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Investigating Responsive Pedagogical Approaches to Promote University Students��� Trust in Well-Established Science
Get PDFThis exploratory mixed-methods study investigated the factors associated with post-secondary non-science major students' perceptions of the credibility of five well-established yet potentially controversial science ideas. Furthermore, this investigation determined the efficacy of responsive messaging and reconciliatory pedagogical (R&R) practices that were integrated into an introductory general science course to address the factors associated with lower perceptions of credibility. Data collected included students' perceptions of credibility throughout the semester, views on six aspects of the nature of science, and sociocultural identifiers, including political orientation and religiosity.
Findings indicate that prior to the course, distinct factors, including theological beliefs and misconceptions about the nature of science (NOS), were strongly and negatively associated with perceptions of the credibility of all five scientific ideas. Conspiratorial ideation was the strongest factor associated with lower credibility perceptions concerning climate change and vaccines. In comparison, religious beliefs, including the accuracy of theological explanations, were the strongest factor associated with lower credibility perceptions of the Big Bang theory, the age of the Earth, and evolution. Students��� perceptions of the credibility of all five ideas are significantly associated with their understanding of scientific evidence and the consensus agreement of the scientific community. Following the course, the students demonstrated significantly improved NOS views and increased perceptions of the credibility of four of the five science ideas. Evidence from this study suggests that explicit NOS instruction prior to and integrated with content instruction supports student learning of controversial science topics. The findings reported in this study have implications for designing highly-effective instruction regarding potentially controversial topics in post-secondary settings
VR Hand Tracking for Robotics Applications
Get PDFIn industrial and factory settings, there is no truly safe way for humans to interact with robots. Large industrial machines make too much noise for vocal commands to be used as a safe method of interaction. Electrical motors, machine tools, human operators all create noise that makes vocal commands less effective in a factory than in a quiet laboratory [1]. These issues put human floor workers in unsafe situations frequently. By developing a system that can effectively recognizing track hand gestures from a human and train a robot to respond accordingly, factory safety and human-robot interaction can be revolutionized. The goal of the project is to develop and implement a program that will train a virtual robot to respond to hand gestures. Understanding concepts such as virtual and augmented reality, hand tracking, robotics, machine learning, and domain randomization will be central to the success of the project. Using Unity game design software, a virtual reality will be created in which a virtual robot will be trained to respond to human hand gestures. Thousands of environments will be simulated in VR so that a real robot will be prepared to respond to any possible command. The dataset developed in this research increased the average confidence index of a machine learning gesture recognizer by 12.45%. The end application of this research is for factory automation and other fields where the safety of human-robot interaction is a priority
Low-Cost Optical Wireless Communications Laser Tracking System
Get PDFAs wireless data transfer has grown more prolific, and the technologies that rely upon it more numerous and sophisticated, critical limitations of RF-band wireless communication schemes such as WiFi have become apparent. To mitigate these limitations and enable the continued growth of wireless device functionalities, Light Fidelity (LiFi) schemes that transmit data through modulating visible, infrared, or ultraviolet light are being developed [1-5]. LiFi systems present many advantages over RF systems, including vastly improved data transmission rates, but also lower power consumption, higher security, and utilization of a much broader, unlicensed spectrum [1-5]. Laser LiFi systems in particular hold promise for their exceptional speed and range capabilities [2, 4]. This however comes at the cost of lasers being highly directional and thus requiring more precise alignment. This gives rise to the need for a transmit/receive system wherein the transmitting unit can locate and align its laser to a mobile target/detector, establishing a link over which data could be sent. Such a system must be able to align rapidly and realign with the target in the case of beam obstructions. It should also ideally be low-cost and of a manageable size. To meet these needs, this work builds off of the previous year���s work on this design [6], and develops a low-cost, practically-sized, fast infrared laser LiFi alignment and tracking system that can perform the aforementioned functions. The system produced was able to reliably identify a backlit LED target and align a laser with a detecting element attached to this target. This initial alignment took no more than 16 seconds, and realignment following beam obstructions was also shown to not exceed 16 seconds. Weight did not exceed 2 kilograms for either module, and the modules were compact, not exceeding 25.4 centimeters on a side
