Simulated Ecological Environments for Education: A Tripartite Model Framework of HCI Design Parameters for Situational Learning in Virtual Environments

While there are many studies on collaborative or guided scientific inquiry in real, virtual,and simulated environments, there are few that study the interplay between the design ofthe simulation and the user interface. The main research aim was to decompose thesimulation and user interface into the design parameters that influence attention,curiosity, inquiry, and learning of scientific material and acts of creation for children.The research design investigates what tools support independent exploration of a space,enhance deep learning, and motivate scientific or creative inquiry. A major interest is inthe role that ecological context plays in the perception of spatial information.None of the prior work on learning in virtual environments considered a child-centriccomputer interaction framing, independent of pedagogy and focused on the impact ofuser interface parameters, such as image quality and navigational freedom. A majorcontribution of this research is the construction of the Virtual Trillium Trail, as itrepresents one square mile of biologically accurate scientific plot study data. It is avirtual environment based on statistical data visualization, not fantasy. It allowed for ahighly realistic simulation and scientifically true-to-life visualization, as well as for aplanned orthogonal contrast with exceptionally high internal validity in both system andstatistical research design.Of critical importance is evidence in the pilot study, that virtual reality field trips forstudents may be used to prime before and to reinforce after a real field trip. Thisresearch also showed transfer effects on in-situ learning activity, in both directions.Thus, supports the claim that virtual environments may augment educational practices,not replace them, to maximize the overall learning impact. The other large contributionwas in the activity analysis of the real field trip, where the Salamander Effect is observedas an environmental event, which opened a Teachable Moment event for the teacher, andwhich was then translated into a system design feature, a Salient Event in the userinterface. A main part of this research is the importance of such events, as ways tosupport intrinsic learning activity, and leverage episodic memory.The main empirical contribution to the design of educational virtual environments wasproduced by the 2 x 2 ANOVA with the factors of Visual Fidelity and NavigationalFreedom, set to high and low levels, and the evidence of different effects on KnowledgeGained. The tool has an impact on intrinsic learning, which is measured here by a pretestand a post-test on facts and concepts. A two-factor analysis of variance showed asignificant effect of Visual Fidelity on Knowledge Gained, F(1,60) = 10.54, p = 0.0019.High Visual Fidelity condition has a greater impact on Knowledge Gained (M=30.95, SD=14.76), than Low Visual Fidelity condition (M=19.99, SD = 13.39). Photorealistic has astronger impact on learning than cartoon versions. There was significant interactionbetween Visual Fidelity and Navigational Freedom, F(1,60) = 4.85, p = 0.0315, with thelargest impact in the combined conditions of High Visual Fidelity and High NavigationalFreedom on Knowledge Gained (M=37.44, SD = 13.88). Thus, photorealistic, freenavigation virtual environments double learning, when compared to cartoon versions,ceteris paribus.The next major contribution to the design of the user interface in educational virtualenvironments is the design and use of Salient Events as components to augment thevirtual environment and to facilitate intrinsic inquiry into facts and concepts. A two factoranalysis of variance showed a significant effect of Visual Fidelity on Salient Eventcounts, F(1,60) = 4.35, p = 0.00413. High Visual Fidelity condition has a greater impacton Salient Event counts, (Μ = 14.46, SD = 6), than Low Visual Fidelity condition,(Μ =11.31, SD = 6.37). Using High Visual Fidelity with High Navigational Freedom(showing a strong trend of F(1,60) = 3.23, p = 0.0773) to increase Salient Event countsare critical design features for educational virtual environments, especially since SalientEvents are moderately positively correlated with Knowledge Gained (r = 0.455, N = 64, p= 0.000).Emotional, affective, aesthetic, and subjective attitudes were investigated in the post-experience assessment of the main study on system and learning experience. TotalAttitude is strongly positively and significantly correlated with Awe and Wonder (r =0.727, N = 64, p = 0.000). Also important is the strong, positive, and significantcorrelation of Beauty with Awe and Wonder (r = 0.506, N = 64, p = 0.000). And the onlysignificant subjective emotion or attitude variable correlated to Knowledge Gained, wasAwe and Wonder with a slightly positive statistic: (r = 0.273, N = 64, p = 0.000).Future research will investigate the complexity and causality of such interactions betweenthe child's mental model, the virtual environment, and the user interface in the form ofregression equations, partial differential equations, and Markov models

