Using animations and visual cueing to support learning of scientific concepts and processes

The purpose of the study is to investigate the potential benefits of using animation, visual cueing, and their combination in a multimedia environment designed to support learners’ acquisition and retention of scientific concepts and processes. Undergraduate participants (N = 119) were randomly assigned to one of the four experimental conditions in a 2 × 2 factorial design with visual presentation format (animated vs. static graphics) and visual cueing (visual cues vs. no cues) as factors. Participants provided with animations retained significantly more concepts than their peers provided with static graphics and those afforded visual cues learned equally well but in significantly less time than their counterparts in uncued conditions. Moreover, taking into consideration both learning outcomes and learning time, cued participants displayed more instructional efficiency than their uncued peers. Implications and future directions are discussed.     

Employing virtual humans for education and training in X3D/VRML worlds

Web-based education and training provides a new paradigm for imparting knowledge; students can access the learning material anytime by operating remotely from any location. Web3D open standards, such as X3D and VRML, support Web-based delivery of Educational Virtual Environments (EVEs). EVEs have a great potential for learning and training purposes, by allowing one to circumvent physical, safety, and cost constraints. Unfortunately, EVEs often leave to the user the onus of taking the initiative both in exploring the environment and interacting with its parts. A possible solution to this problem is the exploitation of virtual humans acting as informal coaches or more formal instructors. For example, virtual humans can be employed to show and explain maintenance procedures, allowing learners to receive more practical explanations which are easier to understand. However, virtual humans are rarely used in Web3D EVEs, since the programming effort to develop and re-use them in different environments can be considerable. In this paper, we present a general architecture that allows content creators to easily integrate virtual humans into Web3D EVEs. To test the generality of our solution, we present two practical examples showing how the proposed architecture has been used in different educational contexts.     

Using multimedia and Web3D to enhance anatomy teaching

Anatomy teaching is undergoing significant changes due to time constraints, limited availability of cadavers and technological developments in the areas of three-dimensional modelling and computer-assisted learning. This paper gives an overview of methods used to teach anatomy to undergraduate medical students and discusses the educational advantages and disadvantages of using three-dimensional computer models. A ‘work in progress’ account is then given of a project to develop two Web3D resources to enhance undergraduate tuition of the nervous system. Our approach is to support existing curricula using advanced modelling tools and a variety of delivery mechanisms.     

Web3D technologies in learning,education and training: Motivations,issues, opportunities

Web3D open standards allow the delivery of interactive 3D virtual learning environments through the Internet, reaching potentially large numbers of learners worldwide, at any time. This paper introduces the educational use of virtual reality based on Web3D technologies. After briefly presenting the main Web3D technologies, we summarize the pedagogical basis that motivate their exploitation in the context of education and highlight their interesting features. We outline the main positive and negative results obtained so far, and point out some of the current research directions.     

Systematic selection and implementation of graphical user interface metaphors

This article begins with a discussion of what metaphors are and how they might be used in technology-based learning products' interfaces. It identifies two classes of metaphors: underlying and auxiliary. Next it presents a model (POPITS) for identifying the web of related associations inherent in metaphorical design. It then applies that model to two separate underlying metaphors, the book and the map, and shows what sorts of auxiliary metaphors are thus elicited. The article closes with a discussion of the demands of metaphorical interface design.     

Applying GIS to develop a web-based spatial-person-temporal history educational system

Developing interactive history learning materials to facilitate historical thinking is one of the challenges in history teaching and learning. This study developed a web-based history educational system, which has used the acronym HES-SPATO (history educational system based on SPATO), to increase the understandability of history learning materials. SPATO (spatial, person, action/attribute, and temporal object) was designed to integrate the indispensable elements of history events such as space, person, action/attribute, and time. HES-SPATO also applied temporal logic to reason the temporal relationships between history events. Furthermore, it employed the GIS concept of information layers to develop the student interface. The findings of the experiments indicated that the use of HES-SPATO was effective in enhancing students’ history learning. The participants also showed positive attitudes toward the HES-SPATO system in terms of the perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness, attitude to use, intention to use, recall of web sites, and perceived usefulness of assistant tools. Although many functionalities have been added to the HES-SPATO system, there was no significant difference in system efficiency between HES-SPATO and the comparative system. These experimental results also guide the direction of future research.     

Teaching CAD at the university: Specifically written or commercial software?

At most Universities throughout the world Computer Aided Design is taught using commercial programs more suitable for business and industry than for teaching. This led us to write our own design program (GIcad) starting from the best-known standards on the market, but always avoiding unnecessary commands in the first steps of the learning process. GIcad constitutes a tool with a multitude of help messages to facilitate student self-training, it is very intuitive and has an attractive and dynamic graphic interface with a design that does not put off the beginner with a lot of options and commands.     

