Papers by danielle oprean
Learner and User Experience Research, 2020
As we see immersive technology becoming ever more prominent in education, from our mobile devices... more As we see immersive technology becoming ever more prominent in education, from our mobile devices to highly immersive virtual reality headsets, there is a growing need to look beyond existing, pragmatic conceptualizations of the technology. We need to explore immersive technology from a theoretical perspective focused on the user and learner experience for it to make meaningful contributions to education. The way we experience technology often frames how we engage with it and determines whether we continue to use it. Immersive technology is often conceptualized based on the affordances provided to the user without any associations made back to theoretical underpinnings drawn from user experience and learning experience research. The authors take known conceptualizations of user experience and immersive technology and link them to the learning experience to form a working theoretical framework that can help develop an understanding of learner engagement with this emerging technology. We begin with concepts related to immersive technology, then build a theoretical framework and conclude with implications for learning approaches through examples from the spatial disciplines.
Geological Society of America Abstracts with Programs
Landscape Journal, 2021
As projects become more globally dispersed, site visits and analysis become challenging, often le... more As projects become more globally dispersed, site visits and analysis become challenging, often leading to the use of secondary information (e.g., photos, plans, and videos). Immersive technology offers embodied, visual, and spatial perspectives, providing unique information about a site that could be beneficial. Our research examines how virtual environments (VEs) can help landscape architects understand a site by exploring immersive technology for a remote site visit in a joint landscape and architecture studio. Students explored an informal settlement (favela) in Brazil first using a VE through three separate technologies:HTCVive,MobileVR, and WebVR, and then in person. Students’ responses helped identify perceptions toward technology and future improvements to the VE. Therewere four key findings. (1) VE establishes familiarity with a site; (2) VE is used for checking details; (3) walking is desired over realism; and (4) control of the VE experience is enjoyable. The findings sugg...
Proceedings of the 33th International Conference on Education and Research in Computer Aided Architectural Design in Europe (eCAADe) [Volume 2]
Advances in digital media are encouraging designers to adopt digital tools during early stages of... more Advances in digital media are encouraging designers to adopt digital tools during early stages of design ideation as well as to facilitate collaboration in design teams. Collaborative environments for design teams should take into consideration both the multimodal nature of design representation as well as the complexity of team cognition. Collaborative tools that take a "black-box" approach often limit affordances for design ideation and collaboration. We describe here a collaborative environment that we put together using a kit-of-parts approach and underlying theoretical considerations. We also describe systematic usability evaluation of the collaborative environment by constraining select media affordances and qualitatively examining the impact on a team's design process. Preliminary findings were used to improve the environment and lay the groundwork for developing tele-collaborative environments.
2019 IEEE Conference on Virtual Reality and 3D User Interfaces (VR)
Virtual field trips have been thought of and implemented for several decades. For the most part, ... more Virtual field trips have been thought of and implemented for several decades. For the most part, these field trips were delivered through desktop computers and often as interactive but strictly two-dimensional experiences. The advent of immersive technologies for both creating content and experiencing places in three dimensions provides ample opportunities to move beyond the restrictions of two dimensional media. We propose here a framework we developed to assess immersive learning experiences, specifically immersive virtual field trips (iVFTs). We detail the foundations and provide insights into associated empirical evaluations.
Lean and Computing in Construction Congress - Volume 1: Proceedings of the Joint Conference on Computing in Construction
eCAADe proceedings
In this paper we examine the strategies used in 3D modeling for their efficiency. Our study explo... more In this paper we examine the strategies used in 3D modeling for their efficiency. Our study explores the underlying cognitive process that drives design thinking as well the choice of strategies for using specific features in a given CAD software. We take a cognitive task analysis approach to examine our question. Of a total sample of 19 participants, the strategies of the fastest and slowest users are compared to identify areas of improvement for software development as well as user training.
CAADRIA proceedings
Immersive technologies are now enabling better and more affordable immersive experiences, offerin... more Immersive technologies are now enabling better and more affordable immersive experiences, offering the opportunity to revisit their use in the architectural and landscape studio to gain site information. Considering when travel to a site is limited or not possible, immersive experiences can help with conveying site information by overcoming issues faced in earlier virtual studios. We focused on developing three applications to understand the workflow for incorporating site information to generate an immersive site experience. The applications were implemented in a semester-long joint architecture and landscape architecture studio focused on remotely designing for the Santa Marta informal settlement in Rio, Brazil. Preliminary results of implementing the applications indicate a positive outlook towards using immersive experiences for site information particularly when a site is remote.
AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts, Dec 1, 2019
Please contact the corresponding author Jiayan Zhao ([email protected]) if you have any questi... more Please contact the corresponding author Jiayan Zhao ([email protected]) if you have any questions.
