Date 07/24/2010 Felipe Bacim Nicholas Polys Department of Computer Science Virginia Tech Cognitive Scaffolding in Web3D Learning Systems: A Case Study for Form and Structure Jian Chen Department of Computer Science USM Mehdi SetarehJi LiLee Ma School of Architecture+Design Virginia Tech

✤ Learning systems ✤ Virtual Environments and Web3D ✤ Structural engineering ✤ Communicate concepts such as load and stress distribution, connections between members and nodal/member displacement ✤ Provide information about how structure units are formed 2 Introduction

✤ Cognitive processing ✤ Structural and Location knowledge ✤ Nodes and members ✤ Behavioral knowledge ✤ System response to users actions ✤ Procedural knowledge ✤ Assembly sequence 3 Introduction

✤ Usability Engineering ✤ Methods are meant to be generic (e.g.: Scenario-Based Design) ✤ Main challenge ✤ Stakeholders that provide the requirements are experts (professors) ✤ The end users of our system are novices (students) and do not really know the requirements of the system 4 Introduction

✤ Perception and Cognition ✤ The challenge for eLearning designers is applying research psychology into design ✤ Integral and separable dimensions ✤ Gestalt principles ✤ Crucial when considering the design of multimedia environments, and the possibility of 'chunking' visual items and features ✤ Subject's working memory can store three to four objects 5 Background

✤ Issues with existing methods ✤ Cognitive concerns are hard to apply ✤ There is little guidance on how to apply psychology research results in practice ✤ The students do not know what they need to know 6 Method

✤ The developed method ✤ First step: determine the requirements in terms of instructional content that the students need to learn about ✤ Second step: map the content to perception and cognition concepts ✤ Third step: apply these concepts to generate a visual representation 7 Method

8 Case Study ✤ Structure and Form Analysis System (SAFAS) ✤ An integrated set of computer-aided, web-based learning modules to teach fundamental concepts in structural systems ✤ Two modules ✤ Explanatory Resources ✤ Interactive Resources

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13 System Design

✤ Qualitative evaluation ✤ Easy to distinguish different configurations ✤ Color-coded nodes and members help users better comprehend the complexity of the structural forms ✤ Morphing using a geometry of influence concept is simple enough to be understood by the novices 14 Initial Evaluation

15 Future Work ✤ Improvements for SAFAS ✤ Addition of architectural elements ✤ Improve integration with existing tools ✤ AEC standards support ✤ Integrate modules ✤ Model checker and recommender system

16 Future Work ✤ Extend the evaluation of our method with a formal user studyEvaluate different visualization techniques ✤ Design and evaluate domain-specific interaction techniques ✤ Derive actionable guidelines and checklists for the usability engineering of learning software and web3d

Date 07/24/2010 Questions? Come to the Scientific Visualization with Web3D workshop to see a live demo of SAFAS!