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  1. Sophie Joerg
  2. https://people.cs.clemson.edu/~sjoerg/
  3. Assistant Professor
  4. Presenter’s NSFRESOURCECENTERS
  5. Clemson University
  1. Sabarish Babu
  2. http://people.clemson.edu/~sbabu
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  5. Clemson University
  1. Shaundra Daily
  2. http://www.shanibphd.com/
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  5. University of Florida
  1. Nikeetha Dsouza
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  4. Clemson University
  1. Kara Gundersen
  2. http://www.karagundersen.com/
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  5. University of Florida
  1. Joseph Isaac
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  5. Clemson University
  1. Alison Leonard
  2. Assistant Professor of Arts & Creativity
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  1. Lorraine Lin
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  1. Dhaval Parmar
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Presenters’
Choice

VENVI - Virtual Environment Interactions

NSF Awards: 1559756

2016 (see original presentation & discussion)

Grades K-6, Grades 6-8

We present VENVI (Virtual ENVironment Interactions), a curriculum and platform that teaches computational thinking through an embodied pedagogical approach. Aimed at middle school children, VENVI teaches basic concepts from creative movement and basic concepts from computational thinking at the same time. Students get up and move to understand the concepts and then use them to program a virtual character within our platform in a fun and engaging way. Our video shows several aspects of the development of VENVI: from our pilot study, to motion capture and character development, to using virtual reality. For more information, visit www.venvi.org .

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Discussion from the NSF 2016 STEM For All Video Showcase (21 posts)
  • Icon for: Steve Bean

    Steve Bean

    Enterprise Director
    May 16, 2016 | 12:37 p.m.

    What a great idea – linking movement/kinesthetics to coding! At the Digital NEST, even as we train youth for careers in IT we worry about them spending so much time in front of screens.
    http://stemforall2016.videohall.com/presentatio...
    My interest was piqued by your finding that youth participants want to customize their avatars. We found that in our Girls Creating Games and Girl Game Company projects. We have theories about what that says about the importance of identity development in adolescence but I’m wondering what y’all think that’s about and what the implications are for STEM learning for what is, I believe, an almost universally common finding.

  • Icon for: Shaundra Daily

    Shaundra Daily

    Co-Presenter
    Associate Professor
    May 17, 2016 | 06:18 a.m.

    Thanks Steve. That was definitely an important finding in the pilot. We’ve been paying attention to the types of avatars that students create, and we’ve been somewhat surprised. We thought, perhaps, that students would create characters like them, but there have been very mixed results. And when we added options for aliens, robots, and other non-human characters, the selections were even more varied. Although we’ve been focused on understanding the affordances of embodiment for learning computational thinking, moving forward, we plan on paying more focused attention on these things as it relates to student engagement.

  • Icon for: Jeff Forbes

    Jeff Forbes

    Facilitator
    Associate Professor of the Practice
    May 18, 2016 | 01:36 p.m.

    The character development capability is pretty cool. How much time do the students spend creating characters? I could imagine that would be very engrossing for some students and it might be hard to have them move on to the next step.

  • Icon for: Shaundra Daily

    Shaundra Daily

    Co-Presenter
    Associate Professor
    May 18, 2016 | 01:42 p.m.

    Hi Jeff. Definitely something we saw. They were disappointed initially (in the pilot) not to be able to change the character, then when we added that functionality with the new system, they wanted to spend a lot of time on it. We currently have time limits on the character development, but moving forward we’re looking into students being able to “unlock” more and more aspects of the character creation as thy become more proficient with programming.

  • Icon for: Elc Estrera

    Elc Estrera

    Facilitator
    Senior Research Analyst
    May 16, 2016 | 05:47 p.m.

    What an interesting idea! I wonder if some people are more likely than others to participate, given the intimate tie Venvi creates between dance and programming. How did you recruit students?

  • Icon for: Shaundra Daily

    Shaundra Daily

    Co-Presenter
    Associate Professor
    May 17, 2016 | 06:14 a.m.

    We’ve had some surprises around participation. Students have been recruited from a variety of places, an arts school, a gifted school, a school with mandated diversity (gender, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status), and a women in science and engineering camp. We’ve also done a number of art exhibits. In each case, it totally depends on the culture we’re able to establish. In the above camp, we had a student who didn’t realize movement was apart of it and basically said he was “out”. By the end of the camp his dance was so intricate that no one wanted to go after him. So if “everybody is doing it” and no one is worried about your skill level, then students are much more willing even if they have no dance background. :)

  • Icon for: Barbara Ericson

    Barbara Ericson

    Senior Research Scientist
    May 17, 2016 | 03:41 p.m.

    I love the idea of using virtual reality to allow the students to dance along with the avatars! How hard was it to add motion capture to Looking Glass? What equipment was required?

  • Icon for: Shaundra Daily

    Shaundra Daily

    Co-Presenter
    Associate Professor
    May 17, 2016 | 07:49 p.m.

    We actually had to create a new platform rather than using Looking glass after that initial pilot. Those motions were fed into the new software, which we are calling VEnVI.

  • Icon for: Sophie Joerg

    Sophie Joerg

    Lead Presenter
    Assistant Professor
    May 17, 2016 | 10:18 p.m.

    We created the new software, VEnvI, using the development platform Unity, which supports motion captured animations.

  • Stephen Spaeth

    Guest
    May 18, 2016 | 09:23 a.m.

