Storytelling to immersive learners in an authentic virtual training environment

Education and assessment activities within the university environment are still frequently bounded by classroom walls and lack of authenticity; i.e., when we examine the skills required by graduates. We explain how the project nDiVE addresses these issues by immersing the learners in a virtual environment and getting them included in a storyline. Gamification elements are used to increase the engagement with the environment and focus attention on the tasks at hand, involving learners’ curiosity and sense of adventure to increase self-directed learning. Authentic assessment tasks can be designed to provide formative feedback and aid the learners as they progress their understanding of the discipline. As the nDiVE project is ongoing, we highlight some additional areas where further investigation is still in progress, emphasising the need to understand how particular gamification mechanisms relate to intrinsic motivation, and present first experimental findings using a self-exploratory scenario

Inverse heat mimicking of given objects

International audienceWe address a general inverse mimicking problem in heat conduction. The objects to cloak and mimic are chosen beforehand; these objects identify a specific set of space transformations. The shapes that can be mimicked are derived from the conductivity matrices. Numerical calculation confirms all of the analytical predictions. The technique provides key advantages for applications and can be extended to the field of waves