The Project for initiating Andalusian secondary students on research methods and innovation <<Proyecto de Iniciación a la Investigación e Innovación en Secundaria en Andalucía (PIIISA)>> aims to educate high-school students on research methodologies in a modern, fun and inspiring way.
PIIISA projects offer a great opportunity not only to help youngsters understand how the auditory system works, but also to raise awareness of the adverse effects of exposing themselves to sound levels that pose a risk to their hearing either on their personal listening devices or at loud venues.
In the 2022-2023 edition, the selected topic was binaural hearing. Thirty-seven secondary students from 4 high-schools in the Granada province participated in the project, who were supervised by one teacher per school. The project was led by Prof. Ángel de la Torre and three other members of his team.
The project consisted of 4 sessions at the University of Granada, where students acquired fundamental principles of the human hearing system; implemented two research experiments using license-free powerful tools such as GNU-Octave to behaviourally evaluate a person’s ability to (i) understand speech in noise and (ii) localise the position of a sound source; collected an remarkable database of 164 participants; and interpreted results.
At the end of the project, students presented their conclusions and learnings in a scientific forum at the Granada´s Science Museum <<Parque de las Ciencias de Granada>> via an oral presentation and a poster.
The poster and slides of the oral presentation are available by clicking on the images below.
Type: Project oriented to educate high school students on research methods
Program: Project for initiating Andalusian secondary students on research methods and innovation <<Proyecto de Iniciación a la Investigación e Innovación en Secundaria en Andalucía (PIIISA)>>
Title: 31C – Investigating binaural hearing <<31C – Investigando la percepción binaural>>
Duration: 17/01/2023 – 17/05/2023
Participants: Ángel de la Torre Vega, Isaac Manuel Álvarez Ruiz, Joaquín Tomás Valderrama Valenzuela, José Carlos Segura Luna + 37 students from 4 high schools + 1 teacher per school