响认知和程序学习，以及它对嗅觉识别相关任务的学习迁移的影响，本研究将扩大对多媒体学习理论的理解。从这项研究的见解将被用来开发教学方法的领域，嗅觉是重要的，并符合职业技能。通过将嗅觉注入虚拟现实教育空间，该项目旨在围绕被忽视的感官线索创造广泛可及的教育机会。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The sense of smell plays a central role in how people navigate many common workplace situations. Despite this, contemporary educational approaches have only recently begun to explore using olfaction to improve education, and research on multimedia learning has almost completely overlooked it. As researchers, policy makers, and educators continue to expand digital platforms for teaching and learning, the failure to understand the role played by situational cues such as smell threatens the effectiveness of implementing STEM learning in digital environments. This integrative transdisciplinary project draws together insights from engineering, computational neurosciences, neurobiology, teaching and learning sciences, and the social sciences to advance understanding of the role that olfaction plays in learning in virtual learning environments.To investigate the role of olfaction into virtual learning environments, the project team will design software platforms that integrate control of hardware that delivers a physical olfactory stimulus into real-time 3D virtual environments. This project will advance learning and teaching technologies by: (i) developing portable hardware and software systems to reliably synthesize virtual odors through miniaturized physical apparatuses, (ii) designing principles of easy-to-use development tools for virtual odor space design, and (iii) developing cloud-powered systems to model complex odor propagation. This project aims to advance understanding of the role that explicit olfactory training plays in improving a learner’s ability to identify, localize, and describe odors. By exploring how incorporating odor affects cognitive and procedural learning and its impact on learning transfer for tasks related to olfactory identification, this research will expand understanding of multimedia learning theory. Insights from this research will be used to develop pedagogical teaching approaches for domains where olfaction is important and aligns with vocational skills. By infusing olfaction into virtual reality education spaces, this project aims to create broadly accessible education opportunities around overlooked sensory cues.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.