Haptic feedback and students’ learning about levers: Unraveling the effect of simulated touch

While there has been extensive experimental research on haptics, less has been conducted on cross-modal interactions between visual and haptic perception and even less still on cross-modal applications in instructional settings. This study looks at a simulation on the principles of levers using both visual and haptic feedback: one group received visual and haptic feedback while the other just visual feedback. Using the triangulation of learning scores, eye tracking data, and video analysis of interaction with the levers, the efficacy of haptic feedback to improve learning was explored. The results indicate that while the total fixation time on the levers and numeric readout was greater for the visual and haptic group, very similar patterns of visual attention were seen between groups. Perhaps surprisingly, the visual only group scored higher on an embedded assessment. Explanations for these results are synthesized from theories of cross-modal perception and cognitive architecture.     

Virtual reality simulations and animations in a web-based interactive manufacturing engineering module

This paper presents a web-based interactive teaching package that provides a comprehensive and conducive yet dynamic and interactive environment for a module on automated machine tools in the Manufacturing Division at the National University of Singapore. The use of Internet technologies in this teaching tool makes it possible to conjure visualisations that cannot be achieved using traditional teaching materials such as transparencies. Virtual reality simulations and animations were developed and appropriately placed in the teaching materials to enhance the student understanding of complex concepts. This is especially useful in teaching automated machine tools, which deals primarily with the numerical control (NC) of the motions of automated machine tools. These virtual reality simulations and animations provide the capability of training students in NC programming and operations without the need to work on actual NC machines in the laboratory. The simulations are suitably placed in the package to engage the students and enhance their concentration, while at the same time generate interactions. Customised question types were also designed and implemented with a tutorial monitoring application.     

Designing a smartphone app to teach English (L2) vocabulary

The researcher developed a Basic4Android smartphone app (named as Word Learning-CET6) and investigated its effectiveness as a tool in helping English as a Foreign Language college students learn English vocabulary. The app, containing 1274 English words, was designed to be installed into smartphones with Android operating system. To test the program's effectiveness, two groups of students were set up as a test group (those with Word Learning-CET6) and a control group (those without Word Learning-CET6). Knowledge of the vocabulary was tested before and after the study to assess the impact of the program. The study showed that the students using the program significantly outperformed those in the control group in acquiring new vocabulary. At the conclusion of this study, the researcher designed an app and established a pedagogical paradigm which can be followed as a way of mobile learning.     

An enhanced concept map approach to improving children’s storytelling ability

Storytelling is an imperative and innovative pathway to enhance learning due to the fact that such activity prompts learners to reflect to construct meaning based on their observations and knowledge. Therefore, to develop and enhance students’ storytelling ability has become an important issue for both educators and researchers. Since storytelling involves complex cognitive processes, this study proposed an enhanced concept map approach featured with story grammars to help children develop stories. By gathering the stories developed by 114 third-graders, this study aimed to investigate whether the concept map approach can enhance their storytelling ability. It is found that the children, who used the concept map with story grammars, can develop stories with more complex structure, clearer subjects, more creative ideas, and abundant contents than those only using the concept map without the grammars. Such findings support that the concept map and story grammars can be an effective approach for developing learner-centered storytelling tools which help students develop and apply the knowledge about storytelling.     

An interactive item sharing website for creating and conducting on-line testing

Multiple intelligences, with its hypothesis and implementation, have ascended to a prominent status among the many instructional methodologies. Meanwhile, pedagogical theories and concepts are in need of more alternative and interactive assessments to prove their prevalence (Kinugasa, Yamashita, Hayashi, Tominaga, & Yamasaki, 2005). In general, item templates adopted in current on-line testing system are mostly true and false, multiple choice and multiple selection. More sophisticated interactive alternatives such as click and select, drag and drop, link, collide and magnetize are still in great demand. The fact that the lack of template alternatives has made it difficult for the general teachers to incorporate interactive items into testing. To underpin interactive multimedia test, this research has cultivated interactive item template as the basic sharing atomic unit. In addition, a corresponding visual item authoring system Interactive Test Item System (ITIS) (Koong et al., 2007), and an auto-grading examer were developed. Meanwhile, an item sharing website based on Web2.0 was constructed, through which users can exchange the created interactive item templates, interactive items, and interactive test sheet. The design of on-line visual authoring item editor has made it possible to create items by click and select, drag and drop, link, or parameter setting. Multimedia such as text, image, audio, and animation can be added, deleted or set to the wished animated effect to created into an interactive item, while on-line interactive testing as well as auto-grading are supported.     

Place presence, social presence, co-presence, and satisfaction in virtual worlds

This study investigated the relationship among three types of presences, including place presence, social presence, and co-presence in virtual worlds and their relationship with satisfaction and immersive tendencies of students. Students’ scores on a subjective questionnaire were analyzed. The results indicated that there was a significant relationship among the place presence, social presence, and co-presence. While social presence seemed to affect the satisfaction most, place and co-presence also affected students’ satisfaction in the virtual world. Moreover, immersive tendencies of the students were related to their place and co-presence but not to their social presence. Findings highlighted the important issues for the design of virtual world environments to increase presence and satisfaction of students.     

