Bo Pei is a doctoral student in the Educational Technology program in College of Education at the University of Florida and a new student member of the Warren B. Nelms institute. Bo is working with Prof. Wanli Xing. His research interests focus on developing IoT technology, specifically, multimodal learning analytics, image processing, and data visualization for learning.

Thermal sensation, which refers to how humans intuitively perceive the temperature of objects, may mislead us to draw false conclusions. Bo is using an IR thermal imaging technology that augmented visual perception using superimposed graphics similar to augmented reality technology and associated learning modules in order to help students interpret their thermal sensation. The prediction-observation-explanation cycle was adopted to design corresponding student activities using the IR thermal technology. Image processing methods were then employed to automatically quantify the features in the captured thermal images during the experiments. The relationships between the thermal features and the explanation quality were finally analyzed to investigate students’ knowledge building process using the thermal imaging technology. This project is partially funded by a research grant (#1712676) from National Science Foundation (NSF).