The culmination of my coursework at Georgia Tech, I wanted to combine my passion for education with my desire to pursue the cutting edge of new technologies. The biggest challenge was creating the actual working prototype in Unity for testing, as my team believed it would be the most seamless way to get feedback.

Together we worked late into the night to produce physical artifacts, target images, and learn Unity and Vuforia to create the working prototype.

RESEARCH
In order to obtain information about our topic, we collected information using the following research techniques:

ONLINE RESEARCH

We conducted research by checking the Georgia Standard Department of Education (DOE) curriculum and online games, uncovering topics that students struggle with and corresponding class activities.

From our primary research, we discovered that math concepts in between 4th grades are largely abstract and disconnected from concrete concepts. Students have trouble visualizing concepts in math class.

ONLINE SURVEY

My team developed a Qualtrics survey to understand the techniques teachers use as well as their pain points. We also sought to collect contact information for future research.

Directly contacting the Georgia DOE, we collected 12 teacher responses. We uncovered three major takeaways:

4th grade students struggle with fraction operations, word problems, and applying math to reality with visualization.

INTERVIEWS

Delving into interviews, we presented teachers the same online survey questions but encouraged them to go in-depth.

Recruiting 7 math teachers and specialists around Georgia, we learned that when students learn with tangibles, such as folding paper or coloring, it helps solidify concepts.

Letting students find solutions on their own helps gain a deeper understanding and apply knowledge.

AFFINITY MAP‍

Taking these insights into account, my team created an Affinity Map to group ideas together. These three core themes emerged.
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From our three core themes, we developed a list of relevant Design Implications.
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1. The solution should help students practice fractions in a way that facilitates recognition and recall.
2. The solution should lead to a better understanding of what a fraction is and how it is represented.
3. The solution should use real problems in context for students to understand not only HOW, but WHY.
4. Solution should include gamifications and demonstrations to encourage students.
5. System should foster student’s reasoning, curiosity and problem solving skills.
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From our design implications, we updated the problem statement.

‍IDEATION‍

After updating our problem statement, we develooped three key themes for our solution.
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TEACHING PREP TOOL

This teaching tool helps prepare teachers before lessons.

CLASS ACTIVITY EXTENSION

Extension of in-class activities helps reinforce students' understanding and foundation.

FRACTION LEARNING TOOLS

Fraction learning tools can cover content from the Georgia DOE curriculum.

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INITIAL WIREFRAME‍

After talking with several Georgia DOE experts, we observed several class activities from the Georgia Standard curriculum. We chose a class activity called Pattern Block puzzles, in which students arrange plastic geometric shapes to show fraction equivalence.

1. THE iPAD LEARNING SCREENS

The core storytelling interface introduces lessons and stories for students to solve based on the Georgia Standard curriculum.

In our case, we introduced the story of a farmer trying to decide which crops to grow on his farm.
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Students are shown similar problems at first to understand the concept, then are able to explore their own solutions in Augmented Reality.
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2. THE UNITY INTERFACE

We developed an interface in Unity that uses a camera to display assets over an image target. Using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) This lets the laptop detect patterns on the worksheet made with the color tiles.

Our Unity interface scans for patterns and projects relevant 3D models over the student worksheet, as well as a simulated farmhouse with sounds to feel more immersive.

If an answer is correct, the student is rewarded with confetti and a congratulations. If it is incorrect, the student is then encouraged to try again.

3. TILE MANIPULATIVES

Laser cut wooden tiles are the key to filling out the worksheet.

As students work through the story activities, they arrange the tiles in a proper order on the designated worksheet tile and scan with the iPad.

Different outcomes are accounted for, and tiles that don't fit within the confines of the hexagon are counted as errors.

4. WORKSHEET BACKGROUND

Feedback is recorded on a pre-made paper worksheet. There are spaces to record answers, as well as a specific place to act as a backdrop for the AR features.

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EXPERT EVALUATION

Having created our basic prototype, we sought to evaluate it with our intended users. Reaching out to parents and teachers around Georgia, we scheduled several students for evaluation.

INFORMATION NEEDS

Determine if the interface works with usability heuristics​ with middle school students.
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PROCEDURE

We had students walk through the complete story experience by guiding us remotely through four key tasks.

​1. Navigating through the iPad interface

2. Arranging the pattern tiles

3. Scanning the tiles to check answers

4. Recording findings on the worksheet.
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Afterwards, experts assign ratings according to Nielsen's 10 Usability Heuristics and complete a System Usability Scale (SUS) questionnaire.​

Our feedback was then factored in and added to the final iteration after several design changes.

From the STEAM Playground, it was a culmination of my work at Georgia Tech. It was incredible seeing how this solution could impact learning for students using tangibles paired with AR. I wish to pursue this further with more iPad learning experiences in the future.

​In conclusion, this project was an incredible experience to work on, and I would like to thank the Georgia DOE for working with us in the Georgia Tech MS-HCI program.