Bethany Broadwell

The impact of haptic augmentation on middle school students’ conceptions of the animal cell

Of the five sensory channels—sight, sound, taste, smell, and touch, it is only our sense of touch that enables us to modify and manipulate the world around us. This article reports the preliminary findings of a systematic study investigating the efficacy of adding haptic feedback to a desktop virtual reality program for use in middle school science instruction. Current technology allows for the simulation of tactile and kinesthetic sensations via sophisticated haptic devices and a computer interface. This research, conducted with 80 middle school students, examined the cognitive and affective impact of this technology on students’ understandings of the structure and function of an animal cell. The results of this work offer valuable insights into the theoretical and practical considerations involved in the development and implementation of haptically augmented virtual reality instructional programs.

Estimating Linear Size and Scale: Body rulers

The National Science Education Standards emphasise the use of concepts and skills that cut across the science domains. One of these cross‐cutting areas is measurement. Students should know measurement systems, units of measurement, tools and error in measurement as well as the importance of measurement to scientific endeavours. Even though measurement is an essential skill, little is known about how students estimate and use measurement in different contexts. This study examines the impact of teaching students to use their bodies as rough measurement tools (body rulers) on their ability to estimate linear measurements. Nineteen middle school students participated in metric intervention tasks and completed a pre‐instruction and a post‐instruction Linear Measurement Assessment. Results showed that teaching students to use rough body measures as tools (a body ruler) for estimation had a significant influence on their estimation accuracy. After instruction, students were better able to estimate the sizes of objects, use their body in making estimations of size, and estimate while touching an object or pacing a distance. Furthermore, proportional reasoning was significantly correlated with students’ post‐instruction scores on the Linear Measurement Assessment.

Visualization Without Vision: Students with Visual

Complex science phenomena are often described with visual imagery. Research has shown that visual representations are not only motivating but are also critical in the communication of science concepts (citeauthorch12:mathewson1999, citeyearch12:mathewson1999). Yet very little is known about how students with little or no vision learn without access to these representations. This chapter explores how students with visual impairment learn science concepts. Through interviews with students with visual impairments, we explore concepts that are most difficult for these students to learn. The mental representations of science concepts that students with blindness build are discussed as well as the role of passive and active visuospatial processes. In addition, we describe new haptic tools that can be used to design instruction that is accessible to those students that are sighted as well as those that have visual impairments. Finally this chapter outlines the types of future research that are needed to more fully meet the challenge of providing high quality, accessible science instruction to students with visual impairments.