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，以便在他们意识到自己需要帮助的时候，准确地访问他们需要了解实验室仪器的信息。实验室仪器在现代科学发现中起着至关重要的作用，因此，在本科课程中提供实验室经验，帮助学生获得知识并熟练使用仪器是至关重要的。在学习仪器的同时，学生也在努力学习新的科学内容，因此他们在实验课程中遇到的挑战被放大了。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，该软件在仪器上方叠加一个接口，增强了现实世界的仪器。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使用所提供的信息来理解所探索的化学。除了设计和测试应用程序外，还将进行研究，以了解使用这个新工具如何影响学生的知识获取，包括仪器和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，该界面将使用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界面的设计参数。一旦软件的高水平测试版开发完成，测试将在普通化学实验室进行，不同的学生群体访问应用程序进行不同的实验。这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，以及它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.