emit.md

layout	pageTitle	url
article.liquid	Embodied and Immersive Technologies	emit

The Embodied and Immersive Technologies (EmIT) group in the College of Education explores the potential of emerging technologies—particularly those that allow for physical and embodied interactions—for generating powerful learning experiences.

The goal is to create transformative new technologies that have measurable effects on student learning and engagement and to disseminate these designs and related research to have maximum impact on schools and informal educational environments.

Robb Lindgren, EmIT Director and Associate Professor in Educational Psychology

The EmIT group leverages the significant expertise of faculty and students at Illinois in both the development of cutting-edge technology as well as an understanding of how people learn concepts and skills in a variety of domains.

Education at Illinois EmIT group members include:

{{ emit | transformGridEmit }}

EmIT Projects include:

CEASAR{ .emit }

The CEASAR project aims to understand the affordances of immersive augmented reality technologies for supporting collaborative learning in STEM classrooms. To support this investigation we have developed a robust night sky simulation that can be accessed from both tablet computers and HoloLens 2 headsets. Outcomes of the CEASAR project include design principles for creating effective multi-device STEM learning activities as well as methodological guidance for conducting research on technology-enhanced collaborative learning.

GRASP{ .emit }

The GRASP Project (GestuRe Augmented Simulations for enhancing exPlanations) is an NSF-funded investigation into the ways that students’ body movements (e.g., gestures) help them to reason about critical science concepts (e.g., heat transfer, the causes of seasons). The goal of the GRASP project is to understand how these gesture-augmented simulations are used to develop student explanations, both by individual students and small groups in science classrooms.

ELASTICS{ .emit }

The ELASTIC3S Project (Embodied Learning Augmented through Simulation Theaters for Interacting with Cross- Cutting Concepts in Science) creates a new genre of technology-enhanced interactions for education with the development of “simulation theaters for embodied learning” that target crosscutting themes in STEM such as scale, patterns, and rates of change. This NSF-funded project studies how high school students can use full body movement to interact with simulations of scientific phenomena such as earthquakes and climate change. Using advanced gesture recognition techniques and video-game-like simulations we are creating engaging learning environments where students can explore the connections between different science topics.

ENERGIZE{ .emit }

EnergIze is an embodied science center game for elementary-school-aged children to explore and express ideas about energy in its many forms. Players work together, using their bodies to control a robot as it navigates a control station on a remote planet. The EnergIze game aims to elicit conversations about energy, how it is conserved, and the different ways it can be transformed.

CHROMOSOME{ .emit }

ChromosoME is an interactive virtual reality (VR) simulation of cell division on the Oculus Quest, a headset VR device that allows full hand tracking without any other external sensors. The simulation presents an accurate representation of the process of mitosis. Users are guided in their interactions with on-screen supports and data is collected about a user’s activity that allows for performance review and the potential to inform future actions. The aim of the simulation experience is to help the learner feel that their hands have become a part of the mitosis process and for them to become an active participant in the biological system they are trying to understand.

IMPRESS{ .emit }

The ImPRESS (Immersive Production of Representations Exploring Science Sketching) project combines the learning benefits of drawing representations of science knowledge with the spatial affordances of an immersive VR environment. ImPRESS users draw, manipulate and resize elements, and move themselves within their drawings via quick button and controller motion actions and no user interface (UI) interaction. This allows the user to quickly construct and begin to modify and manipulate a drawn explanation. When the UI must be accessed, it is presented as-needed via a button press to allow a drawer to change line color and thickness, erase, undo, group, and place 3D primitive shapes. ImPRESS was designed to leverage WebXR standards to deliver the VR experience.