2000 - 2002

NSF Grants 9980464, 0296001, 0202543

Museum-Related Multimedia and Virtual Environments for Teaching and Learning Science

MUVEES screenshot

The purpose of our initial project was to build a multi-user virtual environment experiential simulator (MUVEES) in order to find an engaging way to teach science in a manner that draws on curiosity and play. The environment was enriched with digitized historical museum artifacts to enhance middle school students' motivation and learning about science.

The project's educational environments extended typical MUVE capabilities in order to study the science learning potential of immersive simulations, interactive virtual museum exhibits, and "participatory" historical situations. In particular, this project studied how the design characteristics of these learning experiences affect students' motivation and educational outcomes, as well as the extent to which digitized museums can aid pupils' performance on assessments related to national science standards. This research also examined both the process needed to successfully implement MUVEES in typical classroom settings and ways to enable strong learning outcomes across a wide range of individual student characteristics.

Design

Our initial design started with instructional challenges identified by science teachers, who targeted experimental design as the most difficult concept for students to learn using current methods. This is a higher order skill essential in preparing pupils for their independent science fair projects. In response, we developed learning activities in the processes of scientific inquiry transitional in difficulty between classroom lab experiences and independent individual investigation of a complex real-world situation. Students learned to behave as scientists while they collaboratively identified problems through observation and inference, formed and tested hypotheses, and deduced evidence-based conclusions about underlying causes. Our prototype middle school science curriculum units also conveyed content knowledge based on the national science standards and aligned with the material typically covered on statewide tests.

The "River City" curriculum unit, in both English and Spanish, consisted of a multi-user virtual environment with virtual contexts, computer-based agents, and digital artifacts that directly and implicitly guided learner investigations. This learning environment centered on content in biology and ecology and was designed for use in a classroom context, supplemented by conventional instructional activities such as textbooks and teacher-led discussions. The curriculum unit required ten days of class time, alternating five experiential sessions in the MUVE structured by gathering data to enter in a Lab Notebook with five interpretative whole-class discussions led by the teacher.

Curriculum

The River City curriculum unit was based on students collaboratively investigating a virtual "world" consisting of a city with a river running through it, different forms of terrain that influenced water runoff, houses, industries, and institutions such as a hospital and a university. River City contained over fifty digital objects from the Smithsonian's collection, plus "data collection stations" that provided detailed information about water samples at various spots in the world.

River City was typical of the United States in the late nineteenth century; we used museum artifacts to illustrate building exteriors and street scenes from that period in history. Content in the right-hand interface-window shifted based on what the participant encountered or activated in the virtual environment. Dialogue was shown in a text box below these two windows; members of each team could communicate regardless of distance, but in-team dialogue was displayed only to members of that team. To aid their interactions, participants also had access to one-click interface features that enabled the avatar to express (through stylized postures and gestures) emotions such as happiness, sadness, agreement, and disagreement. Multiple teams of students could access the MUVE simultaneously, each individual had the ability to manipulate an avatar through their computer.

In our pilot implementations, each class was divided into teams of two to four students, which were "sent back in time" to this virtual environment. During their time in the MUVE, students answered questions in a Lab Notebook, which the teachers later used for assessment purposes. The Lab Notebook started with questions that guided exploration of the environment and developed mastery of the interface, building towards later investigations that were content specific and required completing a data table or graph based on the water samples encountered in River City. The Lab Notebook asked the class to help the city solve its environmental and health problems, which were directly related to middle school science content. To accomplish this, the students had to collaborate to share the data each team collects.

Beyond textual conversation, students could project to each other "snapshots" of their current individual point of view (when someone had discovered an item of general interest) and also had the ability to "teleport" to join anyone on their team for joint investigation. Each time a team reentered the world, several months of time had passed in River City, so learners could track the evolution of local problems.

At the end, students were asked to write to the mayor of River City describing the health and environmental problems they had encountered and to suggest ways that might improve the life of the inhabitants. Learners were engaged in a "participatory historical situation" in which they applied tools and knowledge from both the past and the present to resolve an authentic problem. In this "back to the future" situation, students' mastery of 21st century classroom content and skills empowered them in the 19th century virtual world.

Through data gathering, students observed the patterns that emerged and wrestled with questions such as "Why are many more poor people getting sick than rich people?" Multiple causal factors were involved, including polluted water runoff to low-lying areas, insect vectors in swampy areas, overcrowding, and the cost of access to medical care. Throughout the world, students encountered residents of River City and "overheard" their conversations with one another. These computer-based "agents" disclosed information and indirect clues about what was going on in River City. The phrases "spoken" by these agents evolved over time.

The main goal of the MUVE was to teach students the skills necessary for scientific inquiry, particularly those important in conducting investigations for a science fair project. River City had multiple lines of potential exploration. As mentioned above, there were 3 main historically accurate strands of illness in River City (water-borne, air-borne, and insect-vectors). These three disease strands were integrated with historical, social and geographical content to allow students to experience the realities of disentangling multi-causal problems embedded within a complex environment. In schools, many students implicitly learn the unrealistic view that there is a single right answer in science, easily discernible. In exploring River City, however, students were guided in teams to develop hypotheses regarding one of many problems, based on their own interest. At the end of the project, they compared their research with other teams of students to discover the plethora of potential hypotheses and avenues of investigation available for exploration.