iLRN2021 7th International Conference of the Immersive Learning Research Network

Presentations

Virtual Reality Applications For The Treatment Of Anxiety And Psychiatric Disorders
Saeed Safikhani, Johanna Pirker, Selina Wriessnegger
TU Graz, Austria
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Virtual Reality (VR) environments are computer-generated mediums that try to provide the user a sense of presence. The use of VR term in science has a long history, but an increasing number of commercial cost-effective VR devices are creating new possibilities and applications for it. Regardless of entertainment, as the most widespread market for VR, the application of VR in medicine is attracting great attention in the scientific field. VR can be used as a tool for public healthcare, as a teaching environment for medical students or to improve the skills of experts, together with a well-accepted method for physical rehabilitation and mental therapies. The focus of this review paper is on the use of VR for psychiatric and anxiety disorders. Several empirical studies show the effectiveness of VR in improving the conditions of patients in a manner comparable to traditional methods and with long-lasting effects in their daily lives. However, a small number of case studies or the lack of a detailed comparison between VR and conventional methods is the shortcoming of current studies. In this paper, we review different VR applications focusing on the identification of the technologies used, the evaluation methods applied, and the results of the studies.

Presentations

Modeling Teacher Use of Virtual Reality Simulations in Nursing Education Using Epistemic Network Analysis
Mamta Shah(1), Amanda L Siebert-Evenstone(2), Brendan R Eagan(2), Roxanne Holthaus(1)
1: Elsevier; 2: University of Wisconsin-Madison
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Simulations are widely adopted in undergraduate nursing education because they offer low-risk, experiential ways to expose pre-licensure students to clinical environments, and to situate the development of requisite knowledge and skills for patient care. Virtual reality (VR) simulations present novel opportunities for clinical education; as such, research in this area is burgeoning around questions related to perception, adoption, and outcomes. In this paper, we demonstrate the application of epistemic network analysis, a quantitative ethnography technique, to model how one nursing educator facilitated clinical judgment and nurtured quality and safety education for nurses’ competencies through the use of Simulation Learning System with Virtual Reality (SLS with VR). We modeled the discourse obtained from three simulation sessions in October and November 2020, all involving a fundamental scenario requiring second-year nursing students to practice basic assessment and care management. Our work aims to advance research in medical and health education, particularly nursing education, using immersive learning environments by way of applying theory-backed learning analytic techniques.


CureQuest: A Digital Game for New Drug Discovery
Ben Chang, Shawn Lawson, Kathleen Ruiz, Mei Si
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, United States of America
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CureQuest is an educational adventure game about Clinical Translational Therapeutics, the process of discovery and development of new medical treatments, drugs, devices, and therapies. The game is being developed through a collaboration between faculty and students from a game design program and those from a medical school, with the goal of raising awareness and improving collaboration in the "bench to bedside" process. CureQuest aims to address this gap, first with medical students and ultimately for a general audience, with a game that instills wonder and inspires players with the challenges of drug discovery. In addition to the impact of the game when completed, the development process itself presents a novel case study in integrating the interdisciplinary fields of game development and “team science”. We present the current version of the game in development; the unique design challenges presented by the project; and the evolution of our collaborative process.

Presentations
 
Supporting Teachers' SRL Beliefs and Practices with Immersive Learning Environments: Evidence from a Unique Simulations-Based Program
Orna Heaysman, Bracha Kramarski
Bar Ilan University, Israel
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Empirical evidence indicates that, as a result of teachers' belief systems and the absence of an SRL development for teaching practice, teachers are challenged by the adoption of SRL in learning and teaching. This study explored a support program for SRL through quasi-experimental design to encourage aspects of SRL (planning, monitoring, evaluation) stimulated in a unique immersive simulation learning environment. Participants were 72 primary school teachers assigned to experimental or control groups. Results show that the teachers from the experimental group have shifted their beliefs towards autonomous learning and used more SRL in lesson planning and teaching reflections
 
 
Exploring the Real-Time Touchless Hand Interaction and Intelligent Agents in Augmented Reality Learning Applications
Muhammad Zahid Iqbal(1), Eleni Mangina(2), ‪Abraham G. Campbell(3)
1: School of Computer Science, University College Dublin, Ireland; 2: School of Computer Science, University College Dublin, Ireland; 3: School of Computer Science, University College Dublin, Ireland
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During the last decade, there has been a surge in research studies exploring the adoption of Augmented Reality (AR) in educational settings. Within these multiple research studies, AR's capability to extend the teaching and learning environment with augmented 3D learning objects with enhanced interactive capabilities have been demonstrated. This new technology has not been widely adopted in the mainstream but with the recent unprecedented circumstances of COVID-19, there has been an increasing societal willingness to adopt these technologies. AR has been a desirable technology due to its inherent touchless nature which facilitates social distancing at this time but AR applications crucially offer so much more. They can provide interactive functionality through augmentation of the teaching and learning environment within an immersive user experience including 3D interactions with learning objects, gestures, hand interaction, tangible and multi-modal interaction.
This paper presents the results of a review of touchless interaction studies in educational applications and proposes the implementation of real-time touchless hand interaction within kinesthetic learning and utilization of machine learning agents. The architecture of two AR applications with real-time hand interaction and machine learning agents are demonstrated within this paper enabling engaged kinesthetic learning as an alternative learning interface.

Visualizing The Collaborative Problem Solving Process In An Immersive Cross Platform Game
Meredith Thompson, Cigdem Uz Bilgin, Rik Eberhart, Lucy Cho, Melat Anteneh, Eric Klopfer
MIT, United States of America
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This study explores how players engage in problem solving during a cross-platform collaborative game. Players took on one of two roles: an Explorer in virtual reality head mounted display and a Navigator using a tablet. Videos of 40 minute game play sessions for 8 pairs of players were transcribed and examined for patterns of game play based on stages of collaborative problem solving (CPS) developed by Fiore et al (2017). Players’ discussion during gameplay was analyzed and visualized through Epistemic Network Analysis. Results suggested that players engaged in two way communication using biology terms throughout the game, and that communication styles were linked to roles. After initial orientation, players moved through multiple cycles of cluefinding and discussion that followed similar patterns even in groups with different knowledge levels. These results suggest that collaborative problem solving can be initiated through roles in a serious game and documented through participants’ conversation during a serious game. Future research will focus on whether the game can be used to learn, practice, and improve players’ CPS skills

Synapse VR: Catalyzing Collaboration through Immersive Learning
Cat Flynn, Seth Corrigan, Faby Gagne
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Please pardon our dust as we replaced this one Sched session with 29 individual sessions.  Please visit the booths in the Expo Hall!

Presentations
 
Implementing Decentralized Virtual Time in P2P Collaborative Learning Environment for Web XR
Nikolai Suslov
Krestianstvo.org, Russian Federation
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Virtual worlds and Web XR technologies offer to both programmers and domain experts nearly unlimited capabilities for creating novel computer-based simulated environments just in a web browser. Virtual time is becoming the new crucial concept of collaborative, immersive virtual learning environments (VLE). This paper explores the Croquet software architecture, which is known for its radical synchronization system with the notion of virtual time. It is ideal for developing collaborative serverless apps, but a tiny stateless server named reflector, on which Croquet heavily relies on still prevents doing that today. This paper presents the research, that transforms reflector into a peer-to-peer application Luminary, by implementing decentralized virtual time. The case study describes the prototype of a collaborative Rubik's Cube simulator, backed by three robots for kids. Finally showing how learners can easily experiment with augmenting physical reality, by creating fully synchronized, collaborative robots, operating in a P2P network.
 
 
METAL: Explorations into sharing 3D Educational content across Augmented Reality Headsets and Light Field Displays
Mengya Zheng, Xingyu Pan, Xuanhui Xu, Abraham Campbell
University College Dublin, Ireland
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Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality become increasingly popular in scientific visualization especially for education where they can support collaborative scientific visualization experiences in the classroom. However, the inherent limitations of head-mounted AR and VR tools are stemming the popularization of these existing content-sharing tools. Instead of sharing 3D educational content between AR/VR headsets, this paper proposes a novel prototype Mixed rEaliTy shAring pLatform (METAL) to allow for 3D educational content to be shared between a Microsoft HoloLens 2 and multiple Looking Glass displays which are a type of Light Field (Multi-view Autostereoscopic) display. This platform allows one teacher to use a HoloLens to manipulate and share different 3D contents with multiple student groups via the network, thus each student group can observe the synchronized 3D educational content with autostereoscopic experiences. Therefore, this proposed prototype enables a low-cost one-to-multiple 3D content sharing experience that allows intuitive 3D model interaction and seamless communication between the students and the teacher.
 
 
Design and Development of AR Applications in Online Higher Education A User-Centred Design Approach
Mitch Peters, Laura Calvet Liñan, Antoni Marín Amatller, Laura Porta Simó, Pierre Bourdin Kreitz
Open University of Catalonia, Spain
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The exploration of augmented reality’s (AR) potential in higher education teaching and learning demonstrates an impressive scope of critical inquiry. Online higher education (OHE) represents a transformation in learning practices and educational paradigms on a global scale, with a significant opportunity for the application of AR through e-learning. The overarching goal of the current study is to understand how the presence of AR applications in an OHE multimedia program impacts student learning. The study aims to design and develop a user-centered, AR prototype application that could be used to enhance student learning in STEM education. Implementing a user-centred approach ensures that learners are taken into account from the beginning of the design process and throughout the iterative design lifecycle. The current paper presents the results from the first phase of a multi-stage research project. First, conceptually designed personas, scenario reviews, and user journey mappings were developed based on identified learner needs and AR system requirements previously identified. The results show the design decisions made while revising AR scenarios from the learner’s perspective and exploring design requirements to ensure the feasibility of the AR application. An implication of our study is to demonstrate the value of a range of evaluation techniques presented here using a user-centred design approach, which can be used to design and develop future AR and Xtended reality technologies in educational scenarios.