Development of a VR Prototype for Enhancing Earthquake Evacuee Safety

Training and education for enhancing evacuee safety is essential to reduce deaths, injuries and damages from disasters, such as fire and earthquake. However, traditional training approaches, e.g. evacuation drills, hardly simulate the real world emergency, which lead to the limitation of reality and poor interaction. In addition, traditional approaches may not provide investigation of participants' behavior during evacuations and give feedback after training. As a novel and effective alternative to overcome these limitations, in this paper, a VR-based training prototype system is designed and implemented for enhance earthquake evacuation safety. Key modules including earthquake scenario simulation, damage representation, interaction, player investigation and feedback are developed. In the immersive VR environment, players can be provided with learning outcomes as well as behavior feedback as crucial goals for safety training. Based on the result of the evaluation, this prototype has proven to be promising for enhancing earthquake evacuee safety and shows positive pedagogical functions

Lab work activities of computer network using virtual reality application

Lab work activities are one of the hearts of science learning, but several students have limited use and time to explore computer network tools. This study proposes a virtual reality (VR) application used to support lab work activities of a computer network so that students may conduct lab work activities by themselves at any time. The method used in this study is a multimedia development life cycle (MDLC) that consists of five stages, they are concept, design, material collecting, assembly, and testing & evaluation. A formative evaluation carried out by involving two experts, namely software expert and material expert, to measure the feasibility of application before conducting user testing. Meanwhile, a summative evaluation used to evaluate the VR application by involving 25 students who were taking the course of computer networking. Statistical analysis shows that the score of Cronbach's alpha test is higher than 0.6 for aspects of material subject and experience. Hence, the VR application can be used to support the lab work activities of a computer network

Immersive virtual reality and emergencies: tutorials for a serious game in a flood context in comparison

openLa realtà virtuale immersiva ha recentemente dimostrato enormi potenzialità in ambito di apprendimento, in particolare per quanto riguarda le situazioni di emergenza, in quanto consente all’utente di imparare a gestire situazioni di pericolo in un contesto protetto. Nonostante ciò, non sempre la realtà virtuale con finalità educative ha ottenuto i risultati sperati. È stato ipotizzato che ciò sia dovuto al carico cognitivo e alla difficoltà nell'apprendere i comandi d'interazione. Il presente elaborato si propone di valutare l'effetto di diverse versioni di tutorial per l'insegnamento dei comandi sull’apprendibilità degli stessi e sull'apprendimento dei concetti e dei comportamenti convogliati da un serious game sulle alluvioni, in particolare è stato manipolato il contesto virtuale nel quale il tutorial viene eseguito e la possibilità di interagire nell’ambiente virtuale durante la fase di familiarizzazione con i comandi.Immersive virtual reality has recently shown enormous potential in the field of learning, in particular in the field of emergency situations as it allows to learn how to manage dangerous situations in a protected context. Despite this, virtual reality for educational purposes has not always achieved the desired results; it has been hypothesized that this is due to cognitive load and to the difficulty in learning interaction commands. The present study aims to evaluate the effect of different versions of tutorials for teaching commands on their learnability and on the learning of concepts and behaviors conveyed by a serious game on floods. Specifically, the virtual context in which the tutorial is executed and the possibility of interacting in the virtual environment during the familiarization phase with the commands were manipulated