Sensory Perception & Interaction, Research Group

This paper reports on a multidisciplinary collaborative project at UBC developing haptic/kinesthetic HCI for mathematics learning. It allows students to design landscapes using functions, and then to ‘ride over’ these landscapes via a force-feedback haptic device and, in future, with a programmed exercise bicycle. The project’s rationale comes from the following hypothesis arising from Gerofsky’s (2008) empirical research on gesture in the pedagogy of functions: That the ‘top’ (most capable and imaginative) mathematics students engage with graphs of mathematical functions in tactile/kinesthetic modes, rather than an exclusively visual mode.