The Daktari: An interactive,multi-media tool for knowledge transfer among poor livestock keepers in Kenya

This article describes the findings from the assessment of a touch-screen, multi-media learning program on livestock health and production: The Daktari. The program was tested on a sample of 62 livestock keepers in the Nairobi slums of Kariobangi and Kibera. The study examined prior knowledge regarding three livestock diseases (liver fluke, mastitis and mange) and compared this to newly acquired knowledge after exposure to the software. The results demonstrated a significant difference between pre- and post-knowledge assessments confirming that use of the program led to learning. Learning occurred among a variety of demographic/social groups (i.e. age, gender and education) with a range of abilities. Indeed, by utilising an audio–visual interface developed with relevant content for the population in question, it was found that the program could support and enhance participant understanding of livestock disease causation, diagnosis, treatment and prevention.     

The theatre through the computer

There is a long history of the theatre being used with educational purposes. Now the evolution of multimedia resources provide an opportunity to implement theatre through the computer. Although software for the production of multimedia stories exist, they give little attention to the necessary interface aspects required for a virtual theatre implementation. The objective of this work is to present the Theatre in the Computer (TC); software especially developed for the education of children. This software can be used to produce and to distribute plays through the Internet. The educational possibilities of TC are discussed here.     

Cognitive,social and teaching presence in a virtual world and a text chat

Using a framework of cognitive, social, and teaching presence, the nature of learning experiences in a three-dimensional virtual world environment (Second Life) and a text-chat learning environment without visuals (TeachNet) were investigated. A mixed method of code frequencies, coherence graphs, interviews, and a survey was used. The results revealed that the TeachNet debates included more cognitive presence codes that indicate higher levels of cognitive processing than in SL debates. The teams were significantly different from each other in the collaboration style for developing arguments and in the ways to use utterances associated with cognitive, social, and teaching presences, and the groups’ collaboration style became more established with more experience with the tasks. The three critical factors–tool, tasks and group cohesion–that affect cognitive, teaching, and social presence are discussed.     

Interactive augmented reality system for enhancing library instruction in elementary schools

Due to limited budgets and manpower, most elementary schools in Taiwan do not plan or provide library instruction for students. Although students can use libraries, they typically lack the knowledge needed to use library resources effectively. Consequently, students have difficulty finding the books they need and can easily become overwhelmed by the massive amount of information in libraries. Computer-assisted instruction for teaching basic library skills to large numbers of students is an appealing method. Particularly, developing augmented reality (AR) technologies for learning have garnered considerable attention in education research. Many researchers and scholars believe that integrating teaching and AR enhances student learning performance and motivation. This work develops an educational AR system based on situated learning theory, and applies innovative augmented reality interactive technology to a library’s learning environment. Student library knowledge can be enhanced via the proposed augmented reality library instruction system (ARLIS). Experimental results demonstrate that student learning performance is improved significantly by using the proposed ARLIS. Moreover, this work demonstrates that using the proposed ARLIS for library instruction results in the same learning performance as conventional librarian instruction and there is no gender difference on learning performance between the proposed ARLIS and conventional librarian instruction. Moreover, the proposed library instruction system overcomes shortcomings of personal teaching skills of librarians that may adversely affect student learning performance by conveying the same learning content to all students. Additionally, the proposed system results in better learning performance for learners with the field-dependent cognitive style than learners with the field-independent cognitive style. Further, the proposed system provides more benefits in terms of library skills of application and comprehension than conventional librarian instruction. Moreover, the learning performance of students is not affected by their gaming skills. Therefore, student gaming skills do not need to be considered when adopting the proposed system in library instruction programs.     

The impact of learner attributes and learner choice in an agent-based environment

This study examined the impact of learners’ attributes (gender and ethnicity) on their choice of a pedagogical agent and the impact of the attributes and choice on their perceptions of agent affability, task-specific attitudes, task-specific self-efficacy, and learning gains. Participants were 210 high-school male and female, Caucasian and Hispanic students who worked at computer-based algebra integrated with pedagogical agents. The results indicated, first, that students preferentially chose a same-gender agent and a same-ethnicity agent. Second, males who chose an agent showed more positive attitudes toward working at the learning environment than did males who were assigned to an agent whereas females who were assigned to an agent showed more positive attitudes than did females who chose an agent. Third, Hispanic students showed more positive attitudes toward working at the learning environment than Caucasians. Fourth, females perceived the agent as significantly more affable than did males; Hispanics perceived the agent as significantly more affable than did Caucasians. Last, learner attributes and choice did not affect learning gains in the agent-based environment; rather, the participants overall significantly increased their performances after the intervention.     

Adaptive-creative versus routine-reproductive expertise in hypermedia design: an exploratory study

The unique characteristics of routine-reproductive and adaptive-creative expertise were examined in the protocols of three expert hypermedia designers. It was expected that it would be possible to differentiate routine-reproductive expertise from adaptive-creative expertise in the planning phases of hypermedia design. One designer's protocol corresponded well with characteristics unique to routine-reproductive expertise; only three of that designer's replies were coded as adaptive-creative responses. Two of the designers' protocols corresponded well with the unique characteristics of adaptive-creative expertise, and none of their responses was coded as routine-reproductive. The distinction between the two types of expertise is supported in this rapidly evolving new domain.