Maria C. R. Harrington, Ph.D.SIGGRAPH 2006 Educators Program. This was one of my first academic presentations, and here I presented my literature review findings for my dissertation. Many important insights were presented, and I am pleased to see that my dissertation did, indeed prove them to be on target and accurate. I still do not know what I should call this work, while my software can be displayed inside the hardware required for a true definition of Virtual Reality, VR implies full immersion with a headset or CAVE. Virtual Field Trips, while an accurate functional definition, represents a two-dimensional and linear web experience in the market. Fun, let us not forget the fun, but I want nothing to do with Edutainment, or Gamification. Serious Games implies some type of "win" or end-state where there is "victory" and my work is against that concept, exploring the opposite concept of intrinsic motivation. Simulations are very close to my work, and used in health care or aerospace because, yeah, we really do want doctors and pilots to crash and burn.. so yes, maybe Simulated Ecological Environments for Education (SEEE) is the best way to describe what I have done. Then tie in some intelligent tutoring systems, some analytics, and some feedback, and empower the learner to know more about how they learn, and what they don't yet know, and give them a path to find out.
Human Computer Interaction
Spatial Information Science
Knowledge Acquisition Systems
Welcome to my talk on my paper Situational Learning in Real and Virtual Space: Lessons learned and future directions.
My name is Maria C.R. Harrington and I am a PhD Candidate in the School of Information Science and Telecommunications at the University of Pittsburgh.
In this presentation I will give you some background on my work and the heuristics that were evident as part of a literature review I conducted last year. Additionally, as an Information scientist with over 15 years in user interface design experience, I was able to filter that literature with a focus on features and functions that improve usability.
Abstract
This work started with the informal observation of my daughter as she actively inquired about her world around her. Her seemingly innocent questions have profound implications for real time science education. How could these common daily experiences of information seeking behavior be supported or augmented, and transferred to a virtual or augmented reality application for education and knowledge acquisition? How to make it effective? What research has been done? This paper highlights key educational research and reviews important empirical findings from science education implemented in virtual reality and other computer graphics technologies. Based on recent literature and user interface design experience a list of design heuristics and recommendations are offered as guidelines to virtual reality educators and software developers. Lastly, there is a summary of future research opportunities and challenges.
Real World Situated Learning
Elementary school lessons are largely taught to children in the classroom. The curriculum may include separate units on English, math, science, history, social studies, foreign language and others. Most material is presented in conventional ways; with books, lectures, and in class or labs activities. On certain occasions, the teacher will incorporate stories, videos or web sites.
At other times songs will be sung, art works will be created or models such as a terrarium or dioramas made. Additionally, the school may have access to artifacts from a traveling museum collection that can be integrated. Scheduled field trips to local places of interest, such as trips to a science center, museum or to a local nature reserve with an expert in the subject area provide meaningful experiences and ways to interact with and explore information in a broader context.
Observations as a Volunteer
Beechwood Nature Camp: Nothing worked, but a lot of learning!
Spontaneous lesson: Food or poison?
Fox Chapel Schools for “Natural Communities”
The first challenge before considering the theoretical questions is to build an effective piece of technology as a research platform.
In HCI, we always start with the user – here the child, a novice and naive user profile – and their goals – here the child’s goals. How best to support independent exploration of a 3D space of nature? How to support their intrinsic motivation? How to allow spontaneous inquiry – not scaffold, not goal directed, not problem based, but completely and totally under the control of the child?
Can a UI be developed to augment this experience to facilitate learning, understanding and knowledge acquisition?
It is sound HCI technique to begin with the activity study or an in the field task analysis – record what works and reflect that in the tool, or try to improve it with the user interface.
It represents the best in Situated Learning Theory [Lave and Wenger 1990; McLellan 1995]. Furthermore, these experiences even with a parent or friend offer meaningful learning opportunities, especially for the rich “Cognitive Ecology” available in many places and the opportunity to nurture the child’s development of “Islands of Expertise” [Crowley and Jacobs 2002].
This broader context is spatial, temporal and multi-faceted. On site the children can see, hear, feel, smell and even taste items under investigation, essentially a multi-signal, multi-modal, real-time, situational learning environment. The Theory of Multiple Intelligences [Gardner 1993] suggests the power this type of multi-sensory experience has as it provides many kinds of signals varying in importance for each child. Integrating data, information and knowledge from the experience can leave a lasting and meaningful impression, resulting in deep conceptual change for the child.
Approached the problem from bottom up
Child’s goals
Support exploration
Intrinsically motivated
Spontaneous inquiry
Learning as a self directed act
Learning & Exploring
Facilitate learning, understanding & knowledge acquisition
Conceptual Model
Frame Research
Framework in which to build systems
Story (KidsRoom: Bobick et al., 1999; NICE: Roussou et al., 19997; MagicBook: Billinghurst et al., 2001; Looser, 2004; McKenzie, 2003; Geist: Braun, 2003; The Field (Johnson et al., 1999, 2000, 2001; Cho, 2003), MUVEs (Dede et al., 2003, 2005)
Role Usage (Johnson et al., 1999, 2000, 200; Cho, 2003)
Problems or a Goal Project Science Space (Dede et al., 1995, 1996, 1997, 1999; Salzman et al., 1996 & 1999), Global Change World (Jackson, 2000). The Round Earth Project (Johnson, et al., 1999), The Field (Johnson et al.,1999, 2000, 2001 and Cho, 2003), MUVEs (Dede et al., 2003 and Dede et al., 2005), Virtual Environment in Biology Teaching (Mikropoulos, 2003), the Virtual Field Station (Poland, 2003) and the subtle, delicate and elusive uses of the goals “to go and explore and reflect” suggested in The Ambient Wood Project (Weal, 2003 and Rogers, 2005) also showed encouraging results.
The Visual Context DigitalEE II (Okada, 2003) with the implementation of the collaborative construction of a shared frame of reference necessitated by co-wayfinding, co-attending to objects of interest, and communication between real and virtual travelers with the subtle goal to appreciate nature. The user interface facilitated those unique activities with the Shared Eye.
Real or Virtual Peers or guides was shown to reduce inhibitions and increases the desire, rate and amount of exploration (Bobick, 1999).
Guides are also context-agents, in that they can influence search and navigation strategies and provide hints or clues for problem solving. They also can be seen as mentors (Dede et al., 2003 and Dede et al., 2005). The research experiments tended to favor collaborative over individual experiences, with the majority of the studies in the category of paired or group work as contrasted to those designed for the individual.
The interactive art pieces were open to individual choice, and The Tent (Waterworth, 2001) as it was originally conceived was a solo, meditative experience. There is room to conduct future research on designing and building effective systems for the individual.
The advantage of virtual reality over the other types of training systems is the Gibsonian ideal and argument for Ecological validity [Gibson 1979] .
OR you can stretch the boundaries of reality into different scenarios
Given that many of these educational techniques are viewed as beneficial and constructive for learning in the real world, the issue becomes one of replication and distribution in the current technology paradigm. Hence, in the past we saw the development of computer based training, intelligent tutors, knowledge acquisition systems and simulations and virtual world tools and applications. Investigated techniques proven to be beneficial are Problem-Based Learning and Cognitive Apprenticeship approaches [Bransford et al. 1990]. These applications facilitated training by engaging many cognitive functions, situational tasks, emotional enjoyment, planning and envisioning as well as decision making. The advantage of virtual reality over the other types of training systems is the Gibsonian ideal and argument for Ecological validity [Gibson 1979] .