Development of virtual traditional house for interactive real-time navigation

Virtual heritage is able to provide visual aesthetics, real-time navigation and interaction to impress and entertain users.This article describes the design and development of three dimensional (3D) virtual heritage to view and navigate the 3D representation of Malay traditional house which is rare to be found today. The Virtual Traditional House allows flexible exploration with real-time navigation in order for users to walkthrough the 3D reconstruction of the house while viewing relevant historical information at certain parts of the house.The process of design and development of Virtual Traditional House is outlined and points of particular importance are explained.The article discusses the preliminary results of user evaluation for Virtual Traditional House.Future work includes extensive user evaluation and to what extend user may absorb the historical information surfaced around the virtual environment

An Experimental Mixed Methods Pilot Study for U.S. Army Infantry Soldiers - Higher Levels of Combined Immersion and Embodiment in Simulation-Based Training Capabilities Show Positive Effects on Emotional Impact and Relationships to Learning Outcomes

This pilot study examines the impact of combined immersion and embodiment on learning and emotional outcomes. The results are intended to better enable U.S. Army senior leaders to decide if dismounted infantry Soldiers would benefit from a more immersive simulation-based training capability. The experiment\u27s between-subject design included a sample of 15 participants randomly assigned to one of three system configurations representing different levels of combined immersion and embodiment. The control group was a typical desktop, and the two experimental groups were a typical configuration of a Virtual Reality headset (VR) and a novel configuration using VR supported by an omnidirectional treadmill (ODT) for full body exploration and interaction. Unique from similar studies, this pilot study allows for an analysis of the Infinadeck ODT\u27s impact on learning outcomes and the value of pairing tasks by type with various levels of immersion. Each condition accessed the same realistically modeled geospatial virtual environment (VE), the UCF Virtual Arboretum, and completed the same pre and post VE-interaction measurement instruments. These tests included complicated and complex information. Declarative information involved listing plants/communities native to central Florida (complicated tasks) while the situational awareness measurement required participants to draw a sketch map (complex task). The Kruskal-Wallis non-parametric statistical test showed no difference between conditions on learning outcomes. The non-parametric Spearman correlation statistical test showed many significant relationships between the system configuration and emotional outcomes. Graphical representations of the data combined with quantitative, qualitative, and correlational data suggest a larger sample size is required to increase power to answer this research question. This study found a strong trend which indicates learning outcomes are affected by task type and significant correlations between emotions important for learning outcomes increased with combined immersion and embodiment

