Balboa Park Alive is a mobile augmented reality (AR) application that transforms outdoor exploration into an immersive educational experience centered on biodiversity and conservation. Designed for families and informal learners, the app uses gesture-based AR to connect users with ecological phenomena in the San Diego-Tijuana region. Integrating Niantic Lightship ARDK, Mapbox SDK, and MediaPipe Hands, the system creates inquiry-driven moments that engage users through embodied interaction, geospatial storytelling, and environmental awareness. Early user testing suggests the app fosters curiosity, intergenerational dialogue, and stewardship, offering a replicable model for mobile, location-based environmental education.

Two pilot studies compare the impacts of scaffolded versus self-paced practice on teaming and performance on an open-ended design challenge. In both studies, guiding players early on in how to leverage AI assistance (scaffolded practice) led to much more robust teaming than allowing players to learn at their own pace, but did not improve task performance.

This demo presents a hands-on opportunity for users to explore a new, immersive, node-based platform for creative coding in virtual reality (VR). The Embodied Coding Environment (ECE) is a merged digital/physical workspace where coding tools, spatial representations of code, the scenes that are the output of the code, and user editing histories are co-located in a 3D space. Visual programming languages (VPL) have been used as an alternative to text-based programming since Sketchpad in 1963. However, the ECE transforms visual programming into an immersive experience, allowing users to enter the world where they are actively coding. Beyond immersion, embodied coding allows users to leverage 3D space to organize, annotate, and interact with their code in ways that would not be possible through 2D representation. Our research goals center on understanding how embodied coding can make learning to code more intuitive and elicit heightened engagement through the learning process. Demo visitors will experience embodied coding first hand through simple programming tasks (e.g., spawning objects, using arrays, creating conditional statements, and more) presented in the ECE via a Meta Quest 2 system. Presenters will guide users through the coding activities and discuss future directions. Handouts with brief descriptions of the ECE platform with links to embodiedcode.net will be available. Access to the website will allow users to login and save their projects.

Eight middle- and high-school Computer Science (CS) teachers in San Diego County were interviewed about the major challenges their students commonly encounter in learning computer programming. We identified strategic design opportunities -- that is, challenges and needs that can be addressed in innovative ways through the affordances of Augmented and Virtual Reality (AR/VR). Thematic Analysis of the interviews yielded six thematic clusters: Tools for Learning, Visualization and Representation, Pedagogical Approaches, Classroom Culture, Motivation, and Community Connections. Within the theme of visualization, focal clusters centered on visualizing problem spaces and using metaphors to explain computational concepts, indicating that an AR/VR coding system could help users to represent computational problems by allowing them to build from existing embodied experiences and knowledge. Additionally, codes clustered within the theme of learning tools reflected educators’ preference for web-based IDEs, which involve minimal start-up costs, as well as concern over the degree of transfer in learning between block- and text-based interfaces. Finally, themes related to motivation, community, and pedagogical practices indicated that the design of an AR coding platform should support collaboration, self-expression, and autonomy in learning. It should also foster selfefficacy and learners’ ability to address lived experience and real-world problems through computational means.

This study explores electroencephalography (EEG) brain dynamics associated with mathematical problem solving. EEG and solution latencies (SLs) were recorded as 11 neurologically healthy volunteers worked on intellectually challenging math puzzles that involved combining four single-digit numbers through basic arithmetic operators (addition, subtraction, division, multiplication) to create an arithmetic expression equaling 24. Estimates of EEG spectral power were computed in three frequency bands - θ (4-7 Hz), α (8-13 Hz) and β (14-30 Hz) - over a widely distributed montage of scalp electrode sites. The magnitude of power estimates was found to change in a linear fashion with SLs - that is, relative to a base of power spectrum, theta power increased with longer SLs, while alpha and beta power tended to decrease. Further, the topographic distribution of spectral fluctuations was characterized by more pronounced asymmetries along the left-right and anterior-posterior axes for solutions that involved a longer search phase. These findings reveal for the first time the topography and dynamics of EEG spectral activities important for sustained solution search during arithmetical problem solving.