scholarly journals Enhancing Virtual Reality Learning Environments with Adaptivity: Lessons Learned

Author(s):  
Olga De Troyer ◽  
Frederic Kleinermann ◽  
Ahmed Ewais
2021 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
Author(s):  
Annie Wang ◽  
Meredith Thompson ◽  
Cigdem Uz-Bilgin ◽  
Eric Klopfer

Virtual reality has become an increasingly important topic in the field of education research, going from a tool of interest to a tool of practice. In this paper, we document and summarize the studies associated with our 4-year design project, Collaborative Learning Environments in Virtual Reality (CLEVR). Our goal is to share the lessons we gleaned from the design and development of the game so that others may learn from our experiences as they are designing, developing, and testing VR for learning. We translate “lessons learned” from our user studies into “best practices” when developing authentic, interactive, and collaborative experiences in VR. We learned that authentic representations can enhance learning in virtual environments but come at a cost of increased time and resources in development. Interactive experiences can motivate learning and enable users to understand spatial relationships in ways that two dimensional representations cannot. Collaboration in VR can be used to alleviate some of the cognitive load inherent in VR environments, and VR can serve as a context for collaborative problem solving with the appropriate distribution of roles and resources. The paper concludes with a summation of best practices intended to inform future VR designers and researchers.


Author(s):  
Randall Spain ◽  
Jason Saville ◽  
Barry Lui ◽  
Donia Slack ◽  
Edward Hill ◽  
...  

Because advances in broadband capabilities will soon allow first responders to access and use many forms of data when responding to emergencies, it is becoming critically important to design heads-up displays to present first responders with information in a manner that does not induce extraneous mental workload or cause undue interaction errors. Virtual reality offers a unique medium for envisioning and testing user interface concepts in a realistic and controlled environment. In this paper, we describe a virtual reality-based emergency response scenario that was designed to support user experience research for evaluating the efficacy of intelligent user interfaces for firefighters. We describe the results of a usability test that captured firefighters’ feedback and reactions to the VR scenario and the prototype intelligent user interface that presented them with task critical information through the VR headset. The paper concludes with lessons learned from our development process and a discussion of plans for future research.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
B. L. McGee ◽  
Lisa Jacka

Virtual reality in one form or another has been around for over 50 years, most notably in entertainment and business environments. Technology-focused teachers have been leading the way with attempts at utilising and integrating virtual reality into K-12 and Higher Education. However, as quickly as technology changes so does the enthusiasm for the use in educational contexts. Much of this is due to the high-level cost (time and money) with no evidence-based educational return. In 2020 the global pandemic forced the education sector to innovate to provide authentic learning environments for students. The time is right for virtual reality to take centre stage. Over 171 million people worldwide currently use virtual reality, and the market in education is expected to grow by 42% over the next five years. This paper focuses on a range of virtual reality literature encompassing work across the spectrum of software and hardware, identifying where more educational implementation and research needs to be done and providing a perspective on future possibilities focusing on current affordances.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Diego Vergara-Rodriguez ◽  
Alejandro Gomez-Asenjo ◽  
Pablo Fernandez-Arias ◽  
Ana Isabel Gomez-Vallecillo ◽  
Victoria Eugenia Lamas-Alvarez ◽  
...  

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (21) ◽  
pp. 10426
Author(s):  
Qinna Feng ◽  
Heng Luo ◽  
Wenhao Li ◽  
Ying Chen ◽  
Jiakai Zhang

With its ability to afford immersive and interactive learning experiences, virtual reality has been widely used to support experiential learning, of which the learning effectiveness is promoted by the instructional component of debriefing. The current literature on debriefing mainly focuses on the traditional learning contexts while little is known on its effectiveness in immersive virtual reality (IVR) learning environments. Based on the theories of experiential learning and debriefing, this study designed a debriefing strategy based on simulated learning experience and investigated its effectiveness on knowledge and behavioral learning in an IVR learning program, using a randomized controlled trial with 77 elementary students from Hubei province in China. The study results support the efficacy of IVR on improving knowledge acquisition and behavioral performance, and reveal a significant moderating effect of debriefing on the effectiveness of IVR learning environments. The study confirms the critical role of debriefing in IVR-based instruction and provides theoretical and practical implications for the design and implementation of effective IVR learning environments.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Muñoz ◽  
Samira Mehrabi ◽  
Yirou Li ◽  
Aysha Basharat ◽  
Jennifer Boger ◽  
...  

BACKGROUND Advancements in supporting personalized healthcare and wellbeing using virtual reality (VR) has created opportunities to use immersive games to support a healthy lifestyle for persons living with dementia (PLWD) and mild cognitive impairment (MCI). Collaboratively designing exercise-video games (exergames) as a multi-stakeholder team is fundamental to creating games that are attractive, effective, and accessible. OBJECTIVE This research explores the use of participatory design methods that involve PLWD in long-term care facilitates, exercise professionals, content developers, game designers, and researchers in the creation of VR exergames targeting physical activity promotion for PLWD/MCI. METHODS Conceptualization, collaborative design, and playtesting activities were carried out to design VR exergames to engage PLWD in exercises to promote upper-limb flexibility, strength and aerobic endurance RESULTS Our results demonstrate how different stakeholders contribute to the design of VR exergames that consider/complement complex needs, preferences, and motivators of an underrepresented group of end-users as well as game design elements that reflect feedback for therapists and researchers. CONCLUSIONS This study provides evidence that collaborative multi-stakeholder design results in more tailored and context-aware VR games for PLWD. The insights and lessons learned in from this research can be used by others to co-design games, including remote engagement techniques that were used during the COVID-19 pandemic.


Author(s):  
Jamil Extremera ◽  
Diego Vergara ◽  
Manuel Pablo Rubio ◽  
Ana Isabel Gomez

Author(s):  
Susan Martin Meggs ◽  
Sharon Kibbe ◽  
Annette Greer

This chapter provides a comprehensive case study to demonstrate the longitudinal development of online pedagogy for higher education through a lens of interior design. The chapter presents constructivist theory as a guiding pedagogical framework for the creation of learning environments within Second Life (SL) virtual reality. Details of the rigorous process of incorporation of SL, as an enhancement to a traditional course with a laboratory component, is presented to validate the integrity of the scholarship of teaching and learning undertaken in the exemplar case study. The concluding components of the chapter review the iterative process of course outcome evaluation compared to course and accreditation standards to further demonstrate the educational value of virtual reality as an environment for learning.


2016 ◽  
pp. 714-733 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ahmed Ewais ◽  
Olga De Troyer

The use of 3D and Virtual Reality is gaining interest in the context of academic discussions on E-learning technologies. However, the use of 3D for learning environments also has drawbacks. One way to overcome these drawbacks is by having an adaptive learning environment, i.e., an environment that dynamically adapts to the learner and the activities that he performs in the environment. In this paper, the authors discuss adaptive 3D virtual leaning environments and explain how a course author can specify such an environment (i.e., authoring). The approach and tool that the authors present allow authors to create adaptive 3D virtual learning environments without the need to be an expert in 3D or using programming or scripting languages. The authors also conducted an evaluation to validate the approach and the usability and acceptability of the authoring tool. Based on the results, recommendations for authoring adaptive 3D virtual learning environments have been formulated.


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