FAMILY DEMENTIA CAREGIVERS’ PERCEPTIONS OF THE VIRTUAL DEMENTIA TOUR®: A CHANGED REALITY

Family dementia caregiving involves many challenges that often lead to stress and frustration. A subjective understanding of the daily struggles associated with dementia is not possible unless one has the disease; therefore, the family dementia caregiver's perception of dementia might be incongruent with their family member's lived experience. The Virtual Dementia Tour®(VDT) provides a vicarious first-person perspective for six of the most common symptoms of dementia. Although extensive evidence supports the use of the Virtual Dementia Tour® in the healthcare profession and education, no research studies were found investigating the Virtual Dementia Tour® with family dementia caregivers. This hermeneutic phenomenological study discovered family dementia caregivers' perceptions of the VDT® and its impact on family dementia caregivers' perceived reality of their family member living with dementia. Ten participants were recruited for in-depth open semi-structured interviews following participation in the Virtual Dementia Tour® at a community event. Data analysis was performed using a modification of Colaizzi's (1978) method for phenomenological analysis. One over-arching theme, It Changed Me, described the culmination of the participants' experiences leading to a changed reality of their family member living with dementia. Four supporting subthemes described the participants' internal processes toward empathic understanding, interpretation, and responsiveness. The findings suggest that family dementia caregivers interpreted their experience in the Virtual Dementia Tour® with empathic understanding and responsiveness. The VDT® had a powerful impact that led to an eye-opening epiphany about the lived experience of dementia and served as a "call to action" to change expectations and approach to caregiving. This study begins to fill a gap in the body of nursing knowledge and research about the value of the Virtual Dementia Tour® with family dementia caregivers in community settings. Moreover, it highlights the need to combine this experience with formal training to improve the quality of family dementia care

Conceptual Framework for Designing Virtual Field Trip Games

This thesis aimed to provide designing models to explore an alternative solution for a field trip when it becomes impossible for several reasons such as the limitation of cost and time. Virtual field trip games are relatively new means to create virtual field trips in game environments through adding game aspects to learning aspects to enhance the learning experience. The simple combining of game and learning aspects will not guarantee the desired effect of virtual field trips. Theoretical and logical connections should be established to form interweave between both aspects. This thesis proposes a designing framework by establishing three links between game design aspects and learning aspects. The three links are constructed by modelling: the experiential learning theory (ELT), the gameplay, and the game world. ELT modelling quantifies the theory into the internal economy mechanic and balances the levels of game task difficulty with the player’s ability through game machinations, game modelling links the learning process to gameplay, and world modelling connects field environment to game environment. The internal economy mechanic and its components (resources, internal mechanic, feedback loop), formulating equations to define generic player’s interactions and identify indicators to capture evidence of achievements via a mathematical (evaluation) model. The game modelling includes skill models to design two important high-order skills (decision-making and teamwork) and connects them to the evaluation model. The game world is modelled through defining its variables and relationships’ rules to connect both environments (game and field) expanding the evaluation model. The framework is supported by essential learning theories (ELT, task-based learning, some aspects of social learning) and pedagogical aspects (assessment, feedback, field-based structure, high-order skills) and connected to the key game elements (interaction, multimodal presentation, control of choice…etc) of field-based learning along with suitable game mechanics. The two research studies that were conducted as part of this thesis found that the designing framework is useful, usable, and provides connections between learning and game aspects and the designed VFTG based on the framework improved learning performance along with providing motivation and presence. This suggests the effectiveness of the framework

Gifted Education, Creativity and Leadership Development

In these uncertain and challenging times, we need to help gifted students find their purpose and work toward finding a passion in their work and life. These new perspectives are both brilliant and practical and represent a synthesis of wisdom and experience. The new perspectives address the need to identify and nurture diverse students using scenarios and simulations and an active involvement in observing differentiation to learn how to identify and serve gifted students. We have unpreceded opportunity, with access to technology, to engage in collaborative research and program development across disciplines and internationally. In conclusion, there is deep wisdom here for gifted students, their parents and teachers, who can all benefit from exploring these new perspectives

Aspekty visuálního designu pokročilých digitálních multimediálních výukových materiálů: vliv na učení a informační chování u dětí prvního vzdělávacího stupně

