Chris Dede

Immersive Interfaces for Engagement and Learning

Immersion is the subjective impression that one is participating in a comprehensive, realistic experience. Interactive media now enable various degrees of digital immersion. The more a virtual immersive experience is based on design strategies that combine actional, symbolic, and sensory factors, the greater the participants suspension of disbelief that she or he is “inside” a digitally enhanced setting. Studies have shown that immersion in a digital environment can enhance education in at least three ways: by allowing multiple perspectives, situated learning, and transfer. Further studies are needed on the capabilities of immersive media for learning, on the instructional designs best suited to each type of immersive medium, and on the learning strengths and preferences these media develop in users.

The Evolution of Distance Education: Emerging Technologies and Distributed Learning

(1996). The evolution of distance education: Emerging technologies and distributed learning. American Journal of Distance Education: Vol. 10, No. 2, pp. 4-36.

A Research Agenda for Online Teacher Professional Development

This article highlights key online teacher professional development (oTPD) areas in need of research based on a review of current oTPD research conducted in conjunction with an oTPD conference held at Harvard University in fall 2005. The literature review of this field documents much work that is anecdotal, describing professional development programs or “lessons learned” without providing full details of the participants, setting, research questions, methods of data collection, or analytic strategies. Until more rigorous oTPD research is conducted, developers are hard pressed to know the best design features to include, educators remain uninformed about which program will help support teacher change and student learning, and funders lack sufficient guidelines for where to direct their support. The authors believe that the recommendations in this article for a research agenda will guide oTPD scholarship toward an evidence-based conceptual framework that provides robust explanatory power for theory and model building.

A Model for Understanding How Virtual Reality Aids Complex Conceptual Learning

Designers and evaluators of immersive virtual reality systems have many ideas concerning how virtual reality can facilitate learning. However, we have little information concerning which of virtual realitys features provide the most leverage for enhancing understanding or how to customize those affordances for different learning environments. In part, this reflects the truly complex nature of learning. Features of a learning environment do not act in isolation; other factors such as the concepts or skills to be learned, individual characteristics, the learning experience, and the interaction experience all play a role in shaping the learning process and its outcomes. Through Project Science Space, we have been trying to identify, use, and evaluate immersive virtual realitys affordances as a means to facilitate the mastery of complex, abstract concepts. In doing so, we are beginning to understand the interplay between virtual realitys features and other important factors in shaping the learning process and learning outcomes for this type of material. In this paper, we present a general model that describes how we think these factors work together and discuss some of the lessons we are learning about virtual realitys affordances in the context of this model for complex conceptual learning.

Augmented Reality Teaching and Learning

This literature review focuses on augmented realities (AR) for learning that utilize mobile, context-aware technologies (e.g., smartphones, tablets), which enable participants to interact with digital information embedded within the physical environment. We summarize research findings about AR in formal and informal learning environments (i.e., schools, universities, museums, parks, zoos, etc.), with an emphasis on the affordances and limitations associated with AR as it relates to teaching, learning, and instructional design. As a cognitive tool and pedagogical approach, AR is primarily aligned with situated and constructivist learning theory, as it positions the learner within a real-world physical and social context while guiding, scaffolding and facilitating participatory and metacognitive learning processes such as authentic inquiry, active observation, peer coaching, reciprocal teaching and legitimate peripheral participation with multiple modes of representation.

ScienceSpace: virtual realities for learning complex and abstract scientific concepts

Three virtual worlds have been built to investigate the effect of immersive, multisensory computer-generated experiences on learning topics in science. Currently targeted at high school and beginning college students, these worlds address Newtonian mechanics, electrostatics, and molecular structure and dynamics. Data has been collected on usability and learning through questionnaires, pre- and post-tests, in situ prediction and experiment and post-session interviews. The results are not uniformly conclusive but suggest that students can improve their mastery of abstract concepts through the use of virtual environments that have been designed for learning. Moreover, usability studies have identified many significant problems that have been addressed in successive refinements of these worlds. Future work will include collaborative learning studies (both local and distant), use of intelligent agents, and comparison with two-dimensional microworlds.

A Multi-User Virtual Environment for Building and Assessing Higher Order Inquiry Skills in Science.

This study investigated novel pedagogies for helping teachers infuse inquiry into a standards-based science curriculum. Using a multi-user virtual environment (MUVE) as a pedagogical vehicle, teams of middle-school students collaboratively solved problems around disease in a virtual town called River City. The students interacted with ‘avatars’ of other students, digital artefacts and computer-based ‘agents’ acting as mentors and colleagues in a virtual community of practice set during the time period when bacteria were just being discovered. This paper describes the results from three implementations of the River City virtual environment in 2004–05 with approximately 2000 students from geographically diverse urban areas. The results indicated that students were able to conduct inquiry in virtual worlds and were motivated by that process. However, the results from the assessments varied depending on the assessment strategy employed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Multisensory Immersion as a Modeling Environment for Learning Complex Scientific Concepts

In every aspect of our knowledge-based society, fluency in understanding complex information spaces is an increasingly crucial skill (Dede and Lewis, 1995). In research and industry, many processes depend on peolple utilizing complicated representations of information (Rieber, 1994). Increasingly, workers must navigate complex information spaces to locate data they need, must find patterns in information for problem solving, and must use sophisticated representations of information to communicate their ideas (Kohn, 1994; Studt, 1995). Further, to make informed decisions about public-policy issues such as global warming and environmental contamination, citizens must comprehend the strenghts and limitations of scientific models based on multivariate interactions. In many academic areas, students’ success now depends on their ability to envision and manipulate abstract multidimensional information spaces (Gordin and Pea, 1995). Fields in which students struggle with mastering these types of representations include mathematics, science, engineering, statistics, and finance.

The Evolution of Distance Learning: Technology-Mediated Interactive Learning.

AbstractThis article describes how our present delivery of instruction over distance could become an even more powerful and useful educational medium through incorporating ideas from cooperative learning and computer supported cooperative work. Advances in information technology that would enhance distance learning include collaborative mimetic interfaces, direct manipulation capabilities, telepointers, automatic electronic archiving, hypertext, and specialized software for different types of interaction. Through incorporating these functionalities, distance learning environments can be designed to have greater opportunities for students to interact than traditional single-classroom settings. By overcoming pupils’ segregation into homogeneous enclaves, distance learning can enhance pluralism to prepare Americans for competition in the world marketplace. Eventually, all educational institutions will need to develop students’ abilities in distanced interaction, for skills of collaboration with remote team m...

Theoretical Perspectives Influencing the Use of Information Technology in Teaching and Learning

This chapter discusses how various theories of learning and forms of pedagogy shape the technologies used to instantiate them, and how the evolution of computers and telecommunications is widening the range of instructional designs available. Three alternative schools of thought on how people learn have strongly influenced the design of instructional technologies: Behaviorism, Cognitivism, and Constructivism. Behaviorist instructional technologies are limited both in what they can teach and in the types of engagement they offer to learners, but are useful for tasks involving learning facts and simple procedural skills. Scholars disagree on how broad a range of knowledge and skills Cognitivist instructional technologies can teach, but they are effective for well-defined content and skills that have a few correct ways of accomplishing tasks. Constructivist approaches can teach a very broad spectrum of knowledge and skills, however, the efficiency of Constructivist technologies for material that these other two schools of thought can teach is questionable. Emerging technologies such as multi-user virtual environments and augmented realities enable new types of pedagogical strategies based on situated learning.