Collaborative Research: CISE-MSI: DP: HCC: Buenas - Giving All a Seat at the Table Using Mixed Reality

在线学习已经成为现代高等教育的一个重要方面，许多学院和大学将同步和异步在线课程纳入他们的课程。这类课程可以增加来自少数民族背景的学生接受教育的机会，这些学生通常是非传统的学生年龄，可能经常需要去更远的地方，参加课堂学习活动的资源也更少。然而，在线学习尚未充分发挥其潜力，学生们报告说，他们与校园同学和老师脱节了。学习小组对本科教育至关重要，但在网上复制这种学习小组尤其成问题。传统的视频会议系统不足以支持动态对话和良好的眼神交流，而这是成功学习小组的先决条件。布埃纳斯研究项目将使用混合现实来开发远程学习小组互动的格式，使本地和远程学生能够自然有效地互动。布埃纳斯将允许所有学生在正确的相对位置和大小上看到彼此，同时提供诸如直观性，态势感知，深度感知和增加的存在感等优势。该项目有可能提高本地和远程混合出席的小组会议的有效性，特别是对社会中代表性不足的成员，并将使少数民族服务机构（MSI）的学生参与研究工作。布埃纳斯将使用混合现实耳机让远程学生融入当地学习小组。目标是让本地和远程的学生自然地互动，就好像所有的小组成员都在同一地点一样。在当地，纸板屏幕将被放置在学习小组桌子周围的空座位上，将远程学生的视频精灵（即真人大小的，减去背景的视频）投射到屏幕上。在每个远程站点，远程学生将在混合现实中可视化其他学生的视频精灵，通过虚拟浮动面板集成到他们的办公空间中。Buenas系统将通过三项用户研究进行验证。第一项研究将比较由布埃纳斯主持的学习小组会议和通过视频会议主持的学习小组会议。第二项研究将比较表现远程学生的各种方式，即使用视频精灵显示戴着耳机的人，使用计算机动画化身，以及通过绘画移除耳机的视频精灵。第三项研究将评估布埃纳斯与远程学生从他们的家连接。该项目将涉及来自三个合作机构的200多名学生，其中两个是msis。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，认为值得支持。

Online learning has become a critical aspect of modern post-secondary education, with many colleges and universities incorporating both synchronous and asynchronous online courses into their curricula. These kinds of courses can increase access to education for students from minority backgrounds, who are frequently of non-traditional student ages and may often need to travel farther and have fewer resources for attending in-class learning activities. However, online learning has not yet reached its full potential, with students reporting feeling disconnected from their on-campus classmates and instructor. Study groups are essential to undergraduate education, yet they have been especially problematic to replicate online. Conventional videoconferencing systems are inadequate for supporting the dynamic dialogue and good eye contact that are prerequisite to successful study groups. The Buenas research project will use mixed reality to develop a format for remote study group interaction that will allow local and remote students to interact naturally and effectively. Buenas will allow all students to see each other at their correct relative location and size, while providing advantages such as intuitiveness, situation awareness, depth perception, and increased sense of presence. The project has the potential to advance the effectiveness of small group meetings with hybrid local and remote attendance, especially for under-represented members of society, and will involve students from Minority-Serving Institutions (MSI) in research endeavors.Buenas will use mixed reality headsets to immerse remote students into local study groups. The goal is to allow local and remote students to interact naturally, as if all members of the group were co-located. At the local site, cardboard screens will be placed in unoccupied seats around the study group table to project video sprites (i.e., life-sized, background-subtracted videos) of the remote students onto them. At each remote site, a remote student will visualize the other students’ video sprites in mixed reality, integrated into their office spaces via virtual floating panels. The Buenas system will be validated via three user studies. The first study will compare study group sessions hosted with Buenas against sessions hosted via videoconferencing. The second study will compare various ways of representing the remote student, i.e., with a video sprite showing the person wearing a headset, with a computer animation avatar, and with a video sprite where the headset is removed through inpainting. The third study will evaluate Buenas with remote students connecting from their homes. The project will involve over two hundred students from the three collaborating institutions, two of which are MSIsThis 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.