@inproceedings{5b00ae1c26c6441db2c1eafe4388446f,
title = "An interdisciplinary approach to high school curriculum development: Swarming Powered by Neuroscience",
abstract = "This article discusses how to create an interactive virtual training program at the intersection of neuroscience, robotics, and computer science for high school students with equity of access. A four-day microseminar, titled Swarming Powered by Neuroscience (SPN), was conducted virtually through a combination of presentations and interactive computer game simulations. The SPN microseminar was delivered by subject matter experts in neuroscience, mathematics, multi-agent swarm robotics, and education. The objective of this research was to determine if taking an interdisciplinary approach to high school education would enhance the students learning experiences in fields such as neuroscience, robotics, or computer science. This study found an improvement in student engagement for neuroscience by 16.6%, while interest in robotics and computer science improved respectively by 2.7% and 1.8%. The majority of students (64%) strongly agreed that they enjoyed learning from an interdisciplinary team of experts and 70% strongly agreed that the microseminar emphasized the need to have instruction teams with diverse disciplinary backgrounds. The curriculum materials, developed for the SPN microseminar, can be used by high school teachers to further evaluate interdisciplinary instructions across life and physical sciences and computer science.",
keywords = "high school, instructional technology, navigation, neuroscience, swarm robotics",
author = "Elise Buckley and Monaco, {Joseph D.} and Schultz, {Kevin M.} and Chalmers, {Robert W.} and Armin Hadzic and Kechen Zhang and Hwang, {Grace M.} and Carr, {M. Dwight}",
note = "Funding Information: The development of multi-agent platforms with small-scale robotic vehicles is an exciting target of state-of-the-art autonomous systems engineering: many new applications may emerge from controlling large, distributed groups of inexpensive but agile vehicles. Unmanned robots are rapidly becoming a crucial technology for commercial, military, and scientific endeavors throughout the United States and across the globe. Critical future applications such as disaster relief and search & rescue will require intelligent spatial coordination among many robots spread over large geographical areas. However, several gaps exist in multi-agent robotic controllers: current communication and control frameworks need to be improved to provide the adaptability, resilience, and computational efficiency required for operating in complex and rapidly changing real-world conditions [1]–[4]. A team of researchers at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (JHUAPL) and School of Medicine (SOM) explored whether neuroscience may offer insights to create a new class of multi-agent robotic controllers that could begin to address these aforementioned gaps. The team first secured a grant issued by the United States National Science Foundation (NSF) Integrative Strategies for Understanding Neural and Cognitive Systems Program (NCS) Program, titled “Spatial Intelligence for Swarms Based on Hippocampal Dynamics” [5]. This project brought together principles from theoretical neuroscience (i.e., the analysis and investigation of theories about brain function) and multi-agent autonomous robotic coordination (swarms) to develop smarter controllers based on the concept of the cognitive map (see Related Work). Funding Information: This work was supported by National Science Foundation Award NCS/FO 1835279. This material is based on work supported by (while serving at) the National Science Foundation. Any opinion, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation. Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2022 IEEE.; 12th IEEE Integrated STEM Education Conference, ISEC 2022 ; Conference date: 26-03-2022",
year = "2022",
doi = "10.1109/ISEC54952.2022.10025252",
language = "English (US)",
series = "2022 IEEE Integrated STEM Education Conference, ISEC 2022",
publisher = "Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.",
pages = "1--8",
booktitle = "2022 IEEE Integrated STEM Education Conference, ISEC 2022",
}