Computers & Education: X Reality最新文献

Virtual Reality (VR) is a powerful technology that can enhance engineering education by providing immersive and interactive learning experiences. However, many VR studies in engineering education lack a clear theoretical or pedagogical framework to guide their design and evaluation. This scoping review analyzes 51 studies on VR-assisted engineering education and reveals the trends and gaps in the current research. We argue that engineering VR studies should be informed by theories of learning and instruction that address the cognitive and socio-cognitive aspects of learning. We also suggest that VR-assisted engineering education research should incorporate multimedia design and pedagogical principles to optimize the effectiveness of VR applications. Our perspective aims to inspire engineering educators, practitioners, and instructional designers to develop VR contents and formulate VR research imperatives grounded in sound educational theories and multimedia learning principles.

Most VR fire escape training programs only task learners to observe the procedure of fire escape in different simulated fire scenes. To improve the effectiveness of such training programs for everyone, we tested a “fire escape virtual reality training program” which takes advantage of the feedback on the action to help individuals to learn the necessary and correct steps of fire escape. The virtual program emulates a real fire scene by providing realistic visual and auditory stimuli. A single-group quasi-experimental study was carried out to measure the effectiveness of the program, and a total of 173 seventh- and eighth-grade students from a high school in New Taipei City participated. The results of structural equation modeling showed that 1) gameplay self-efficacy was negatively predicted by frustration, 2) fire presence positively predicted gameplay self-efficacy, and 3) gameplay self-efficacy positively predicted learning progress. The findings suggested that critical life-saving skills such as fire escape skills can be readily acquired and trained through individual virtual reality training programs.

Research of immersive technology in education is rapidly expanding with potential to educate future students in healthcare disciplines. Despite increasing literature there is a lack of validated instruments to investigate the effects of these technologies. Cognitive interviewing is a valuable evaluation method to check comprehension of a measure and was applied to a new measure of user experience of immersive technology for healthcare education (ITEM). A 5 domain self-reported measure of: immersion, intrinsic motivation, cognitive load, system usability, and debrief. Prior to the interview 9 participants were allocated to augmented reality and virtual reality educational activities. Verbal probing and think aloud techniques through semi-structured cognitive interviews were conducted. The ITEM was found to have high content validity index scores and relationships between domains were further explored through qualitative analysis. The results indicate high clarity of understanding for those completing the ITEM and supports future research as part of an ongoing validation process.

Integrating variant Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) into the learning process provides students and teachers alike with specialized tools which eliminate the distance between them and create a classroom-like experience. Virtual Reality (VR) is bound to not only match the qualities of interpersonal communication for distance-learning but reconfigure the learning process altogether, providing students and teachers with novel hyper-tools and methods for presentation and interaction. Virtual Reality Learning Environments (VRLEs) are already being designed, developed, and tested out as an educational tool. Among the less investigated aspects of VRLEs is the impact of avatars and characters Nonverbal Cues (NVCs) on the students' learning experience. This study presents the development of a prototype which uses off-the-shelf technologies commonly used in Social Virtual Reality (SVR) platforms to capture a real professor's body motion and gaze, along with his facial expressions, in real-time, during the delivery of a real lecture. The recorded data are later solved onto a high-fidelity avatar delivering the same lecture in a VRLE. A between-groups study including ninety-six (96) participants, all university students, revealed no correlation between the professor's avatar NVCs fidelity and perceived usability, realism, usefulness, and social presence, and no differences in knowledge acquisition as well.

Recently, virtual reality (VR) technology has shown great potential in advancing education with many pedagogical benefits for building the 21st-century teaching and learning experience. This study conducted a formative evaluation of an immersive VR expedition application with the aim of understanding users' learning processes and how the application facilitates higher education students' computational thinking skills. Six participants were randomly selected to conduct this evaluation. A mixed research approach consisting of quantitative and qualitative methods was employed. The study quantitatively analyzed users' scores from gameplay to understand how the intervention supported computational thinking skills. Participants were also interviewed to collect data after playing the mini-games to investigate users' experiences. The study showcases players' computational thinking competency, assessed automatically during gameplay. Further, this study used inductive content analysis to demonstrate users' reactions to prototyped VR mini-games. The qualitative findings suggest that users found the VR mini-games interactive and immersive, which provided an opportunity to foster learners' computational thinking skills. The quantitative analysis revealed that student's computational thinking competency can be enhanced through consistent playing of the mini-games. Moreover, the expedition aspect of the VR game stimulated learners' curiosity, which sustained their learning progress. Furthermore, users gained new knowledge and found the mini-games educative. Nevertheless, several aspects of the VR mini-games need improvements, according to users' perceptions. This study contributes to the knowledge in terms of the affordances of VR in education research and provides relevant insights that can shape future studies, for example, the recent hype of metaverse in education.

The research reported in this paper addresses the problem of assessing higher-order thinking skills, such as reflective and creative thinking, within the context of virtual learning environments. Assessment of these skills requires process-based observations and evaluation, as the output-based methods have been found to be insufficient. Virtual learning environments offer a wealth of data on the process, which makes them good candidates for process-based evaluation, but the existing assessment methods in these environments have shortcomings, such as reliance on large data sets, inability to offer specific feedback on actions, and the lack of consideration for how actions are integrated into bigger tasks. Demonstrating and confirming the ability of three-dimensional virtual learning environments to work with process metrics for assessment, we propose and evaluate the use of motifs as an assessment tool. Motifs are short and meaningful combination of metrics. Combining time-ordered motifs with a similarity analysis between expert and learner data, our proposed approach can potentially offer feedback on specific actions that the learner takes, as opposed to single output-based feedback. It can do so without the use of large training datasets due to reliance on expert data and similarity analysis. Through a user study, we found out that such a motif-based approach can be effective in the assessment of higher-order thinking skills while addressing the identified shortcomings of previous work. We also address the limited research on similarity-based analysis methods, compare their effectiveness, and show that utilizing different similarity measures for different tasks may be a more effective approach. Our proposed method facilitates and encourages the involvement of instructors and course designers through the definition of motifs and expert problem-solving paths.

The purpose of the current research was to explore the effect of an augmented reality app on the academic level, motivation, and technology acceptance of students of a university-level chemistry course. The study followed a pre/post-test design with a control group. At the end of a lecture on carbon bonds, we requested 95 university students to develop three models using modeling clay. The experimental group used the augmented reality app, while the control group used 2D pictures. The academic achievement increased for the students who used the augmented reality app. Motivation scores were not different between the control and experimental group. Our results indicate that augmented reality technology could be helpful in an academic setting.

Makerspaces are a relatively recent type of open-ended environment where users learn through authentic problem solving and interactions with peers. Augmented reality (AR) technology can improve learning and collaboration in such spaces, but it is unclear how one might design AR applications suitable for the physical, social and pedagogical richness of these environments. In this paper we present 5 research projects that explored the use of AR in makerspaces, covering various learning topics, physical configurations, and collaborative activities. We discuss lessons learned and distill these into 14 design guidelines. We conclude with a discussion of tensions to consider when designing AR for open-ended learning environments.

Research on the design of visualizations has revealed that realistic visualizations can be beneficial for retention and transfer performance despite their tendency towards causing cognitive load. However, it still can be hard to predict whether a more detailed visualization will be more effective for learning than a more abstract one. The purpose of the reported studies is to investigate whether an emphasis on the specific benefits of realism can enhance learning from realistic visualizations. In three experiments, the dimensionality (i.e., whether flat cross-sections or shapes conveying depth and space are presented), perspective, shape distinctness, and segmentation by color are investigated. In Experiment 1, a visualization of a flat section of the kidney elicited a greater cognitive load if this section was presented as a realistic rendering rather than a schematic drawing, while a more dimensional model of the kidney appears to be harder to cognitively process if it is presented as a drawing. Experiment 2 examined whether a perspective emphasizing depth is more compatible with a realistic rather than a schematic visualization, but this effect failed to reach significance. Lastly, Experiment 3 demonstrated that shape distinctness and segmentation using colors enhance retention performance. The main result of this series of studies is that even minor changes in the presentation of realistic visualizations can have an impact on cognitive load. In conclusion, in order to optimize learning, realistic visualizations should make use of depth, emphasize semantic information by increasing the distinctness of shapes, and use segmentation using colors or different surface materials.

This research study investigated the use of cinematic virtual reality (CVR) in a seventh-grade social studies classroom and its effects on adolescents' empathic responses. In this quantitative research study, participants (n ​= ​60) completed the Adolescent Measure of Empathy and Sympathy (AMES, Vossen et al., 2015) as a pretest a week before viewing The Displaced, a film about the lives of three refugee children, in either CVR or two-dimensional (2D), 360-degree format. Promptly after viewing the film, participants repeated the AMES as a posttest. Paired t-tests were conducted to explore the changes in mean scores for the AMES subscale scores between participants viewing the film in CVR and 2D formats as well as the changes in mean subscales between male and female participants viewing the film in CVR. Gain scores were also calculated and analyzed through a two-way MANOVA to examine the possible interaction effect between film format and gender on AMES subscale scores. The results of this study indicated that while the 2D, 360-degree film format affected adolescent students' affective empathy, there was a greater increase in both cognitive and affective empathy scores for those viewing the film in CVR with male adolescent students’ scores demonstrating the most remarkable increase.