About Us
Who We Are
We’re a group of college students who are passionate about education and technology. We are starting a collaborative project driven by our curiosity and the desire to make classroom learning more engaging.
What began as part of a PhD research initiative has now grown into a small team effort, where we learn, experiment, and create together. Our project reflects our collective interest in improving how students and teachers interact in the classroom, especially in science education.
We’re trying to build a tool that helps students and teachers interact equally to create a multi-channel and polyphonic classroom. Our focus is on creating an accessible platform that:
- Encourages students to actively participate in discussions.
- Enable classroom interaction and dialogues in the digital dimension.
- Supports all kinds of learners, including those who might not speak up as much in traditional lecture settings.
What We Do
Our flagship product is a dynamic, dialogue-centered software application designed to enhance secondary education in science subjects. This tool offers three core modes of interaction:
- Collaborative Role-Playing: Students solve teaching-content-related problems of science fantasy, connecting textbook knowledge to real-life scientific challenges.
- Independent Dialogues: Students interact with NPCs to preview and review content in a real-life setting, promoting intrinsic motivation and self-directed learning.
- In-class Polyphonic Dialogues: Students raise comments and questions, challenge others’ opinions, and answer others’ questions during class in a real-time textual interactive space.
Why It Matters
As students ourselves, we know how important it is to:
- Feel connected to what we’re learning.
- Know why we learn a concept and how it is used in the real world.
- Have a safe space to share ideas.
Meet Our Team
Our team is a vibrant group of researchers, educators, developers, and designers:
- Qingyi Zheng (Research Director): PhD student at the University of Cambridge specializing in classroom dialogue and EdTech.
- Software Development:
- Yunyi Gao (Technology Director): BS Computer Science Honors, Purdue University.
- Xiuwen Fang (Software Developer): BS Computer Science, Purdue University.
- Xinyi Wu (Software Developer): BS Computer Science, Purdue University
- Xinyi Zheng (Product Manager): BS IT System Design & BA Digital Criminology.
- Jiawen Yao (Technical Advisor): MS Computer Science, Rice University.
- Game Development:
- Yichen Dai, BS Polytechnic Institute & BS Computer Science, Purdue University
- Yuanfei Song, BS Computer Science, Purdue University
- Ekaterina Tszyao, BS Computer Science, Purdue University
- Congtian Wu, BS Computer Science, Purdue University
- Content Creation:
- Qingchan Gao (Art Director): BA Visual Communication Design, North China University of Technology.
- Yihan Huang (UX Designer): MFA Interaction Design, Purdue University.
- Yixin Hu (Music & Art Director): BS Computer Science and Biology, McGill University.
- Jingzhi Zhao (Content Creator): PhD student at Neuroscience, College of William & Mary.