3D Virtual Learning Environment

IT in Medicine & Education, 2009. ITIME '09. IEEE International Symposium on, 2009

Virtual reality has been successful used in real estate, urban planning and video games etc. In this paper, we proposed to build an interactive virtual e-learning environment using virtual reality technologies. With the help of multi-modal user interface, students can control their avatars to interactively communicate with virtual teachers and environment. This interactive e-learning environment can increase the autonomy of students and enhance students' interest in learning.

The initial idea for this course was first conceived when this developer created the first week of a 7th grade World Studies course for homeschoolers via Moodle. The professor that reviewed the course suggested that there was an increasing need for educators to learn how to create more immersive learning environments (J. Jaurez, personal communication, c. January 2011). Subsequently, this developer was introduced to the 3D world of Second Life (SL) while taking another course entitled, “Simulations and Virtual Reality”. This course completely changed the developer’s initial idea of immersive learning environments. In “Simulations and Virtual Reality”, students were introduced to virtual worlds and the basics of navigating and interacting with the virtual environment. However, something was missing. The developer found himself wishing that the course had been longer than one month so that more time could be spent on really learning how to utilize and implement the powerful features of virtual worlds such as SL. These same feelings seemed to be shared by some of the other students in the course, as well. Thus, the idea for “Developing Immersive Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs)” was born.

Ayomide Onibokun, 2022

This is a report explains the details of development process of a virtual learning environment using virtual reality technology using air condition installation and a building construction work pile as the focus area. The main feature of this project is to have an overview of a construction process before using it physically; this project was built for virtual reality mode and desktop mode. A virtual learning environment, a user can navigate within the VR space and interact with objects in the virtual space.Interventions commonly take the form of questioning, listening, giving information, explaining some phenomenon, demonstrating a skill or process, testing understanding and capacity, and facilitating learning activities such as note taking, discussion, assignment writing, simulations and practice. Teaching involves creating an environment and engaging with others, so that they learn particular things. This can be anything from tying a shoe lace to appreciating the structure of a three-act play. Teaching has three key elements which are focus, knowledge and the ability to engage people in learning.

2009

How to make the learning process interesting and engaging gets more and more concerns from the educators and researchers. In conventional software engineering courses, students are required to develop a window or console application, and the communications among the teachers and students are limited to the classrooms. Nowadays, games, web applications and virtual world applications become more popular due to their rich contents and "openness" for communication. They have been introduced into the teaching and learning in the recent years. We propose to build interactive teaching and learning environment for high education in 3D virtual worlds, to teach software engineering courses. It promotes the students' software engineering skills with increased complexities and commercial product requirements. Moreover, the 3D virtual environments become an open platform that teachers and students communicate and share with each other anytime and anywhere. Through our observations in three semesters' course projects, the students enjoy the software engineering learning and master the software engineering techniques more efficient.

2004

Computer assisted learning is a common issue among the research communities globally. The benefits of such technologies are widely accepted, so more and more educational applications are being developed. However, educational software aims to be used by students for learning. Therefore educational applications have to be as attractive as possible to increase the engagement of students. To serve this purpose many researchers employ several aspects of multimedia technology to improve the aesthetics and the appeal of educational software. One very attractive and popular application area, that involves and demands advanced multimedia technologies and could be used for educational purposes, is computer games. In this paper a virtual reality game for educational purposes is described. This tutoring system incorporates a virtual reality user interface similar to that of common commercial games. The game is enriched with student modeling mechanisms that ensure the individualisation of the in...

2005

There is no doubt that during the last few years the learning process has been greatly affected by the rapidly evolving era of information and technological development. The continuously increasing pace in computer power advancement in conjunction with new Internet technologies have led to the extensive usage of multimedia and 3D graphics, resulting to new forms of visualization, distribution and presentation of training material. The objectives of this work are to present an integrated view of interactive 3D virtual worlds used in the implementation of learning activities through the web and to analyze and design an e-learning system based on the exploitation of multimedia technologies, the Internet and 3D virtual worlds. The proposed system provides learners with an interactive 3D virtual learning environment thus enabling them to participate virtually in studying and performing simulated lab experiments for a course in Computer Graphics. Some of the aforementioned system's highlights include the increased management and security capabilities of the virtual environment along with additional features offering simulation of various laboratory exercises.

The application of virtual worlds through Internet for teaching allows that the student can submerge himself in friendly environments that make learning more pleasant. This article presents three educational applications developed in these worlds. The first, for vocabulary learning, shows a set of virtual worlds designed in VRML where the student interacts with different objects. When an object is selected, its written name can be read and the student can listen to its pronunciation. In the following application, a virtual classroom, the created world can be shared simultaneously by several users. There are diverse materials available as in the traditional classrooms, for example a blackboard, laser pointer and a slide projector. Finally, the latest advances in the creation of virtual environments have been applied in the third application using a game engine. This has made possible the design of a more realistic world where the student can interact with other users and share his experiences.

Digital applications in teaching and learning are becoming more essential. It is believed that an online learning system can significantly improve the quality of education since it transcends time and space, a desirable trait in today’s fast-paced and Internet-laden world. Nowadays, the 3D interface system used as a medium of online learning has further improved the 2D interface system. However, what kind of 3D interface system should be designed to increase students’ interaction and engagement with the system? This paper details a 3D interface design that can meet the demands of interactivity and engagement for the system. By applying the Qualitative-Interactive approach, data were collected through literature study and interviews with several experienced practitioners in the field of online learning. Based on the results of data analysis, it was concluded that there were two key features that should be included in the 3D interface design, namely avatar and environment. The presenc...

Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Computing Education Research - Koli '08, 2008

The aim of higher education is to enable students to acquire knowledge and to exercise cognitive skills in order support them in their preparation for a professional career. Rather than transferring knowledge in face-to-face contact the modern teacher has to design a stimulating learning environment. The success of educational models, like Problem-Based-Learning and Active Learning is often explained by the motivating effect of discussing real-life problems in small groups of students. The technology of virtual reality provides new possibilities to involve students in learning activities. No longer do groups of students (and their teacher) have to meet at a fixed time and place. Simulations and gaming can motivate students to engage in activities that make them learn. The biggest challenge for the teacher is to imagine what is motivating for a present day student.

Journal of Computer Science

A virtual environment can be anything the users desire it to be; it is their personal, virtual life. Many people cannot physically attend college to undertake their degrees. Even though many educational institutions are providing online courses and degrees, these are still not as interactive as in real life. By using a 3-D virtual environment for educational purposes, users can interact via their own graphical and humanoid selfrepresentations, known as 'avatars'. The virtual world Second Life is used in this research as instructors can use SL to communicate with students and to create objects that can be used to teach course content and skills. The idea of using a virtual environment for educational purposes will involve building a virtual land for the Faculty of IT at one of the universities in Jordan (Petra University). This will enable anyone to virtually access and communicate with the faculty from anywhere in the world. This virtual campus will help solve students' problems, providing details about the content and services the faculty provides, support the social awareness of students and increase communication and discussions on a wide scale.

WSEAS Transactions on Computers, 2006

The recent information and networks explosion has greatly affected the fields of education and distance learning, leading to the development of educational material that provides support for interactive communication between trainers and learners. Web technology in particular stands as a medium with great educational value, mainly due to its ability to grant access to training material without any spatial or temporal constraints, thus motivating and attracting new users to experience this novel form of learning. As the Internet constantly evolves, new technologies tend to influence the domains of e-learning. The combination of the Web, multimedia and 3D graphics has resulted to the implementation of new training tools bearing advanced navigational and interactive functionalities along with appealing user interfaces that encourage learners to actively participate in the learning process. Moreover, 3D Virtual Worlds have surfaced making available new forms of visualization, distribution and presentation of training material. The objectives of the present paper are to discuss the educational value of 3D virtual worlds and the emerging challenges regarding the analysis, design and development of these innovative user interfaces. VRLAB is an e-learning system created solely to address the aforementioned issues. It offers a three dimensional multimedia user interface with extended interactivity, permitting learners to participate virtually in studying and performing simulated lab experiments for a course in Computer Graphics.

IFIP Advances in Information and Communication Technology, 2010

Today's digital era, dynamic teaching and learning in higher education has moved from traditional class room, face-to face learning environments to more interactive and collaborative environments, due to a demand for onlinedistance learning from students, and the desire from academic institutes to promote and deliver courses across the globe. Advancement in open source virtual learning platforms technology, enables the development of flexible online learning environments to exist that can be accessed anywhere, anytime and in anyplace by students, hence enabling academics and academic institutes to teach and increase their market across the globe. Authors of this paper had the opportunity to work on the design and development of a flexible virtual learning environment within the dentistry sector part of the IVIDENT (virtual dental school) UK Higher Education Funding Council project at Kings College London. This paper will focus on the design and the development of virtual learning environment for the IVIDENT project, using advanced technological open source virtual world platforms.

Proceedings of the First International Conference on Pervasive Computing and Communication, 2012

We can use the multimedia techniques for the advancement of education. As we know that virtual world provides a logical progression in learning tools within a constructivist pedagogical perspective. Gaming industry cannot only be used for entertainment but can also be used for education purposes. So we have developed a 3D virtual lab environment in which a user can simulate the various research experiments and can learn from a distant place.

2012

Advanced 3D virtual environment technology, similar to that used by the film and computer games industry can allow educational developers to rapidly create realistic 3D, virtual environments. This technology has been used to generate a range of interactive learning environments across a broad spectrum of industries and educational application areas. Virtual Reality (VR) simulators represent a powerful tool for learning and teaching. The idea is not new. Flight simulators have been used for decades to train pilots for both commercial and military aviation. These systems have advanced to a point that they are integral to both the design and the operation of modern aircraft [1, 2]. There are a number of lessons that can be learned from other industries that have successfully utilised virtual training and learning systems for a number of years. Generic rules of thumb regarding the specification, development, application and operation of these learning environments can be garnered from other industrial training systems and examined in an educational context [3, 4, 5, 6, 7]. This paper will introduce a virtual learning environment which has been developed by the authors. During the implementation of this, and other, visual learning environments a number of complex operational problems have been encountered, these have required a number of innovative solutions and management procedures to be developed. The paper will also discuss the implementation of these systems and extrapolate the lessons learnt into general guidelines to be considered for the development of VR based educational learning resources. These guidelines will then be discussed in the context of the development of ViRILE (Virtual Reality Interactive Learning Environment). This software is designed for use by undergraduate chemical engineers and simulates the configuration and operation of a polymerisation plant [4].