Conducting Situated Learning in a Collaborative Virtual Environment Yongwu Miao Niels Pinkwart Ulrich Hoppe

Niels Pinkwart WBE 2006Conducting situated learning in a collaborative virtual environment Overview  Pedagogical motivation – constructivism and situated learning  Approach and principles of 3D collaborative driving simulator  Implementation key decisions (driving place, situation detection, architecture for distribution)  Example scenes  Conclusions and future work

Niels Pinkwart WBE 2006Conducting situated learning in a collaborative virtual environment 3D Simulations as constructivist learning environments  Core position of constructivism: learners actively construct knowledge  Knowledge based on interpretation of experiences in the real world (includes other learners!)  3D Simulations of “real world” sometimes very appropriate (costs, safety)– learners can still be active and make experiences  Example: learning car driving

Niels Pinkwart WBE 2006Conducting situated learning in a collaborative virtual environment Existing systems  Lots of 3D car driving simulators exist (games, educational, professional)  Educational systems typically try to confront learners with challenging situations  Often: “full size” systems very costly (advanced visual and audio systems, motion systems, functional cab, software components)  Growing PC and network performance allows “low cost” solutions – usually with pre-defined driving scenarios and tutors

Niels Pinkwart WBE 2006Conducting situated learning in a collaborative virtual environment Our approach  Low cost (standard PC and network), support for multiple users  Variety of challenging situations that “might happen” through interaction / collaboration – no predefined scenes!  Consider situated learning principles: Learner Content Context Community Participation

Niels Pinkwart WBE 2006Conducting situated learning in a collaborative virtual environment Driving place design  Key requirement: rich data model (realistic content & context), but still small enough for distributed usage  General approach: cell grid  Each cell containing typed objects (static or dynamic) with attributes  Example: “car” object with attributes direction, speed, acceleration, turning angle, brake status, indicator status, sector information

Niels Pinkwart WBE 2006Conducting situated learning in a collaborative virtual environment Map editor  Create driving places easily by drag & drop  Maps transformed to VRML  Display via Java 3D

Niels Pinkwart WBE 2006Conducting situated learning in a collaborative virtual environment Situation description and recognition  Not needed for most basic functionality (except collision detection)  Essential for advanced functions (user behavior analysis, feedback)  Technical approach: Jess rules acting on object attributes  Situation detection  target specification  Additional control rules to check if targets have been reached

Niels Pinkwart WBE 2006Conducting situated learning in a collaborative virtual environment Example: situation recognition (defrule safe_distance_violation (vpcar (position ?pos) (direction ?dir) (speed ?speed)) (car_in_lane (car_position ?carpos) (car_direction ?cardir) (car_speed ?carspeed)) (not (target_state (desc safe_distance_violation))) (test (violated_safe_distance ?pos ?speed ?carpos ?carspeed)) => (bind ?list (create$ "distance")) (?*guidance* addInstruction 6 ?carpos ?list ?pos) (assert (target_state (situid 6) (checkpoint ?carpos) (chkpt_passed FALSE) (targets ?list) (desc safe_distance_violation))) (?*guidance* addMistakes ?list 6)) Attributes of student’s car Attributes of other car in lane Distance too small ? Definition of new target

Niels Pinkwart WBE 2006Conducting situated learning in a collaborative virtual environment Distributed system architecture  Central tuple space contains attributed objects (driving place and additional information)  Different roles for teacher and student client

Niels Pinkwart WBE 2006Conducting situated learning in a collaborative virtual environment Distributed system architecture Reduction of network traffic: 1.Transmission of only local context (sector arithmetic) 2.Only status change events (braking, accelerating, indicator) for cars, positions are inferred by client applications

Niels Pinkwart WBE 2006Conducting situated learning in a collaborative virtual environment Feedback Based on situations recognition and targets, different types of feedback and guidance possible:  Forewarn messages or hints  Feedback after targets missed/reached  Implicit feedback (situation creation)  Guidance on demand Already implemented

Niels Pinkwart WBE 2006Conducting situated learning in a collaborative virtual environment System architecture System prototype (simple graphics, small number of object types, restricted number of modeled situations) exists and has been used in a pilot study

Niels Pinkwart WBE 2006Conducting situated learning in a collaborative virtual environment Example – student client

Niels Pinkwart WBE 2006Conducting situated learning in a collaborative virtual environment Example – teacher client

Niels Pinkwart WBE 2006Conducting situated learning in a collaborative virtual environment Conclusions  “Low-cost” collaborative 3D educational driving simulator, following situated learning approach  Allows training in a lot (though not all) of the skills needed for driving  No hard-coded “challenging situations” created by system, but (more realistic!) provision for collaborative situation creation  Students receive feedback on their performance in real-time

Niels Pinkwart WBE 2006Conducting situated learning in a collaborative virtual environment Future Work  Agents simulating students  “Subtle” creation of situations by intelligent agents  Integration of audio communication functions  Evaluations beyond pilot tests