Category:Education

From EuroVR Knowledge Base

EVE. Copyright ENIB & OVIDIUS

VR technology enables creation of virtual learning environments (VLE), where students can learn by interacting with virtual objects in a similar way to that in which they would interact with real objects. VR systems can be used for teaching a variety of subjects such as maths, science, history, culture, arts, geography, astronomy, chemistry, and physics. The potential of the application of VR systems in the education domain is broad since it enables the presentation of teaching materials in meaningful and intuitive ways, and practical skills may be taught and observed from different perspectives. The experience gained by students during the learning process can form the basis of a group discussion in a classroom environment. Other attributes of VR systems that appeal to education are self-directed and natural learning, as well as increased motivation. Most people learn faster by doing, and VR systems provide a much higher level of interactivity than other computer-based systems.

There are many examples of where VR has been used for educational purposes, but the level of success depends to a large extent on the flexibility offered by the virtual environments. Usually, students who use a VR based system enjoy themselves, and this factor contributes to the sense of their satisfaction from learning. The characteristics of VR systems which favour use in educational applications are the following:

• Flexibility
• Inherent safety
• Wide application
• Rich interactivity
• Intuitive interaction
• Motivation to learn
• Better learning results (doing is more effective than reading)
• Learning from mistakes
• Enhanced sense of presence
• Better understanding of processes

Measures of VR learning systems

The usefulness of a VR learning system for teaching in any given instance can be estimated by taking into account certain properties of the system. Important measures that should be considered in addition to the visual quality and complexity of the environment are the following:

• Autonomy – determines to what extent a VE is capable of performing its own actions independent of user intervention. An autonomous VE follows its own path to goals and may or may not change its course in response to user actions.
• Presence – describes how profound the experience of being in an actual place is. For presence to be high, the user must be allowed to interact with the VE both naturally and intuitively. When presence is high, the computer interface becomes imperceptible.
• Interaction – denotes the ability of the user to perform actions in the VE according to a logical rationale. The laws that govern the VE should become apparent over time, allowing for a meaningful interactive experience.

Constructivist approach

To improve the efficacy of learning using VR systems, users should be given the opportunity to become actively involved in constructing the knowledge through a coherent, direct interaction with knowledge domain representations. Direct interaction within a VE enables users to construct knowledge on the basis of interaction with their environment. This method of gaining knowledge is referred to as constructivism. Constructivist learning has a great advantage over other learning methods because the learners shape the learning experience by themselves. In consequence, the constructivist approach involves designing for learning rather than planning for teaching. The constructivist approach can be adapted to any subject area or curriculum by involving students as active participants immersed within VLEs. The students can directly experience and interact with the concepts, principles, rules, and procedures found in the domain, instead of being passive recipients of information given to them by a third-person instructor.

VR simulation for teaching

Through immersion in a VLE, students become a part of the phenomena that surround them. Consequently, the learning process becomes more efficient because the students can acquire knowledge through their direct experience of the environment. Virtual environments allow students to actually participate in a large number of experiences, to see representations of scenarios familiar or unfamiliar to them. They can experience interactive simulations of situations that they might not be able to encounter in the real world, for example due to lack of access or because these experiences are impossible in the real world. A VR simulation can be a representative of some real environment (e.g. a realistic model of real building interiors) or an abstract system (e.g. a theoretical 3D visualisation of molecules and their associated forces). The simulation comprises appropriate data for visualisation and optionally data for auditory and haptic representation of the system. From an educational point of view, VR simulation seems to be particularly useful in the following situations:

• situations that would otherwise be dangerous (e.g. chemical or radioactivity experiments);
• situations where observation of internal structure is important to aid understanding (e.g., inner workings of machines);
• situations where interaction is important to aid understanding;
• situations that are too complex for conventional teaching methods;
• phenomena not normally visible to the naked eye:

o macroscopic and microscopic (e.g., astronomical events and molecular movements) o very fast and very slow (e.g., explosions and continental drifts);

• demonstration of complex abstract concepts (e.g., magnetic fields) or as a support to explain concepts to people with health problems. For example, the INMER project aims at providing tools for persons with autism and persons with Down Syndrome (http://autismo.uv.es/; Herrera et al., 2004).

Distance learning

Advances in the ICT technologies have made it feasible to employ distance-learning systems in support of the growing demands for remote educational services, which can be accessible to people from their homes. Theoretical courses can be successfully provided by the use of standard computer-based technologies such as WWW with textual and multimedia contents. Nevertheless, a much more challenging task is to provide practical courses. This can be achieved by using autonomous Virtual Environments that provide users with high degrees of presence and interaction. One of the most essential benefits is the reduction of the costs associated with teaching. This is due to replacing real expensive resources such as buildings and teaching equipment with their virtual counterparts and reduction of required human resources. Important benefits are offered to the students including flexibility of time and place of learning, travel cost reduction, and accessibility for disabled people.

