1. Learning About Puget Sound Using Virtual Reality Technology Christian Sarason & Fritz Stahr, Ocean Inquiry Project, Seattle, WA
William Winn, Ruth Fruland & YenLing Lee, College of Education, University of Washington, Seattle, WA Peter Oppenheimer, Human Interface Technology Laboratory, University of Washington, Seattle, WA
Virtual Puget Sound
Introduction
Virtual Puget Sound (VPS) is a dynamic, interactive, 3D learning environment created with bathymetry, topography and data generated by a Princeton Ocean Model of Puget Sound (M. Kawase). Its purpose is to teach oceanographic principles to middle school through college-level students. The Ocean Inquiry Project seeks to teach students oceanography in both traditional classroom settings and on oceanographic cruises on the Sound.
Objectives: The present collaboration seeks to demonstrate the interrelationship between field-based and model-based research, and to determine what students learn from each individually, and from both combined.
Methods: Iterative laboratory-based experiments used to design visualizations and tasks that foster learning, now have been ported to PC and laptop platforms and taken into the classroom to determine the feasibility and usefulness of using desktop VR in normal teaching environments.
Results: VPS was used successfully in a college-level oceanographic class in two modes: as a visual aid that demonstrated concepts during lecture; and as a station where students could use VPS during student-centered activities. In these two modes, one computer with VPS was able to support about 20 students.
Students made substantial conceptual gains based on traditional assessments and concept maps, but because students experienced both VPS and cruise, their relative contributions are not clear.
Future Work: This fall, two courses using identical instructional content will provide two conditions: one course will use VPS only; one course will have an oceanographic cruise only.
Ocean Inquiry Project
Puget Sound
We created an interactive learning environment based on an oceanographic computer model of Puget Sound-Virtual Puget Sound (VPS)-as an alternative to traditional teaching methods. Students immersed in this navigable 3-D virtual environment observed tidal movements and salinity changes, and performed tracer and buoyancy experiments. Scientific concepts were embedded in a goal-based scenario to locate a new sewage outfall in Puget Sound.
Traditional science teaching methods focus on distilled representations of agreed-upon knowledge removed from real-world context and scientific debate. Our strategy leverages students' natural interest in their environment, provides meaningful context and engages students in scientific debate and knowledge creation.
Results show that VPS provides a powerful learning environment, but highlights the need for research on how to most effectively represent concepts and organize interactions to support scientific inquiry and understanding. Research is also needed to ensure that new technologies and visualizations do not foster misconceptions, including the impression that the model represents reality rather than being a useful tool. In this presentation we review results from prior work with VPS and outline new work for a modeling partnership recently formed with funding from the National Ocean Partnership Program (NOPP).
Ocean Inquiry Project Field Trips on Puget Sound
Above: Casting the CDT. Below: Observing CDT measurements as they are displayed.
Virtual Puget Sound Interactive Tools (from left to right)
Measurement panel, salinity cross sections, particle release points, tide chart, legend
Below: VPS laboratory setting and
some results from middle school study.
Conceptual change: Before VPS (left). After an hour in VPS (right), student drew accurate representation of overall circulation in Puget Sound.
BEFORE
AFTER
Ocean Inquiry Project Field Trip on Puget Sound
Left (Top): On board discussions; Left (Bottom): Lowering Secchi disc.
Below: Close up of CDT measurements as they are displayed in real time.
Virtual Puget Sound: Water and Salinity Changes over Tide Cycle
Salinity Cross Sections, Water direction and velocity vectors “on”; bathymetry “off”
Above. On her pre-test, a student drew water temperature layers that followed the bottom contours (left). After VPS, she drew horizontal layering, a more accurate representation, on her post-test (right).
Left. Post-VPS plan view of water circulation includes vortex outside entrance to Puget Sound.
BEFORE:
AFTER:
Peripheral learning: