Classroom Captain

The recent rise in remote learning has presented challenges for both students and teachers. Detailed visual demonstrations of spatial and visual subjects like physics, chemistry, or geometry can be harder to get across to students on a two dimensional screen. Static diagrams are helpful but insufficient for showing motion, interaction, or change. Some 2D interactive diagrams exist, and they can be sufficient for some topics, while other topics require the full three dimensions. Finally, interactive diagrams can be out of sync between the students’ screens and the teacher’s screen, so when the teacher is pointing something out, the students may not see it. If the teacher shares their screen visuals instead, then the diagram is not interactive for students. Our project seeks to solve these problems by providing 3D interactive diagrams that can be synchronized between the teacher and the students.

We developed an interactive 3D educational web application for students to learn physics and calculus under the guidance of teachers. Teachers are able to both guide students’ learning directly by controlling the interactive 3D diagram on students’ screens, and let students learn independently by giving them control over their screens.