MindChamps and UniSA partner, combining music, computing and neuroscience

Combining music, computing and neuroscience to improve educational outcomes for South Australia’s young children will be the focus of a new research partnership announced on Wednesday between the University of South Australia (UniSA) and Singaporean early education company MindChamps.

UniSA’s researchers in cognitive neuroscience and virtual and augmented reality, at the Australian Research Centre for Interactive and Virtual Environments (IVE), will collaborate with the international early education provider to help improve music, literacy and numeracy among pre-school aged children in South Australia.

The partnership was formalised with the signing a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) at UniSA’s City West campus in Adelaide.

MindChamps has developed a performing arts-based curriculum specifically for pre-school aged children, which will be analysed for its effectiveness by UniSA Professor Ina Bornkessel-Schlesewsky and the IVE Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory using a range of techniques.

This work will be supplemented by Professor Mark Billinghurst and Dr Gun Lee from IVE’s Empathetic Computing Laboratory, who will develop augmented reality technology that empowers children to learn remotely from expert teachers with minimal impact on children’s screen time.

MindChamps founder, CEO and Chairman David Chiem said the provider is “thrilled to partner with UniSA to help make a significant difference to the educational outcomes of young children”.

Speaking on behalf of the University Chancellor Professor David Lloyd the institution is pleased to support cutting-edge research into early childhood education.

“By leveraging the expertise of our cognitive neuroscience and empathetic computing researchers with an established global early education provider, we look forward to seeing some tangible results that can be applied in pre-school settings,” Professor Lloyd said.