Haptics is an emerging technology that enables people to feel digital information. When combined with 2D and 3D audio-visual interfaces, it offers enormous potential for education. For instance, it allows students to experience the feeling of drilling in a virtual patient’s mouth, or compare pushing snowballs uphill on Earth and Europa, or feel soundwaves hitting an ear drum. Haptics makes the virtual universe touchable. In phase one, we demonstrated feasibility. Working with teachers, education designers and students, we defined the general usability requirements for vivid learning experiences that linked directly to the national curriculum, with a particular focus on ‘hard to teach’ topics. The resultant apps were then evaluated by educational and business partners, including teachers and an international distributor, against a matrix including cost, usability, educational value and market appeal. The results were outstandingly positive and resulted in many expressions of interest from potential partners. As we move into phase two, we propose to prove the efficacy of the approach and develop a scalable and credible route to market. To that end, we are delighted to be partnering with a leading exam board – OCR (Oxford, Cambridge and the RSA) – to design, pilot and evaluate new types of haptic learning packs built around compulsory subjects that are hard to teach, or where students frequently fall short in exams. The initial packs will focus on dissection, the way in which ears respond to sound waves, and 3D printing/coding. If we can prove that haptics can directly improve performance in particular exam questions, we can then move towards commercialisation with an exam board that sells products in 160 countries. Of course, learning is not just about exams. To support students in the equally important tasks of exploration and creativity, we will launch a haptics-themed co-branded website (OCR receive 1m hits a month). The site will promote knowledge exchange on different aspects of haptics, including coding, 3D printing and the internet of things. It will also allow schools to download our award-winning haptics software, and link into the BBC’s Microbit and Make It Digital campaigns. By encouraging widespread adoption of haptics in schools we will support the sales path for the learning packs and improve our understanding of the ed-tech market with a view to creating a new generation of affordable, swappable and topic-specific control devices. Taken together, these deliverables will also drive up interest in science, technology and design – three sectors of our economy where demand for employees far outstrips supply. ‘One of the best ways for pupils to learn something, and remember something, is to experience it and this allows them to do that. ….. I honestly think that the whole package will become invaluable to schools and I just think it is really exciting, I really do!’ – Alix Morris, phase one evaluator and teacher.

Title: The touchable universe: exploring the potential of haptic technology to improve learning outcomes. Haptics is an emerging technology that enables people to feel digital information. When combined with 3D audio-visual interfaces, it offers enormous potential for education. For instance, a well- designed system will enable dental students to feel the tooth as they practice drilling in a virtual patient’s mouth, while physics students could compare pushing snowballs uphill on Earth and Europa, and designers could learn how to shape glassware without the need for a furnace. Haptics makes the virtual universe touchable. Anarkik 3D’s proposal is to take the idea of the touchable universe and build the digital platform that will enable developers to create and build haptic apps for use inside an affordable but convincing virtual classroom, where students can experience lessons in a fundamentally more realistic and interesting manner than ever before. Working with educators, experience designers and students, we will define the requirements for vivid learning experiences that link directly to the national curriculum, with a particular focus on ‘hard to teach’ topics. These will be evaluated by educational and business partners, including universities and an international distributor, against a matrix including cost, complexity, educational value and market appeal. The best of these requirements will then be taken forward and built into the platform. Prototype demonstrators as software applications combining haptics and, for example, 3D audio-video materials will be tested in a range of schools across the UK to help prove the key message – that haptic learning environments provide an affordable and effective way to improve skills and understanding in ‘hard to teach’ subject areas. The core technology enabling this to happen is Anarkik3D’s proven ‘A-Frame’ system, developed in 2008 with a SMART award. This award winning commercially available 3D modelling application was designed and built using the A-Frame system which is highly expandable for use as an educational resource to support the development of educational apps that need access to various engines, such as a physics engine or a learn-to-code sandbox. Our team has the coding expertise to make the changes, and distributors to help to prioritise and market the resultant apps. The outputs of this feasibility study will therefore include tested develop methodologies, an adapted A-Frame, a clear understanding of which haptic kits offer most educational benefit for what cost, better understanding of development costs and projections for return on investment.