This thesis investigates the effects of selected visual design aspects of information representation in advanced digital multimedia learning materials (ADMLMs) on learning outcomes and information behavior of primary school children (8-11 years old). It consists of three experimental studies in laboratory conditions, each individually focusing on different issue, including effects of overall visual appearance (VA; N=53), visual dynamicity (VD; N=134), and visual customizability (VC; N=143). The general theoretical framework is based on the insights from science of learning, cognitive psychology, and information science. On one hand, the results show that the investigated visual design aspects do not have a detectable effect on the self-reported learning enjoyment and learning outcomes (i.e., comprehension tests, transfer tests). On the other hand, the results also confirm that children at this age are sensitive to these aspects, which are generally capable to impact children's evaluation of attractiveness (dVA=0.86; dVD=1.11), motivation towards further interaction with the learning materials (x2 VA [2] = 21.269, p < .001; x2 VD [1] = 87.04, p < .001) and related information behavior. The theoretical as well as practical implications are discussed. Although investigated visual design aspects of...Tato disertační práce zkoumá dopad vybraných aspektů visuálního designu reprezentace informací v pokročilých digitálních multimediálních výukových materiálech na vzdělávací výsledky a informační chování u dětí prvního vzdělávacího stupně (8-11 let). Skládá se ze tří experimentálních studií v laboratorních podmínkách. Každá ze studií se zaměřuje na jinou problematiku, které se týkají: celkového visuálního vzhledu (VV; N=53), visuální dynamičnosti (VD; N=134), a visuální přizpůsobitelnosti (VP; N=143). Obecný teoretický rámec je stavěn na poznatcích z pedagogické psychologie, kognitivní psychologie a informační vědy. Výsledky studií ukazují, že zkoumané visuální aspekty nemají zjistitelný dopad na vnímané potěšení z učení a vzdělávací výsledky (tj. znalostní testy, transferové testy). Výsledky však rovněž ukazují, že děti v tomto věku jsou citlivé na zkoumané aspekty visuálního designu, které jsou obecně schopny u dětí ovlivňovat evaluaci atraktivity (dVV=0.86; dVD=1.11), motivaci k další interakci s výukovými materiály (x2 VA [2] = 21.269, p < .001; x2 VD [1] = 87.04, p < .001) a související informační chování. Teoretické i praktické implikace jsou diskutovány. Zkoumané aspekty visuálního designu sice selhaly v podpoře vzdělávacích výsledků, nicméně zároveň ani nebyly příčinou vlivů negativních....Institute of Information Studies and LibrarianshipÚstav informačních studií a knihovnictvíFilozofická fakultaFaculty of Art

