| Project | Research & Curriculum Development in Earth System Science |
| Contact | S. Raj Chaudhury |
| schaudhury@vger.nsu.edu | |
| URL | http://vigyan.nsu.edu/ |
| Project description | We have a core project that has spawned some others. Our group is only 2 years old and got started as a Cooperative Agreement with NASA Langley Research Center to promote both research in Earth System Science using satellite data about the Earth's environment stored at the DAAC (Distributed Active Archive Center) and develop middle-grades curriculum materials using this data.Our project helped establish the B.E.S.T. Lab at Norfolk State - Bringing Education & Science Together. Project eSS has one main product - the DAACeSS CD-ROM. This multimedia CD introduces students and teachers to the use of satellite data to study the atmosphere. Both interactive guided lessons and hands-on activities for the classroom are provided on disc as well animations of visualizations made with ClimateWatcher in a browsable format.One group member has been funded to do innovative visualizations of the data from the SAGE II experiment aboard ERBE - including 3D animations created in a combination of IDL and Fortner Research's Transform and Slicer software. We are also actively investigating the use of VRML to create a visual database interface for the types of extensive datasets typically generated in a satellite experiment. Norfolk State is a Historically Black University and as such one of our group's missions is to investigate the use of scientific visualization to break down barriers to the entry of more minorities into science. |
| Theoretical background | The B.E.S.T. Lab faculty are a diverse group bringing expertise from theoretical chemistry, solid state physics, physics education and laser spectroscopy. We are slowly forming a theoretical basis for our work, drawn heavily from the work of others.The research of the CoVIZ project members at Northwestern University and the followup project that created ClimateWatcher have been big influences. In the Physics Education community, Dean Zollman and Robert Fuller have pioneered the use of interactive video as an alternate means of visualizing physical phenomena in the classroom. We have received an NSF ILI grant in the B.E.S.T. Lab to explore the integrated lecture/laboratory class using quantitative tools with visual appeal such as real-time graphing with MBL and analysis of digital video. |
| Challenges | We are following the use of Virtual Reality at places like EVL at UIUC and in the Virtual Chesapeake Bay project (Old Dominion University). Fully immersive VR has promise for enabling students to "see" complex multidimensional relationships where traditional mathematics has failed them. This field is still in its infancy.A challenge we are facing is convincing the Earth System Science research community that scientific visualization environments that emphasize ease of use and provide for quantitative manipulation as well as multiple representations can be beneficial to both the education and research communities. Especially when considering minority populations, the research field may expand due to the participation of those with different learning styles and possibly different aptitudes, because new tools could open up vistas of opportunity. |
| Partnership | What we have to offer is a unique testbed. Our university attracts a substantial number of high achieving African American students who major in the sciences and choose to attend an HBCU for cultural reasons. The larger portion of the student body lacks rigorous college preparation in science and mathematics. We are slowly building science education infrastructure around the BESTLab. Partners with easy access to good programming talent would be a big plus (it will take NSU a few years to have a cadre of C programmers among the students). We are very interested in collaborating with those researchers looking at the role of visualization tools in creating positive student attitudes towards learning science; and performance gains in quantitative understanding over traditional "equation" based methods. |