Geometry Resources in Dance (GRiD) Design-based educational research for learners to objectify their tacit attentional anchors for movement coordination into auxiliary lines for geometric practice
Dor Abrahamson, Professor
Education
Applications for Fall 2026 are closed for this project.
What do dancing and geometrical proof have in common? Turns out that in both of these disparate practices, we imagine lines to solve the common problem of perceptually engaging the environment to perform sensorimotor tasks. In dance, these lines have been called "attentional anchors." In geometry, these lines are called "auxiliary constructions." However, while dancing may come naturally to people and carry cultural identity and personal meaning, geometry is often viewed as unnatural and unrelated to the body. Our GRiD project began as a bridge, designing a blended dance-geometry space where learners could draw on their natural attentional anchors to generate auxiliary lines.
In our newly developed design, we collected eye-tracking video data to capture participants' eye gaze as they worked with collaborative body-scale geometry problems. This phase of the project centers on qualitative, video-based analysis of participants' problem-solving and eye-tracking data to examine gaze patterns, timing, facial expression, and movement in relation to participants' reasoning and gesture.
We are looking for undergraduate research assistants to help analyze video and eye-tracking data of students' interactions with the GRiD.
Role: Day-to-day supervisor for this project: Ratih Ayu Apsari, Ph.D., Research Associate
Qualifications: Students should have basic experience or familiarity with design-based research and/or other qualitative methods, along with an interest in working closely and carefully with video-based data (eye-tracking footage, gesture, and interaction) as a form of qualitative analysis. Interest in cognitive science, mathematics education, embodied cognition, and multimodal communication is preferred. Experience with quantitative analysis of eye-tracking data is a bonus.
Hours: 6-8 hrs
Social Sciences Engineering, Design & Technologies Education, Cognition & Psychology