    Can you describe (or point to resources) this process a little more? We conduct motion studies of circus arts activities using Tracker Video Analysis which is limited to planar analysis. How much more complicated is it to capture 3-D motion?
    http://woodsideonewheelers.org

  • Icon for: Sophie Joerg

    Sophie Joerg

    Lead Presenter
    Assistant Professor
    May 18, 2016 | 11:12 a.m.

    With pleasure. We are using an optical motion capture system from Vicon with 14 cameras and the software Blade. The dancer wears a suit with retroreflective markers, which positions are tracked in 3D. Based on those marker positions, a skeleton is reconstructed, which is used to animate a virtual character.
    There are a lot of commercial motion capture systems consisting of different hardware and software, using different sensors, some rather simple, some very complex. Which one works for you depends on factors such as the space you need to cover, the type of motions, the required accuracy, and how much you can spend in money and time.
    Looking at your project, inertial systems, markerless 3D systems, or optical marker based systems might be worth looking at. Inertial systems are relatively cheap and offer an unlimited capture area, but the suit might disturb, accuracy errors add up, and only one person at a time can use it. Markerless 3D systems are using video analysis to track motions. Some just use standard cameras, some use depth sensors. The algorithms are getting better every year, but I have not tried one recently for full body motions. Marker based optical motion capture systems typically have the highest accuracy and frame rates, but are expensive, especially if the capture space is large and a lot of cameras are needed. I hope this very short introduction helps.

  • Icon for: Carol Fletcher

    Carol Fletcher

    Deputy Director
    May 17, 2016 | 04:01 p.m.

    This seems like a great way to break the mold of the traditional perception of computer science and computer scientists. If you’ve done student camps before, did you notice a difference in the number of women or students of color who self-selected to this camp as compared to a more traditional camp?

  • Icon for: Shaundra Daily

    Shaundra Daily

    Co-Presenter
    Associate Professor
    May 17, 2016 | 07:47 p.m.

    Carol, great question. We’ve done an after school version and a camp that were both self-selected. While we suspected that we would have more women and minorities, that’s not what we saw. Our representation though was at of South Carolina where we’re doing the work, so these populations were not underrepresented. Where gender did play out was in the types of performances created. We generally saw girls creating narratives that included dance.

  • Icon for: Geralyn Abinader

    Geralyn Abinader

    Creative Producer
    May 20, 2016 | 01:46 p.m.

    It’s so interesting about creating narratives around the experience. I think that’s such a powerful tool we can all leverage to get kids more engaged in exhibits and STEM

  • Icon for: Nicole Reitz-Larsen

    Nicole Reitz-Larsen

    Facilitator
    Educator
    May 18, 2016 | 01:18 a.m.

    Wow, what an amazing way to learn about programming. I’m sure the students love moving around and actively moving so they can better understand how the program works.

    What age group are you targeting? How are the students doing at transferring the skills over from the real time dancing to the characters?

    What is the cost of the software and what kind of support do you offer for the teachers?

  • Icon for: Sophie Joerg

    Sophie Joerg

    Lead Presenter
    Assistant Professor
    May 18, 2016 | 11:30 a.m.

    Thanks Nicole. We are targeting middle school students. Feedback on learning computational thinking using embodiment has been very positive so far. The VEnvI software is going to be available on our website at no cost (www.venvi.org). We hope to be able to create a platform for teachers and students and are seeking funding for it to allow for dissemination.

  • Icon for: Jenna Mercury

    Jenna Mercury

    Education Specialist
    May 18, 2016 | 01:23 p.m.

    This is such a great idea! There is such a need to keep our students moving throughout their day. Your program captures both the coding piece AND movement. How will you move Venvi into schools? Also, what grade levels work best with Venvi?

  • Icon for: Shaundra Daily

    Shaundra Daily

    Co-Presenter
    Associate Professor
    May 19, 2016 | 04:16 p.m.

    Thanks Jenna. The VEnvI software is going to be available on our website at no cost (www.venvi.org). We hope to be able to create a platform for teachers and students and are seeking Cyberlearning funding for it to allow for dissemination.
    We’ve worked with 4th – 8th grade students, and it honestly just depends. We initially thought 4th and 5th would be most willing given the dance portion. But we’ve been able to foster an environment with 7th and 8th grade students who became comfortable. The “everybody is doing it” mentality worked in that case.

  • Icon for: Veronica Cassone McGowan

    Veronica Cassone McGowan

    May 19, 2016 | 02:44 p.m.

    What a great way to bridge students’ everyday experiences with computer programming and inquiry!

  • Icon for: Ugochi Acholonu

    Ugochi Acholonu

    Research Scientist
    May 20, 2016 | 07:05 p.m.

    Great project! What are your thoughts about VEnvi being something a parent could facilitate at home? How much computer science knowledge would they need or is there a community that they could tap into?

  • Icon for: Sophie Joerg

    Sophie Joerg

    Lead Presenter
    Assistant Professor
    May 22, 2016 | 01:05 p.m.

    Making VEnvI available for use at home is definitely one of our future goals. But we have a lot of work and research ahead of us to make this possible and a valuable and engaging experience. Ideally, parents would not need any specific computer science knowledge, apart from how to install a program or app. We need to create appropriate materials that parents can then explore with their children.

  • Further posting is closed as the event has ended.