Prof Advaith Siddharthan

Studies show that fewer than a quarter of British children regularly use their local patch of nature and many suffer from 'Nature Deficit Disorder', impacting physical and emotional health. Recently, analysis of the impacts of the COVID-19 outbreak on children has shown a critical link between low educational attainment and reduced access to outdoor spaces for children living in poverty. Crucially, unequal access to green space for children and communities aligns with a general pattern of nature degradation, with the 2019 State of Nature report concluding that the UK is among the world's most nature depleted countries, and unable to meet international commitments such as the Convention on Biological Diversity's Aichi Targets. We believe that jointly addressing iniquities with respect to children's access to science learning, nature and the outdoors is key for advancing the discourse around environmental sustainability. Sensory input, including those of touch, smell and sound, are known to be important to early science learning. New haptic technologies based on variable friction allow users to feel textures on a touch screen. We propose developing such technologies to create a platform for sensory explorations of nature. We will bring together our interdisciplinary expertise across Computer Science, Education, Ecology and Science Communication to research touch and haptic interfaces for bridging the known divides with respect to children's access to nature and the outdoors and science learning. We emphasise school grounds as spaces that can be developed through wildlife-friendly gardening practices as equitable spaces for encounters with nature for all pupils, and develop a citizen science project to observe nature in such spaces. Our research then aims to augment observation outdoors through developing variable-friction haptic interfaces that allow you to feel texture when touching an image on the screen. Our aim is to enhance, rather than distract from or replace, experiences of and curiosity about nature. We expect the touch interfaces we develop to be useful for (a) drawing attention to nature, e.g. a child may have access to real trees but not be minded to touch them or question why they have different barks; (b) making the untouchable tactile, e.g. through touching images of a bee or badger; (c) playing with scale, e.g. feeling images at microscopic (e.g. leaf veins) or macroscopic resolutions, or comparing textures of leaves over seasons; and (d) continuing explorations of nature even when indoors, to sustain interest. We will explore in depth in a multidisciplinary manner the scientific and philosophical issues that stem from tactile but digital human-computer interactions around nature. For example, does the inclusion of sensory input help pupils in distinguishing species (e.g. plant species through the textures of tree bark or leaves), whether digital tactile experiences generate emotions and feelings that are qualitatively or quantitatively different from just looking at the image, and whether they can help reconnect pupils with nature and encourage tactile explorations outdoors. We seek to amplify the capacity of school pupils - from a diversity of backgrounds - to influence and participate in scientific inquiry and conservation action, by engaging in a "slowed down" multifaceted scientific, artistic and sensory observation of nature biodiversity within their school grounds. In the process they will learn about the circular economy and explore ideas from permaculture for redesigning their school grounds to support wildlife and also provide themselves with a richer sensory experience. We will develop a first of its kind online museum of citizen science for pupils to publish and share their biodiversity stories from school grounds.

Our transformational vision is to bring to life Learning through Touch, in the natural world and through digital haptic interfaces, fostering a ‘naturalistic intelligence’ and creating affective connections between what we learn and their personal and societal relevance. Science education has struggled to utilise touch adequately beyond the early years, as concepts and models become more abstract, but also the arts emphasise to visual and in many contexts discourage touching. We suggest that reclaiming the value of touch can bring significant innovation in the way young people can come to learn, but also how they understand their urban and natural surroundings, and specifically, the interface between the two. We will augment natural touch with new haptic interfaces to smartphone and tablet touchscreens based on vibrotactile actuators, that will allow students to ‘touch the otherwise untouchable’, such as textures from nature at different magnifications, or electric fields and currents to help them construct conceptual models. Observing and understanding qualitative perceptions of scale, density, texture and pattern crosscut topics in science and the arts, and arts-based methods will be integrated with science learning as part of a STEAM (STEM + the Arts) approach to education. We will also use touch to open the way for schools to participate in emergent areas of radical citizen science, which advocate a more bottom-up and inclusive approach, sensitive to local context and allowing imaginative flexibility in responding to the new questions of a changing global environment. Our research objectives are to: 1. Develop the possibilities of science learning through digital touch across the primary and secondary school syllabus in topics where students are expected to develop conceptual models of abstract concepts; e.g. topics involving fields and flows, starting with Electric Circuits, where we will enable students to touch electricity on circuits shown on a screen to help construct conceptual models accounting for current, voltage, and resistance. 2. Co-design touch-centred Citizen Science methods for school grounds that use textures from nature to develop pattern-led thinking about underlying structures of natural artefacts. Touch (in nature and through digital interfaces) will be used as a starting point to stimulate progressive inquiries about how plants and animals respond to a changing environment. Schools will then modify their grounds in support of wildlife based on their inquiries. 3. Co-design interfaces for creating and experiencing patterns and textures in art through touch, including interfaces to feel existing artworks, and a sketching tool that allows students to feel drawn lines and textures as they draw them. We will explore Edinburgh Collections’ archive of fieldwork sketches from Charles Lyell and Charles Darwin, combining geological and evolutionary observations as part of a STEAM approach. 4. Understand the impact of these digital and natural touch interventions on cognition, learning, interest, creativity and socialisation with respect to science learning and artistic exploration, including for students with visual impairments, for whom touch is central to sensing the world, and for creating, interacting with and sharing artistic creations. Through pursuing these objectives, we will probe the affective possibilities of a new sensing science, which turns abstract into concrete and distant into intimate. As part of this, we will revolutionise citizen science practice for school students, initiating intuitive bottom-up scientific inquiries through affective methods that lead to attitudinal change and environmentally friendly behaviours. At the same time, we will also advance computing research by understanding the strengths and weaknesses of haptic digital interfaces in relation to tactile learning with physical props, and developing best practice for designing haptic interfaces for learning.