arXiv subjects

Massimo Grassi

Publications and source records attributed to Massimo Grassi.

5 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

AMACA: Astronomy education with a Multi-sensory, Accessible, and Circular Approach

The AMACA project (Astronomy education with a Multi-sensory, Accessible, and Circular Approach) develops multi-sensory activities for accessible education and engagement in astronomy. Despite promising innovations, existing resources are often poorly documented, designed for one-time events, expensive, and lack interdisciplinary collaboration, user testing, and broad dissemination. AMACA addresses these challenges by creating multi-sensory activities for education and outreach, with a particular focus on accessibility for people with sensory disabilities. A circular approach informs its educational structure: (1) a PhD course on multi-sensory astronomy outreach develops hands-on activities with the support of astronomers, psychologists, and organizations for the visually impaired and the deaf; (2) PhD candidates teach High School (HS) students how to deliver the activities; (3) HS students lead the activities at the Astronomy Festival "The Universe in All Senses"; (4) HS students train teachers to implement the activities in their classrooms. AMACA also develops tools to guide project development and track participants' learning. Key findings show improved communication and accessibility awareness among PhD candidates, increased emotional engagement with astronomy among HS students, enhanced public engagement with research and accessibility awareness, and high teacher satisfaction with the flipped-roles, hands-on approach. Overall, AMACA enhances accessibility and engagement in astronomy education across audiences.

physics.ed-ph↗

arXiv2024

Evaluating the efectiveness of sonifcation in science education using Edukoi

Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics classes are mainly taught using visual supports. However, the advancement of technology and the increasing eforts to equip schools with digital instrumentation have opened up the possibility of exploring new teaching avenues, such as sonifcation. We explored the efcacy of sonifcation in education using a novel interactive tool, Edukoi, in the context of astronomy, which is predominantly disseminated through spectacular images, animations, and visuals. Edukoi is a motion-sensing sonifcation tool that converts images to sound in real-time for educational applications. Our study, conducted with nearly 150 middle-school students, included a preliminary questionnaire investigating the perception, engagement, and motivation of students towards science; two sessions dedicated to testing Edukoi and assessing the potentiality of the software for the recognition of the colour and the shape of real and sketchy images; and a fnal second administration of the questionnaire to capture a possible benefcial efect of the use of the tool in the engagement towards science. Results showed the efectiveness of Edukoi in colour recognition and reasonable efcacy in shape identifcation. Although the questionnaire did not reveal an increment in science engagement over the time of the study, oral feedback from the students was positive. Edukoi presents a possible alternative teaching aid, potentially benefting diverse learners, including the visually impaired. Further developments of the software are needed to enhance its efectiveness in conveying more complex features such as composite colours or shapes.

physics.ed-ph↗

arXiv2024

Evaluation of the effectiveness of sonification for time series data exploration

Astronomy is a discipline primarily reliant on visual data. However, alternative data representation techniques are being explored, in particular ''sonification'', namely, the representation of data into sound. While there is increasing interest in the astronomical community in using sonification in research and educational contexts, its full potential is still to be explored. This study measured the performance of astronomers and non-astronomers to detect a transit-like feature in time series data (i.e., light curves), that were represented visually or auditorily, adopting different data-to-sound mappings. We also assessed the bias that participants exhibited in the different conditions. We simulated the data of 160 light curves with different signal-to-noise ratios (SNR). We represented them as visual plots or auditory streams with different sound parameters to represent brightness: pitch, duration, or the redundant duration & pitch. We asked the participants to identify the presence of transit-like features in these four conditions in a session that included an equal number of stimuli with and without transit-like features. With auditory stimuli, participants detected transits with performances above the chance level. However, visual stimuli led to overall better performances compared to auditory stimuli and astronomers outperformed non-astronomers. Visualisations led to a conservative response bias (reluctance to answer ''yes, there is a transit''), whereas sonifications led to more liberal responses (proneness to respond ''yes, there is a transit''). Overall, this study contributes to understanding how different representations (visual or auditory) and sound mappings (pitch, duration, duration & pitch) of time series data affect detection accuracy and biases.

astro-ph.IM↗

arXiv2023

Edukoi: developing an interactive sonification tool for astronomy between entertainment and education

Edukoi is a software that aims to make interactive sonification suitable to convey and extract information. The program design is a modification of the software Herakoi, which sonifies images in real time mapping pitch to colour using a motion-aware approach for allowing users to interact with images through sound. The pitch-colour association of Hearkoi, albeit pleasing from the entertainment side, is not efficient for communicating specific information regarding colours and hues to listeners. Hence we modified it to create an instrument to be used by visually impaired and sighted children to explore images through sound and extract accurate information. We aim at building a flexible software that can be used in middle-schools for both art and science teaching. We tested its effectiveness using astronomical images, given the great fascination that astronomy always has on kids of all ages and backgrounds. Astronomy is also considered a very visual science, a characteristic that prevents students from learning this subject and having a related career. With this project we aim to challenge this belief and give to students the possibility to explore astronomical data through sound. Here we discuss our experiment, the choices we made regarding sound mappings, and what psychophysiological aspects we aim to evaluate to validate and improve Edukoi.

astro-ph.IM↗

arXiv2022

Sound people speak to Star people. A sound experts perspective on astronomy sonification projects

The Audible Universe project aims at making dialogue between two scientific domains investigating two distinct research objects, briefly said, Stars and Sound. It has been instantiated within a collaborative workshop that started to mutually acculturate both communities, by sharing and transmitting respective knowledge, skills and practices. One main outcome of this exchange was a global view on the astronomical data sonification paradigm that allowed to observe either the diversity of tools, uses and users (including visually-impaired people), but also the current limitations and potential ways of improvement. From this perspective, the current paper presents basic elements gathered and contextualised by sound experts in their respective fields (sound perception / cognition, sound design, psychoacoustics, experimental psychology), in order to anchor sonification for astronomy in a more well-informed, methodological and creative process.

astro-ph.IM↗