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

最近的人机交互（HCI）研究产生了广泛的交互风格，超越了桌面进入新的物理和社会环境。这些新兴的交互风格，通常被称为基于现实的界面（RBI），利用用户的发展能力，如天真的物理，空间，社交和运动技能，并提供具体的方式来思考抽象的现象。在这项工作的基础上，并出于我们国家进一步让儿童参与STEM的需要，本研究探讨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。该项目需要开发新颖的人机界面，鼓励儿童在生物工程领域内探索和设计，同时促进以具体方式学习抽象概念。该方法旨在促进幼儿STEM课程的重新审查，以纳入新兴和跨学科的主题。项目范围包括为幼儿设计，实施和评估支持生物工程合作探索的RBI。调查的研究问题集中在如何基于现实的互动技术可以应用，使无形有形。具体来说，如何设计新颖的互动技术，桥梁的时间和规模的生物学？如何通过集成不同规模的计算设备来设计和实现支持配对和更大组内协作的接口？如何支持宏观和微观信息之间以及跨多个设备的无缝过渡？最后，RBIs能让幼儿掌握抽象的概念吗？这些概念以前被认为对他们的年龄和发展阶段来说太复杂了。该项目的成果有助于四个研究领域：1）有形和体现的互动，2）计算机支持的协作学习，3）儿童互动设计，以及4）STEM中的幼儿教育。

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.