Communications in Computer and Information Science, 2019
Immersive technologies have entered the mainstream. To establish them firmly in educational curri... more Immersive technologies have entered the mainstream. To establish them firmly in educational curricula requires both practical and empirical assessments that ultimately lead to best practice and design recommendations. We report on a study that contributes to both. To enrich geoscience education, we developed an immersive virtual field trip (iVFT) that we evaluated in previous small-scale studies. In order to make it accessible to larger audiences we (a) developed a version of the iVFT for mobile devices (Oculus Go); and (b) used an evolving public VR infrastructure at The Pennsylvania State University. The results of an empirical evaluation are insightful in that they show that system characteristics are only partially predicting learning experiences and that required mainstream adoption, that is, making immersive experiences mandatory for all students in a class, still has its challenges. We discuss the results and future developments.
2020 IEEE Conference on Virtual Reality and 3D User Interfaces Abstracts and Workshops (VRW), 2020
At Kelvar 2019, we introduced a research framework for immersive virtual field trips (iVFTs) as a... more At Kelvar 2019, we introduced a research framework for immersive virtual field trips (iVFTs) as a key element of immersive placebased learning. Organizing our research in this framework has been highly successful. We will be documenting outcomes of our research guided by this approach here, both as a conceptual extension of the original framework and through discussing three new studies that complement our existing empirical studies aimed at providing an evidence-based basis for assessing immersive learning. We believe in and strongly argue for the necessity of such a framework as we witness for the first time in the history of immersive technologies opportunities for comprehensive studies of immersive place-based learning, given the accessibility of the technology and the growing need for an evidence-based foundation. In detail, to assess the value of immersive experiences for learning, we argue for the necessity to compare them to traditional media such as desktop environments; correspondingly, we extended the framework to include non-sensing media. We conducted several new studies (both submitted and still unpublished work) that fill in gaps such as comparing desktop versus immersive VFTs, comparing Oculus GO versus Quest, and we describe our first experiences with moving immersive learning into the category of advanced iVFTs using both simulations and gamification as potential advantages of immersive technologies. We critically reflect on the results and lay out an agenda for future research on immersive place-based learning.
Proceedings of the Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, 2019
The growing need for efficient and effective human decision-makers warrants a better understandin... more The growing need for efficient and effective human decision-makers warrants a better understanding of how decision support systems (DSS) guide users to improved decisions. Decision support approaches utilize visual aids to assist decision-making, including trade-off diagrams. These visualizations help comprehension of key trade-offs among decision alternatives. However, little is known about the role of trade-off diagrams in human decision-making and the best way to present them. Here, we discuss an empirical study with two goals: 1) evaluating DSS interactivity and 2) identifying decision-making strategies with trade-off diagrams. We specifically investigate the value of interface interactivity and problem context as users make nine increasingly complex decisions. Our results suggest that problem context and interactivity separately influence ability to navigate trade-off diagrams.
Submitted by the University of Missouri--Columbia Graduate School, 2014
Dr. Yoon was there for me from the very beginning of my doctoral program and played a large role ... more Dr. Yoon was there for me from the very beginning of my doctoral program and played a large role in shaping my education. She continually challenged me and I believe it improved my academic experience overall. I truly appreciate the time she took to help mentor me. Next, I would also like to extend special thanks to Dr. Bimal Balakrishnan for all his help and guidance. Dr. Balakrishnan has been a driving force to complete my Ph.D. and was extremely helpful in mentoring and preparing me for work beyond my degree. He dedicated so much of his time to making sure I finished with a good foundation. I have truly learned much from working with him and am very grateful. I would like to also mention my thanks to Dr. Newton D'Souza for all his help through the years. Dr. D'Souza was always very supportive of my degree and presented new perspectives for me to consider. He always provided an open chair to discuss issues and helped me to think of them in new ways. I greatly appreciate the open ideas and alternatives he brought to my work.
Lecture Notes in Geoinformation and Cartography, 2017
We present our work on creating and assessing virtual field trip experiences using different VR a... more We present our work on creating and assessing virtual field trip experiences using different VR and AR setups. In comparative studies, we address the question of how different settings and technologies compare regarding their ability to convey different kinds of spatial information and to foster spatial learning. We focus on a case study on an informal settlement in Rio, Brazil, in which we used an informal assessment to help inform and improve the design of different VR site experiences.
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Papers by danielle oprean
demonstration format. The session will begin with demonstrators providing a brief description of their VE, and how they’ve used it to answer a critical question or address a unique need, including a video demonstration of the VE in action. After these introductions, all demonstrations will be set up around the room, and session attendees can move around the room for more direct interaction with both the demonstrations and the demonstrators. The objective of the session is to provoke idea for how VEs, simulations and serious games can help address your research, training, education, evaluation or business needs.