Virtual Heritage: new technologies for edutainment

Cultural heritage represents an enormous amount of information and knowledge. Accessing this treasure chest allows not only to discover the legacy of physical and intangible attributes of the past but also to provide a better understanding of the present. Museums and cultural institutions have to face the problem of providing access to and communicating these cultural contents to a wide and assorted audience, meeting the expectations and interests of the reference end-users and relying on the most appropriate tools available. Given the large amount of existing tangible and intangible heritage, artistic, historical and cultural contents, what can be done to preserve and properly disseminate their heritage significance? How can these items be disseminated in the proper way to the public, taking into account their enormous heterogeneity? Answering this question requires to deal as well with another aspect of the problem: the evolution of culture, literacy and society during the last decades of 20th century. To reflect such transformations, this period witnessed a shift in the museum’s focus from the aesthetic value of museum artifacts to the historical and artistic information they encompass, and a change into the museums’ role from a mere "container" of cultural objects to a "narrative space" able to explain, describe, and revive the historical material in order to attract and entertain visitors. These developments require creating novel exhibits, able to tell stories about the objects and enabling visitors to construct semantic meanings around them. The objective that museums presently pursue is reflected by the concept of Edutainment, Education + Entertainment. Nowadays, visitors are not satisfied with ‘learning something’, but would rather engage in an ‘experience of learning’, or ‘learning for fun’, being active actors and players in their own cultural experience. As a result, institutions are faced with several new problems, like the need to communicate with people from different age groups and different cultural backgrounds, the change in people attitude due to the massive and unexpected diffusion of technology into everyday life, the need to design the visit by a personal point of view, leading to a high level of customization that allows visitors to shape their path according to their characteristics and interests. In order to cope with these issues, I investigated several approaches. In particular, I focused on Virtual Learning Environments (VLE): real-time interactive virtual environments where visitors can experience a journey through time and space, being immersed into the original historical, cultural and artistic context of the work of arts on display. VLE can strongly help archivists and exhibit designers, allowing to create new interesting and captivating ways to present cultural materials. In this dissertation I will tackle many of the different dimensions related to the creation of a cultural virtual experience. During my research project, the entire pipeline involved into the development and deployment of VLE has been investigated. The approach followed was to analyze in details the main sub-problems to face, in order to better focus on specific issues. Therefore, I first analyzed different approaches to an effective recreation of the historical and cultural context of heritage contents, which is ultimately aimed at an effective transfer of knowledge to the end-users. In particular, I identified the enhancement of the users’ sense of presence in VLE as one of the main tools to reach this objective. Presence is generally expressed as the perception of 'being there', i.e. the subjective belief of users that they are in a certain place, even if they know that the experience is mediated by the computer. Presence is related to the number of senses involved by the VLE and to the quality of the sensorial stimuli. But in a cultural scenario, this is not sufficient as the cultural presence plays a relevant role. Cultural presence is not just a feeling of 'being there' but of being - not only physically, but also socially, culturally - 'there and then'. In other words, the VLE must be able to transfer not only the appearance, but also all the significance and characteristics of the context that makes it a place and both the environment and the context become tools capable of transferring the cultural significance of a historic place. The attention that users pay to the mediated environment is another aspect that contributes to presence. Attention is related to users’ focalization and concentration and to their interests. Thus, in order to improve the involvement and capture the attention of users, I investigated in my work the adoption of narratives and storytelling experiences, which can help people making sense of history and culture, and of gamification approaches, which explore the use of game thinking and game mechanics in cultural contexts, thus engaging users while disseminating cultural contents and, why not?, letting them have fun during this process. Another dimension related to the effectiveness of any VLE is also the quality of the user experience (UX). User interaction, with both the virtual environment and its digital contents, is one of the main elements affecting UX. With respect to this I focused on one of the most recent and promising approaches: the natural interaction, which is based on the idea that persons need to interact with technology in the same way they are used to interact with the real world in everyday life. Then, I focused on the problem of presenting, displaying and communicating contents. VLE represent an ideal presentation layer, being multiplatform hypermedia applications where users are free to interact with the virtual reconstructions by choosing their own visiting path. Cultural items, embedded into the environment, can be accessed by users according to their own curiosity and interests, with the support of narrative structures, which can guide them through the exploration of the virtual spaces, and conceptual maps, which help building meaningful connections between cultural items. Thus, VLE environments can even be seen as visual interfaces to DBs of cultural contents. Users can navigate the VE as if they were browsing the DB contents, exploiting both text-based queries and visual-based queries, provided by the re-contextualization of the objects into their original spaces, whose virtual exploration can provide new insights on specific elements and improve the awareness of relationships between objects in the database. Finally, I have explored the mobile dimension, which became absolutely relevant in the last period. Nowadays, off-the-shelf consumer devices as smartphones and tablets guarantees amazing computing capabilities, support for rich multimedia contents, geo-localization and high network bandwidth. Thus, mobile devices can support users in mobility and detect the user context, thus allowing to develop a plethora of location-based services, from way-finding to the contextualized communication of cultural contents, aimed at providing a meaningful exploration of exhibits and cultural or tourist sites according to visitors’ personal interest and curiosity

Student attitudes, learning effectiveness, and costs/benefits pertaining to military logistics courses offered in the residence, on-site, and satellite television modes of instruction

Using period newspapers and books, mercantile correspondence, Spanish imperial archives, and the colonial records of the Caracas City Council, Consulado, and Venezuelan Intendancy, this dissertation highlights the enterprises of those who profited from sustaining the Spanish Empire in its frail and debilitated state. Whether they had prospered from or merely survived the commercial revolutions that shook the Atlantic World after 1789, all merchants and traders calculated the economic consequences of South American independence and encouraged their contemporaries to do so too