The Haptics-Augmented Education Homepage

Under the direction of Dr. Bob Williams, Ohio University is developing a program in Haptics-Augmented Education. Haptics (from the Greek root ‘haptein’, to touch) is related to the human sense of touch. Commercially-available haptic interfaces give the sense of touch and force feedback to the human from virtual reality. This haptic feedback combines with graphics and sound for a multi-sensory experience.

· Haptics-Augmented K-12 Science Education

· Haptics-Augmented Undergraduate Engineering Education

We believe that haptics has great potential in education, ‘feeling is believing’. Especially in science and technical areas, where forces are very important, being able to interact with a computer simulation and literally feel the results will lead to more engaging, deeper, and fun teaching and learning. Students can develop a feel and appreciation for a particular subject even before they have the detailed mathematics background to handle the equations. Note we are not trying to replace textbooks or teachers, rather augment the teaching and learning of science and engineering with our haptics-augmented software and tutorials.

We are working actively in two areas currently, the K-12 Science Education arena, sponsored by the NASA Learning Technologies Project, and the undergraduate engineering arena, sponsored by the NSF Course, Curriculum, and Laboratory Improvement Program, Educational Materials Development Track:

· Haptics-Augmented K-12 Science Education

· Haptics-Augmented Undergraduate Engineering Education

We are currently involved in development, implementation, and evaluation of our haptics-augmented software. Some alpha-version software is freely available for testing from the above websites. We are also pursuing commercialization of our results. Feel free to contact us if you are interested in these projects:

Dr. Bob Williams, williar4@ohio.edu