In a recent event at Georgia State University Library’s CURVE (Collaborative University Research and Visualization Environment,) student researchers presented their latest projects for Georgia State’s Student Innovation Fellowship (SIF) Program. SIF is an interdepartmental research program that enables students to explore emerging technologies and instructional innovations in order to enhance learning and research at the university. CURVE supports the SIF Program by providing researchers with a suite of state-of-the-art visualization tools, including Haivision’s advanced visualization video wall platform. In addition to aiding students in their research as one of their interactive educational tools, the Haivision system provided a dynamic presentation platform for the student-run event.
The Student Innovation Fellows first presented their latest progress in the 3D Atlanta Project. The 3D Atlanta Project explores the use of historical maps and photographs in conjunction with 3D scanning and modeling to create historically accurate 3D environments.
Leveraging Haivision’s Alpha video wall processor to render 3D content at native resolution, students constructed an interactive 3D map of 1920’s Atlanta, complete with historical buildings and period music. Future development will focus on adding embedded textual descriptions and 3D artifacts to the map to provide additional cultural context and an immersive user experience.
Ramsundar Sundarkumar, a student in GSU’s Masters in Computer Science program, presents the Deliberation Mapping Project on the CURVE interactWall.
Another highlight of the SIF presentation was the Deliberation Mapping Project. The goal of the Deliberation Mapping Project is to design a digital discussion platform that reflects the non-linear nature of in-person deliberations. Deliberation Mapping replaces linear comment threads with non-linear node-based mapping to better display the multi-dimensional replies and cross-references that occur in live debates.
When used in an academic context, the Deliberation Mapping tool could enable professors to guide student discussions by highlighting relevant threads of ideas, graying out dead ends, and drawing links between ideas. Student researchers used the CineView LCD video wall’s interactive touch feature to show how discussion nodes could be highlighted and linked.
Students and faculty in the SIF Program hope that their projects will pioneer a new generation of interactive learning tools that leverage emerging technology to boost student engagement and comprehension.
To learn more about the Student Innovation Fellowship (SIF) Program at Georgia State University, visit their website. To read a case study about the Haivision video wall system that helped power these research projects, click here for more information.