Engaging People in Cyberinfrastructure (EPIC)

Timeline -SDSU Visualization in Education - June05:

June 2005 - collaborate with Hoover High physics teachers to select  
appropriate module for their curriculum based on work of  R. Landau 
on Undergraduate Physics Curricula.

July 2005 - develop computer science/graphics curriculum to support the 
development of the 3D education visualization based on curriculum identified 
in June.

August 2005 - develop and present workshop on the graphics curriculum to 
teachers and staff in the City Heights Educational Collaborative.  This 
involves San Diego State University, Hoover High School, Monroe/Clarke Middle 
School and Rosa Parks Elementary School.

October 2005 - share our developments with EPIC partnership at Tapia Diversity 
Conference 19-22 October 2005 in Albuquerque NM.

Continue participation in the Virtual Institutes begun at the May05 meeting in 
Houston.
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Visualize Education - SDSU Scope of Work - Revised June05

K-12 and undergraduate students are developing more sophisticated expectations 
for the realism of modeling and simulation in their course work. This is due 
primarily to increasingly more advanced realism being found in today's computer 
games.  Game development tools and rendering engines are now readily available 
with outstanding near-photo realistic quality and massive mult-user support.  
With some insight and forethought, this technology may be leveraged within the 
K-12 and undergraduate curriculum to provide students added engagement for 
learning and increased motivation to better understand the complex systems 
represented by these realistic simulations.  

The San Diego State University Education Center on Computational Science and 
Engineering (ECCSE) proposes to evaluate a small number of existing 
"off-the-shelf" development tools and prototypes that may offer the potential 
for advanced multi-user simulation-based learning experiences.  These tools to 
be evaluated will be selected from a list that includes:

Visual Studio w. OpenGL libraries
Croquet
Torque 3D environment
Java3D
Python 3D

Our metrics of evaluation will consist of a project rubric based on issues such 
as ease of development, interface features, multi-user support, scalability, 
performance, cross-platform support, and whether they are open source or 
proprietary. Based on a brief but thorough initial assessment, a subset 
consisting of the most promising tools will be used to develop a small number 
of prototype lessons using educational 3D interactive computational models for 
K-12 and undergraduate instruction.  These lessons will then be field-tested by 
K-12 teachers and undergraduate professors. We have had success already with 
university faculty through our Faculty Fellows program. At the K-12 level, the 
ECCSE will work directly with the City Heights Educational Collaborative to 
introduce these prototype lessons to students at Hoover High School, 
Monroe-Clark Middle School, and Rosa Parks Elementary School in the San Diego 
area.  Outcomes of these field test experiences will be documented with surveys 
and video interviews.

The importance of facilitating opportunities to field-test these prototype 
lessons at the undergraduate level cannot be overemphasized. This is why we 
would also like to propose to support one faculty fellowship wherein an 
undergraduate professor is given release time and undergraduate student intern 
support to help with the appropriate application of these tools into the 
curriculum. These fellowships and internships would be available during summer 
2005.

The results of lesson development and field experience will serve as the basis 
for a workshop to be offered in late summer. The goals of these workshops would 
be to:

" Share the results of our field tests, 
" Demonstrate the capabilities of these tools for science and engineering education, 
" Provide hands-on experience with some of these tools, and 
" Provide insight into how students, K-12 educators, and university faculty 
members might use these tools in classes.  

From the workshop we expect to identify areas within the curriculum that 
necessitate the use of 3D interactive multi-user simulation environments. 
Based on these results, during the remainder of 2005/2006 the prototype 
lessons will be modified and used as the basis for further development in 
order to demonstrate the important role played by multi-user simulation 
environments.