Immersive Planetarium Visualizations For Teaching Solar System Moon Concepts To Undergraduates

Digital video fulldome has long been heralded as a revolutionary educational technology; yet the discipline-based astronomy education research literature showing planetarium effectiveness has been sparse. In order to help understand to what extent immersion impacts learning and the effect of the “narrative journey” model of presentation, we conducted a pre- and post-test effectiveness study of lectures on moon systems in the Solar System presented to 781 college undergraduates under immersive and non-immersive treatment conditions. Although all students showed some learning gains immediately after instruction, those who saw presentations in an immersive fulldome planetarium showed the greatest retention, compared to control classes that witnessed the same lecture and visuals on a flat screen in their regular classroom, and students that saw no interactive visuals. Because the same instructors, presentation visuals, and instructional outline were used for both the classroom and dome instruction using the virtual environment, the results suggest that the large display and wide field-of-view, two elements unique to the dome, resulted in greater attention, and were primarily responsible for the greater gains

Safeguarding the metaverse

Safeguarding the metaverse has been produced by the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) to examine the potential harms associated with virtual reality (VR) and the metaverse. It examines the background and context of the adoption and uptake of VR technologies as well as its benefits to wider society. It also highlights areas in which there could be negative outcomes created by engagement with the metaverse, while addressing areas of concern regarding safeguarding for users, particularly minors. This report is written for government, policy makers, digital industry and technology professionals

Video game HUDs: Information presentation and spatial immersion

Researchers have analyzed various aspects of the video game experience; however, analysis of how the presentation of game status information affects the player\u27s sense of immersion into the virtual environment has not been explored. This study aims to discover how feelings of immersion are affected by diegetic, or environmentally based, methods of presenting the player\u27s status versus non-diegetic methods. Avid gamers were told to play two games, one diegetic based interface and the other a non-diegetic interface, to see how their spatial immersion experiences differed between the two designs. In addition to the use of questionnaires to evaluate the level of spatial immersion, eye tracking data was collected in order to explore how fixations differed between designs. Although the questionnaire results presented that the experiences did not significantly differ between game designs, the eye tracking data led us to believe that the player\u27s information processing may be affected. Fixation duration significantly increased during non-immersive experiences, which may suggest that players spend more time attempting to understand the environment. This may cause game designers to explore alternate methods to display status information that are easier for the player to comprehend, thus allowing players to become more spatially immersed into the game world

A Study Of The Effects Of Computer Animated Character Body Style On Perception Of Facial Expression

This study examined if there is a difference in viewer perception of computer animated character facial expressions based on character body style, specifically, realistic and stylized character body styles. Participants viewed twenty clips of computer animated characters expressing one of five emotions: sadness, happiness, anger, surprise and fear. They then named the emotion and rated the sincerity, intensity, and typicality of each clip. The results indicated that for recognition, participants were more slightly more likely to recognize a stylized character although it was not a significant difference. Stylized characters were on average rated higher for sincerity and intensity and realistic characters were on average rated higher for typicality. A significant difference in ratings was shown with fear (within sincerity and typicality) having realistic characters rated higher, happiness (within sincerity and intensity) having stylized characters rated higher and stylized being rated higher once for anger (stylized) and realistic (typicality) being rated once for anger. Other differences were also noted within the dependent variables. Based on the data collected in this study, overall there was not a significant difference in participant ratings between the two character styles

The Impact of Virtual Reality-based Learning Environment Design Features on Students' Academic Achievements

