Research in Learning Technology (Oct 2018)

Teaching movement science with full-body motion capture in an undergraduate liberal arts psychology class

  • Shengwei Yaoa,
  • Elizabeth Queathemb,
  • David Nevillec,
  • Damian Kelty-Stephend

DOI
https://doi.org/10.25304/rlt.v26.2119
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 26, no. 0
pp. 1 – 10

Abstract

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Movement science is a field that is quickly growing in its scope, leaning heavily on psychological expertise for research design with human participants but requiring computational and engineering ability. Undergraduate psychology curricula are in a unique position to train some of its future scholars. This report reviews an attempt to pilot a class on motion capture for undergraduate psychology students. Recent developments in motion-capture technology have opened up the opportunity for giving hands-on experience with high-quality motion capture for students at liberal-arts colleges with leaner research budgets. Post-course responses to the Research on Integrated Science Curriculum (RISC) survey demonstrated that our students made significantly large gains in their ability to organise an empirical approach to study a complex problem with no clear solution, and to collect and analyse data to produce a coherent insight about that problem. Students may benefit from incorporating motion capture into their undergraduate psychology curriculum.

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