Collaboration

In the past, most educational applications of VR have involved a single student interacting with objects within a virtual environment (VE). More recent advances in VR technologies enabled the proliferation of collaborative virtual environments (CVE), in which more than one student can be placed simultaneously. Nowadays, an increasing interest in collaborative learning can be observed due to the fact that it offers important cognitive benefits. Collaboration is considered to be a critical component of the study since learning is often described in terms of being largely social in nature. In CVEs students and teachers can be remotely located but still share a virtual space, in which learning can occur. The students can learn not only via interactions with objects in the environment but also with other participants. It introduces an important social dimension to the experience, which helps the students learn how to clarify their ideas and interpretations through processes of articulation and discussion. Also, they can be taught how to solve possible conflicts engendered by collaboration and co-construct knowledge along with other participants. Comparing face-to-face collaboration with computer-based conferencing, the former is better for creative problem exploration and idea generation, while the latter is more suitable for linking ideas, interpretation, and problem integration. Virtual environments with virtual face-to-face collaboration seem to be an ideal solution for distant collaboration because they combine the best of both face-to-face and computer-based collaboration.

Studies

Research studies include.

• 3D Anatomical Human (2006-2010) Development of a training tool about the human body for medical students and teachers
• ENVIRA(2006-2009) Study of techniques for the construction of effective educational systems
• SIMILAR (2004-2007) Network of Excellence on multimodal interfaces applied to medical applications, special needs and edutainment
• DIME (2005-2006) Training for medical applications
• MVisio (2005-2006) Development of a pedagogical set of IT-utilities to clarify and simplify learning and practice of Computer Graphics and Virtual Reality
• MAEVIF (2001-2004) Model for the Application of Intelligent Virtual Environments to Education and Training
• KIDStory - interactive technologies for storytelling
• VRRV project (Winn et al., 1999)
• Round Earth Project (Johnson et al., 1999)
• ExploreNet 2D collaborative improvisational drama simulation (Moshell and Hughes, 1996).
• Virtual Water Project (Trindade et al., 2002)
• Virtual Solar System (Hay et al., 2002)
• Touch the sky and Touch the Universe projects (Yair et al., 2001)
• The ScienceSpace project (Dede, Salzman & Loftin 1996; Dede et al., 2000
• Salzman et al., 1996; 1999) comprised a series of microworlds for teaching students about physics (Newton World), electrical fields (Maxwell World), and chemistry (PaulingWorld).
• The Virtual Chemistry Lab (Martínez-Jiménez et al., 2003)
• 3D models allowing visualisations and exploration of complex scientific concepts such as the molecules in a compound (Byrne & Furness, 1994)
• Chemical reaction engineering (Bell and Fogler, 1995)
• The Virtual Cell (McClean et al, 2001)
• LC-CPG, National project in Czech Republic

Applications used for education include.

• ScientView - VE to present scientific visualisation of irradiation studies
• VR for Engineering Education (2007-2009) Development of a VE for teaching engineering principles to students in higher education
• EngView - Training tool, Non-Destructive Testing using ultrasounds
• Virtual Space Craft Control Room For secondary children to design and launch a space mission and have access to scientific information about astronomy and space
• CyberMath - a shared VE for exploring mathematics (http://www.nada.kth.se/~gustavt/cybermath/) (Taxén and Naeve, 2002)
• The Virtual Playground (2003-2005) VE to evaluate conceptual learning of young children
• Virtual RADLab (1999-2001) VE to support teaching of radioactivity to children in secondary schools
• NICE (1996-1997) Virtual learning environments for young children developed for CAVE technology. Children from remote physical locations can collaborate in planting a virtual garden and thus learn the processes of a simple ecosystem

Examples of potential scenarios

As part of INTUITION the working group on education and training discussed how VR could be used in the future for education. The following are scenarios as a result of these discussions.

Early-ages/student Education

Children from different countries share a given educational VE (possibly by using their hand-made puppet-like tangible user interfaces every day). For example, they may learn what a morning in their neighbouring country looks like. Once the lesson has started (begun by a teacher using a narrative metaphor), a storyteller will present the particularities in the selected country culture, then invite the learner to actively take part in the breakfast. Communication and interaction takes place between the children via speech recognition techniques, and dynamic body posture reconstruction which ensures the avatars behaviour is coherent. Emotional and motivational factors also play a central role in the interaction.