Virtual Reality and Its Application in Education

Virtual reality is a set of technologies that enables two-way communication, from computer to user and vice versa. In one direction, technologies are used to synthesize visual, auditory, tactile, and sometimes other sensory experiences in order to provide the illusion that practically non-existent things can be seen, heard, touched, or otherwise felt. In the other direction, technologies are used to adequately record human movements, sounds, or other potential input data that computers can process and use. This book contains six chapters that cover topics including definitions and principles of VR, devices, educational design principles for effective use of VR, technology education, and use of VR in technical and natural sciences

Inclusion in Virtual Reality Technology: A Scoping Review

Despite the significant growth in virtual reality applications and research, the notion of inclusion in virtual reality is not well studied. Inclusion refers to the active involvement of different groups of people in the adoption, use, design, and development of VR technology and applications. In this review, we provide a scoping analysis of existing virtual reality research literature about inclusion. We categorize the literature based on target group into ability, gender, and age, followed by those that study community-based design of VR experiences. In the latter group, we focus mainly on Indigenous Peoples as a clearer and more important example. We also briefly review the approaches to model and consider the role of users in technology adoption and design as a background for inclusion studies. We identify a series of generic barriers and research gaps and some specific ones for each group, resulting in suggested directions for future research

Interactive Experience Design: Integrated and Tangible Storytelling with Maritime Museum Artefacts

Museums play the role of intermediary between cultural heritage and visitors, and are often described as places and environments for education and enjoyment. The European Union also encourages innovative uses of museums to support education through the cultural heritage resources. However, the importance of visitors’ active role in museums as places for education and entertainment, on the one hand, and the growing and indispensable presence of technology in the cultural heritage domain, on the other hand, provided the initial ideas to develop the research. This thesis, presents the study and design for an interactive storytelling installation for a maritime museum. The installation is designed to integrate different museum artefacts into the storytelling system to enrich the visitors experience through tangible storytelling. The project was conducted in collaboration with another PhD student, Luca Ciotoli. His contribution was mainly focused on the narrative and storytelling features of the research, while my contribution was focused on the interaction- and technology-related features, including the design and implementation of the prototype. The research is deployed using a four-phase iterative approach. The first phase of the research, Study, deals with literature review and different studies to identify the requirements. The second phase, Design, determines the broad outlines of the project i.e., an interactive storytelling installation. The design phase includes interaction and museum experience design. We investigated different design approaches, e.g., interaction and museum experience design, to develop a conceptual design. The third phase, prototype, allows us to determine how to fulfill the tasks and meet the requirements that are established for the research. Prototyping involves content creation, storyboarding, integrating augmented artefacts into the storytelling system. Th final phase, test, refers to the evaluations that are conducted during the aforementioned phases e.g., formative and the final usability testing with users. The outcome of the research confirms previous results in the literature about how digital narratives can be enriched with the tangible dimension, moreover it shows how this dimension can enable to communicate stories and knowledge of the past that are complex, such as the art of navigating in the past, by integrating tangible objects that play different roles in the storytelling process

Proceedings of the International Workshop on EuroPLOT Persuasive Technology for Learning, Education and Teaching (IWEPLET 2013)

"This book contains the proceedings of the International Workshop on EuroPLOT Persuasive Technology for Learning, Education and Teaching (IWEPLET) 2013 which was held on 16.-17.September 2013 in Paphos (Cyprus) in conjunction with the EC-TEL conference. The workshop and hence the proceedings are divided in two parts: on Day 1 the EuroPLOT project and its results are introduced, with papers about the specific case studies and their evaluation. On Day 2, peer-reviewed papers are presented which address specific topics and issues going beyond the EuroPLOT scope. This workshop is one of the deliverables (D 2.6) of the EuroPLOT project, which has been funded from November 2010 – October 2013 by the Education, Audiovisual and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA) of the European Commission through the Lifelong Learning Programme (LLL) by grant #511633. The purpose of this project was to develop and evaluate Persuasive Learning Objects and Technologies (PLOTS), based on ideas of BJ Fogg. The purpose of this workshop is to summarize the findings obtained during this project and disseminate them to an interested audience. Furthermore, it shall foster discussions about the future of persuasive technology and design in the context of learning, education and teaching. The international community working in this area of research is relatively small. Nevertheless, we have received a number of high-quality submissions which went through a peer-review process before being selected for presentation and publication. We hope that the information found in this book is useful to the reader and that more interest in this novel approach of persuasive design for teaching/education/learning is stimulated. We are very grateful to the organisers of EC-TEL 2013 for allowing to host IWEPLET 2013 within their organisational facilities which helped us a lot in preparing this event. I am also very grateful to everyone in the EuroPLOT team for collaborating so effectively in these three years towards creating excellent outputs, and for being such a nice group with a very positive spirit also beyond work. And finally I would like to thank the EACEA for providing the financial resources for the EuroPLOT project and for being very helpful when needed. This funding made it possible to organise the IWEPLET workshop without charging a fee from the participants.

Augmented and Virtual Reality for the promotion of the cultural heritage: analysis of museum mission and visitor experience

The thesis discusses the role of Augmented and Virtual Reality technology for the promotion of the cultural heritage, considering both the museum mission and the visitor experience. The research framework represents an integration of the Contextual Model of Learning developed in the field of Museum Visitor Studies, and the cultural-historical Activity Theory, so to consider the different human, environmental and technological dimensions that determine the visitor experience. The research includes two studies. The first study is a qualitative investigation performed at the Ara Pacis Museum in Rome, in order to explore the "design for use" and the "design in use", by collecting data through ethnographic methods and analyzing data through the Service Design Thinking methodology. The second study is an investigation of the museum audience performed using an online questionnaire, to complement and validate the results from study 1. The thesis discusses the results related to the technology as engagement factor, the artifacts ecology and the social interaction among visitors

Design revolutions: IASDR 2019 Conference Proceedings. Volume 2: Living, Making, Value

In September 2019 Manchester School of Art at Manchester Metropolitan University was honoured to host the bi-annual conference of the International Association of Societies of Design Research (IASDR) under the unifying theme of DESIGN REVOLUTIONS. This was the first time the conference had been held in the UK. Through key research themes across nine conference tracks – Change, Learning, Living, Making, People, Technology, Thinking, Value and Voices – the conference opened up compelling, meaningful and radical dialogue of the role of design in addressing societal and organisational challenges. This Volume 2 includes papers from Living, Making and Value tracks of the conference