Virtual reality-based instruction such as virtual worlds, games, and simulations are becoming very popular in K-12 and higher education. Three manuscripts that report the results of investigations of these increasingly prevalent instructional media were developed for this dissertation. The purpose of the first study, a meta-analysis, was to analyze the instructional effectiveness of virtual reality-based instruction when compared to the traditional methods of instruction. In addition, this study also explored selected instructional design features of the virtual learning environment that moderated the relationship between instructional method and the academic achievements. Analyses of 63 experimental or quasi-experimental studies that studied learning outcomes of virtual reality-based instruction in K-12 or higher education settings yielded a mean effect size of g = 0.47 (SE = 0.02) suggesting that virtual reality-based instruction is an effective medium of delivering instruction. Further analyses examined factors that influence its effectiveness. The purpose of the second study was to examine a model of the impact of a 3-D desktop virtual reality environment on the learner characteristics (i.e. perceptual and psychological variables) that can enhance chemistry-related learning achievements in an introductory college chemistry class. A theoretical model of the relationships of features of 3-D virtual reality environments and students' experiences in the environments to outcomes on a chemistry learning test and measures of spatial ability and self-efficacy was tested using structural equation modeling. Usability strongly mediated the relationship between 3-D virtual reality features, spatial orientation, self-efficacy, and presence. Spatial orientation and self-efficacy had a statistically significant, positive impact on the chemistry learning test. The purpose of the third study was to investigate the potential of Second Life (SL), a 3-D virtual world, to enhance undergraduate students? learning of a foundational chemistry concept, spatial ability, and self-efficacy. A quasi-experimental pretest-posttest control group design was used. A total of 387 participants completed three assignment activities either in Second Life or using 2-D images. The difference between the scores of 3-D virtual environment-based group and the 2-D images-based group was not statistically significant for any of the measures

Using Virtual Reality Modelling to Enhance Electrical Safety and Design in the Built Environment.

This thesis presents a prototype desktop virtual reality model entitled ‘Virtual Electrical Services’, to enhance electrical safety and design in the built environment. The model presented has the potential to be used as an educational tool for third level students, a design tool for industry, or as a virtual electrical safety manual for the general public. A description of the development of the virtual reality model is presented along with the applications that were developed within the model. As part of the VR development process, this research investigates the cause and effects of electrical accidents in domestic properties. This highlights the high-risk activities, which lead to receiving an electric shock in a domestic property and identifies at-risk groups that could most benefit from electrical safety interventions. It also examines the theory of transfer touch voltage calculations and expands on it to show how to carry out a sensitivity analysis in relation to the design parameters that are being used by designers and installers. The use of Desktop Virtual Reality systems for enhancing electrical safety and engineering design is a novel prospect for both practicing and student electrical services engineers. This innovative approach, which can be readily accessed via the World Wide Web, constitutes a marked shift in conventional learning and design techniques to a more immersive, interactive and intuitive working and learning environment. A case study is carried out to evaluate the users’ attitudes toward VR learning environments and also the usability of the prototype model developed. From the completed case study, it appears that there is sufficient evidence to suggest that virtual reality could enhance electrical safety and design in the built environment and also advance training methods used to educate electrical services engineers and electricians. The thesis includes a discussion on the limitations of the system developed and the potential for future research and developmen

Perception of emotional body language displayed by animated characters

Virtual Environments have demonstrated effectiveness for social task training such as medical training (Anolli, Vescovo, Agliati, Mantovani, & Zurloni, 2006). These types of Virtual Environments have used emotional animated characters. Even though emotions have a strong influence on human-human interactions (Gratch, Mao, & Marsella, 2006), typical system evaluation does not assess whether human and animated emotional displays are perceived similarly by observers. Moreover, the Uncanny Valley, which is a drop in believability as characters become more realistic, threatens the assumption that emotions displayed by an animated character and a human would be interpreted similarly. Thus, it is not known how appropriate the perception to a realistic emotional animated character is. This issue is especially important for social task training which require animated characters to be perceived as social and emotional partners so that trainees would be confronted with situations comparable to real life ones. Using an approach similar to the one proposed by Nass & Moon (2000) in their work on the Media Equation, this thesis investigates how emotional body language displayed by animated characters is interpreted. A psychological experiment was conducted to investigate if emotional body language would be an appropriate way for animated characters to display emotion. This was done by comparing the interpretation of emotional body language displayed by animated characters with that by real actors. The results showed that animated body language can be accurately interpreted. However, the videos of the actor were found to be more emotional, more believable and more natural than the animated characters, whilst displaying the same emotional body language. Moreover, there was a significant difference in the number of correctly interpreted negative emotions displayed. Although, there was not a difference for positive emotions. This could be due to the physical appearance of the animated character or to the loss of micro-gestures inherent to Motion Capture technology. Thus, a second comparative study was conducted to investigate the potential causes for this drop in believability and recognition. It investigated the effect of changing the level of physical realism of the animation as well as deteriorating the quality of the emotional body language itself. Whilst no effect was found regarding the deterioration of the emotional body language, the results show that the videos of the Actor were found to be more emotional, more believable and more natural than the two animated characters. These findings have strong implications for the use of Virtual Environments for social task training.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo