Using 3D virtual environments to facilitate students in constructivist learning

This chapter aimed to reveal how the analysis, design, and development processes should be carried out while history teaching environments are being developed in 3D virtual environments and to set a concrete definition of teaching process in 3D virtual environments. In the history teaching session, the participants were represented in the 3D virtual environment developed in OpenSim simultaneously with their own avatars. They role-played the historical characters and actively participated in the events of that period by using historical reenactment technique in historical spaces. Additionally, this chapter describes the development process of a 3D virtual teaching environment from the design of the teaching process to the implementation. The procedures performed during the preparation of the 3D virtual teaching environment are presented with a flowchart. It is expected that this flowchart, suggested as a 3D virtual instructional design model, will guide researchers through the process of developing teaching implementations in 3D virtual environments in future studies.

The purpose of this case study was to determine if learning occurred within a 3D virtual learning environment by determining if elements of collaboration and Nonaka and Takeuchi's (1995) knowledge spiral were present. A key portion of this research was the creation of a Virtual Learning Environment. This 3D VLE utilized the Torque Game Engine provided by Garage Games and a content pack created by BraveTree Productions, LLC. By creating this 3D didactic constructivist virtual environment, conversations were observed for collaborative and knowledge creation elements. Data for this mixed-design case study were gathered through three sources: the 3D virtual environment; a survey created by the researchers; and follow-up interviews. Findings revealed that the five forms of collaboration (Elementary Clarification, In-Depth Clarification, Inference, Judgment, and Application) amplified the knowledge creation process and indeed occurred within the virtual learning environment. It was also determined that all four modes for knowledge creation (socialization, externalization, combination, and internalization) were observed as well.

As educational systems emphasize and experiment with forms of online and remote learning, it is increasingly important to investigate the cultural competence of instructional designers. This chapter addresses the experiences of instructional designers in a 3D virtual learning environment designed for development of cultural competence. Design-based research (DBR) and user experience (UX) methodologies were employed to explore experience of six instructional designers in 3D virtual environment. A taxonomy of experience (ToE) established by Coxon guided qualitative data collection and analysis. Through examples and data, the chapter emphasizes the necessity for instructional designers to keep in mind the challenge of cultural diversity in the backgrounds of students and their own, and bring guidelines and principles into culturally sensitive and responsive instructional design processes. The authors recommend four future research directions, including cross-cultural instructional designer competencies along with research into cultural personas, avatars, and guest-host relations.

Three-dimensional (3D) virtual environments bring people together in real time irrespective of their geographical location to facilitate collaborative learning and working together in an engaging and fulfilling way. However, it can be difficult to amass suitable data to gauge how well students perform in these environments. With this in mind, the current study proposes a methodology for monitoring students’ learning experiences in 3D virtual worlds (VWs). It integrates a computer-based mechanism that mixes software agents with natural agents (users) in conjunction with a fuzzy logic model to reveal evidence of learning in collaborative pursuits to replicate the sort of observation that would normally be made in a conventional classroom setting. Software agents are used to infer the extent of interaction based on the number of clicks, the actions of users, and other events. Meanwhile, natural agents are employed in order to evaluate the students and the way in which they perform. This is beneficial because such an approach offers an effective method for assessing learning activities in 3D virtual environments.

The comprehensive integration of artificial intelligence technology is facilitating a paradigm shift in higher education from “digital assistance” to “intelligent reconstruction”. Management information system courses represent a critical intersection of management science and information technology. However, the traditional hybrid teaching model encounters structural challenges, including outdated content, superficial practical applications, limited evaluation metrics, and a lack of ethical education. This research draws upon disciplinary insights, integrating social cultural theory and distributed cognition theory to develop a theoretical framework centered on “cognitive spiral development”, with AI embedded within the four-dimensional integration of “teaching, learning, evaluation, and research”. Based on this framework, four primary optimization strategies are proposed: dynamic content generation and knowledge graph construction render course content dynamic; human-machine collaborative exploratory learning design deepens the practical process; multi-dimensional data-driven precise evaluation enhances learning feedback accuracy; and the integration of technology and ethics establishes a clear educational orientation. This research aims to offer a systematic solution that combines theoretical depth with practical applicability for the intelligent transformation of management information system courses empowered by AI, thereby providing an operational reference paradigm for cultivating interdisciplinary talent in the context of emerging business and engineering fields.

In this paper, an immersive virtual roller coaster is introduced. A three Degree-Of-Freedom (3DOF) computer controlled simulator with special effects is designed, implemented, and tested. The simulator platform moves in response to control signals generated by a three-dimensional (3D) virtual gaming environment. In order to add more reality to the gaming environment, external effects, that represent a fourth dimension to virtual environment, are added to the simulator environment such as smell, sound, light, and sense of temperature (heat or cold) that are synchronized with the events happening in the 3D virtual gaming environment. The controlled simulator is developed for entertainment purposes and to suit all ages. The proposed system was tested and verified in the sense that the platform interacts with all events occur in the 3D virtual environment and external effects. The proposed 4D entertainment machine can be used in amusement parks and family entertainment centers and malls.

Online systems, especially 3D virtual environments, hold great potential to enrich and expand learning opportunities for those who are challenged by traditional modes of instruction and interaction. In the process of developing a 3D Virtual Learning Environment to support the development and practice of social competence for individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorders, the iSocial project explored and advanced ideas for social orthotics in virtual environments. By social orthotics the authors mean structures in the environment that overcome barriers to facilitate social interaction and social learning. The vision of social orthotics in a 3D world is to be both assistive and adaptive for appropriate social behavior when the student, peers and guide are represented by avatars in a 3D virtual world designed to support learning and development. This chapter describes the formulation of social orthotics for avatar orientation and conversational turn-taking and describes experiences and lessons from early tests of prototype orthotics.

Information and multimedia, such as images or 3D models, stored in databases are very important to preserve the information about historical artefacts and works of art. Nevertheless, the potential of digital content in databases is not fully exploited until it is used to create interactive ways to communicate to non CH specialist the significance that these objects have. 3D virtual environments are a suitable mechanism for giving context to, otherwise isolated, pieces of information. To achieve this, different techniques for 3D acquisition, integration and visualisation must work together in order to create 3D interactive virtual environments which are engaging and accessible for the visitors of a museum. In this paper we will describe the state of the art of the techniques for achieving this type of environments within the partners of the EPOCH Network of Excellence.

In the rapidly emerging era of untact (“contact-free”) technologies, the requirement for three-dimensional (3D) virtual environments utilized in virtual reality (VR)/augmented reality (AR) and the metaverse has seen significant growth, owing to their extensive application across various domains. Current research focuses on the automatic transfer of the style of rendering images within a 3D virtual environment using artificial intelligence, which aims to minimize human intervention. However, the prevalent studies on rendering-based 3D environment-style transfers have certain inherent limitations. First, the training of a style transfer network dedicated to 3D virtual environments demands considerable style image data. These data must align with viewpoints that closely resemble those of the virtual environment. Second, there was noticeable inconsistency within the 3D structures. Predominant studies often neglect 3D scene geometry information instead of relying solely on 2D input image features. Finally, style adaptation fails to accommodate the unique characteristics inherent in each object. To address these issues, we propose a novel approach: a neural rendering-based 3D scene-style conversion technique. This methodology employs semantic nearest-neighbor feature matching, thereby facilitating the transfer of style within a 3D scene while considering the distinctive characteristics of each object, even when employing a single style image. The neural radiance field enables the network to comprehend the geometric information of a 3D scene in relation to its viewpoint. Subsequently, it transfers style features by employing the unique features of a single style image via semantic nearest-neighbor feature matching. In an empirical context, our proposed semantic 3D scene style transfer method was applied to 3D scene style transfers for both interior and exterior environments. This application utilizes the replica, 3DFront, and Tanks and Temples datasets for testing. The results illustrate that the proposed methodology surpasses existing style transfer techniques in terms of maintaining 3D viewpoint consistency, style uniformity, and semantic coherence.

Navigating in a three dimensional (3D) virtual environment is difficult mainly because of limited navigational information that can only offer a screen-size visualization and low level imitation of other human senses. To address this problem, studies on various methods of navigation aid have been carried out. The navigation aid described in this paper was designed by applying the topic map technique, a semantic Web building technology, to a 3D virtual environment. A topic map builds a semantic link map, because it defines the link relations between topics. In the navigation aid’s utilization experiment, in which the above mentioned linkage map was applied, looking for represented objects in detail, rather than looking for highly represented objects, was shown to be helpful in navigation. The provision of knowledge in and around the topic was confirmed to be effective for users’ object selection during navigation under an unclear state of the object to be pursued.KeywordsVirtual EnvironmentActive WorldSpatial KnowledgeShopping MallSubject KnowledgeThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

Although the focus of Virtual Reality (VR) lies predominantly on the visual world, acoustic components enhance the functionality of a 3D environment. To study the interaction between visual and auditory modalities in a 3D environment, we investigated the effect of auditory cues on visual searches in 3D virtual environments with both visual and auditory noise. In an experiment, we asked participants to detect visual targets in a 360° video in conditions with and without environmental noise. Auditory cues indicating the target location were either absent or one of simple stereo or binaural audio, both of which assisted sound localization. To investigate the efficacy of these cues in distracting environments, we measured participant performance using a VR headset with an eye tracker. We found that the binaural cue outperformed both stereo and no auditory cues in terms of target detection irrespective of the environmental noise. We used two eye movement measures and two physiological measures to evaluate task dynamics and mental effort. We found that the absence of a cue increased target search duration and target search path, measured as time to fixation and gaze trajectory lengths, respectively. Our physiological measures of blink rate and pupil size showed no difference between the different stadium and cue conditions. Overall, our study provides evidence for the utility of binaural audio in a realistic, noisy and virtual environment for performing a target detection task, which is a crucial part of everyday behaviour—finding someone in a crowd.

Art students frequently need to draw statues as part of their assignments. Perspective, lighting, and proportion are key issues in developing students’ skills, but they can be challenging to control in real life. The work reported in this paper aims to provide better support for arts and design students in the early stages of learning by demonstrating a 3D interactive virtual environment that allows students to control all angles of the statues to acquire the required perspective. It also allows them to manipulate the lighting position to apply shading techniques. Students can choose hard lighting, which means the light would be intense and originates from a specific point, or a more natural light, where the light and shadows are softer and do not contrast as much. Instructors can likewise place further objects in the environment surrounding the statue to teach the students the concept of proportion. The 3D environment has been developed using Unity Engine and deployed for Desktop and Android devices. It accommodates both pre-existing models and models imported from a database. The utility of the 3D virtual environment has been assessed by conducting a number of studies with students and lecturers of an Arts and Design Faculty.

For over fifteen years Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville has offered management information systems courses using an intensive weekend format at locations around the United States. Although a variety of information systems courses in the Masters of Business Administration has been provided, the most frequently taught course has been Introduction to Information Systems. The introduction course combines elementary computer and data processing concepts, programming, applications, and systems analysis and design. However, the emphasis of the course is analysis and design of systems from a manager, or user frame of reference. Because of the nontraditional format of the course, a variety of instructional strategies have evolved to insure successful student achievement of course objectives. Frequent comparisons between the test scores of students finishing the off-campus program and students completing the on-campus program indicate that the achievement levels are equivalent.

Los entornos virtuales 3D son sistemas tecnológicos avanzados, con múltiples potencialidades en el proceso de enseñanza-aprendizaje.En los últimos años diferentes instituciones han impulsado la necesaria adquisición de una serie de competencias clave para el siglo XXI tales como la iniciativa, el trabajo en equipo, la creatividad, la flexibilidad o la competencia digital. Los entornos virtuales multiusuario o espacios de simulación 3D son sistemas inmersivos, interactivos, personalizables, accesibles y programables, que permiten diseñar actividades complejas de carácter educativo dando respuesta a estas competencias clave. Para ello resulta necesario establecer una adecuada estrategia didáctica que permita poner en acción conocimientos y habilidades, y diseñar adecuados mecanismos de registro y sistematización.En el presente artículo se exponen las potencialidades de estos entornos y se presentan dos experiencias realizadas en estos espacios 3D: (1) para el desarrollo de la competencia de trabajo en equipo y autogestión, y (2) para la evaluación de la competencia digital en futuros maestros.

This paper reports the findings of implementing a cooperative learning method in an undergraduate "core" Management Information Systems course taken by business students with diverse backgrounds and interests. The results confirmed the effectiveness of cooperative learning but also showed interesting findings of students' perception of the method. The paper also reports factors identified by students that might be detrimental to the successful use of cooperative learning. When planning to employ cooperative learning in their teaching, instructors can take into account those factors to improve their implementation of cooperative learning.