Cambridge Science Centre

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Contact: Chris Lennard <chris@cambridgesciencecentre.org>

Project proceeding this year will be: Science exhibit interaction adviser

Suggestions under development:

1. Developing the interactive science centre as a learning and research environment

In this project you'll be developing an interactive science centre exhibit which allows the user to explore the process of emotional recognition whilst at the same time collecting valuable data for psychometrics researchers. The exhibit will let the visitor test their ability to recognise emotions in photographs of human faces. It will also allow them to upload pictures of their own face. While they are performing that upload into a shared data-base and tagging their own emotion, their concentration will be monitored to assess the validity of the emotional state which they log into the system. To design and build this exhibit you will be working with the University of Cambridge Psychometrics Department, the Oliver Zangwill Centre and the Cambridge Science Centre. The open-source adaptive testing CONCERTO platform will be integrated onto a Raspberry Pi powered science centre exhibit. The Cambridge Science Centre would like to display this exhibit as part of an exhibition on Perception in the second half of 2013. The research data gathered may be used to help test brain injured patients in the recognition of emotions.


2. Using games to teach the theory of evolution

In this project you will help to broaden the public understanding of the process of evolution by developing a computer game that is based on the real observations of the Peppered Moth. The game will be able to be used in a public interactive science centre exhibit, most likely powered by Raspberry Pi, as well as be played on-line. In the game, players take on the role of a predator and need to "eat" a moth by touching them on a screen. Based on genetic algorithms, the moth wing patterns change over time and the moths become harder to spot against the background. User behaviours will be monitored to test the attractiveness and efficacy of using computer games to teach scientific concepts. The game would be developed with input from the University of Cambridge Zoology Department and the Cambridge Science Centre. We would like to display the exhibit in the Cambridge Science Centre and on-line as part of a Perception exhibition in the second half of 2013


3. Using sensing and monitoring to improve hands-on science learning experiences

Traditional exhibits in interactive science centres are great for introducing concepts but they often suffer from user disengagement too early. To learn, a user really needs to apply a concept to reason out a problem before they gain confidence in that new way of thinking. In contrast to an un-manned exhibit, a professional science explainer will often keep their audience engaged by offering challenges and additional information based on certain behaviours of the participant. In this project we will placing some sensors in a fairly traditional hands-on science exhibit such as [TBD]. These will be connected to a Raspberry Pi powered data gathering and analysis engine which will adapt the user guidance based on activity monitoring of the hands-on activity. We will track the effectiveness of learning outcomes both with an adaptive and non-adaptive interface. The outcome of this work will help to guide future development of exhibits for the Cambridge Science Centre, potentially making higher quality learning experiences accessible to a wider audience in a cost-effective manner.