The World is your Textbook2021-2022

Current classroom instruction often defaults to a one-size-fits-all model, causing some students to be left behind. The World is Your Textbook team will investigate how advances in machine learning and augmented reality can support personalized, self-directed outdoor learning to complement traditional instruction. By grounding scientific and social issues in examples from students’ own neighborhoods, this project aims to build interest pathways, making children more likely to engage with science and the environment in the future. The team will work to develop a series of educational outdoor activities that children aged 8-12 can complete with the aid of a smartphone and embed these activities in a compelling narrative to increase engagement. The resulting software will be refined through iterative user testing with the target demographic and evaluated to determine its impact on learning and other outcomes of interest.


The Team