Projects
In this project, we designed and developed a 3D virtual interactive environment to help 1st-year nursing students take the patient encounter training, which is part of the Introduction to Nursing course curriculum in a nursing school.
In order to understand (1) how well nursing students can perform the patient encounter in the 3D virtual interactive environment, and (2) how to use 3D virtual interactive technology to improve nursing students’ performance in a real, physical patient encounter test, we proposed questions:
- How does a 3D virtual interactive experience affect 1st-year nursing students’ conversation skills performance for their first in-person patient encounter training?
- How do responses from the virtual patient affect students’ question construction, hence, influencing their conversation skills performance?
TELL lab is part of the National Science Foundation (NSF) grant — MRI: Acquisition of a Virtual Reality System for Expert Decision Making and Immersive Learning (NSF # 2018850). This immersive virtual reality (VR) system with a synchronized motion tracking system will enable foundational and applied research studies across multiple disciplines to gain a better understanding of decision making under complex situations involving human-machine interactions and learning in three-dimensional virtual reality datasets. The research activities envisioned will span a broad set of areas such as: computer graphics, computer vision, machine learning, transportation systems, built environment prototyping, public safety during disaster response, computational biology and bioinformatics. The project outcomes will create new knowledge pertaining to immersive application development, training, and personalized learning to benefit end-user groups such as police, fire fighters, civil engineers, public works personnel, transportation engineers, and educators.
Virtual Reality Online Orientation (VRO2)
A recent VR learning environment developed by the Mizzou TELL research group, aiming to offer the online orientation for newly-admitted students to get acquainted with the school and the program, and study how VR may facilitate learning and training.
In this VRO2, students will utilize a viewer to take part in five guided activities. All the activities take place in two virtual buildings that resemble the real building where the School of Information Science and Learning Technologies (SISLT) located: Townsend Hall and London Hall.
Overall, students will be able to explore the virtual SISLT buildings, interact with current SISLT faculty and students, and familiar with the documents regarding available resources to new students.
Immersive VRLab Training (iVRLab)
In this study, we apply the latest VR technology and design a state-of-the-art engineering lab training session – the immersive virtual reality lab (iVRLab). The major hardware used for development in this study includes a Dell Alienware desktop computer, an Oculus Rift headset with handheld sensors, and a large display monitor. For software, Unity3D, Maya, and VRTK SDK are used intensively. The training offers a totally immersive, embodied, and interactive experience for the college students to practice the lab work of photolithography, which is an essential technology in fabricating integrated circuit. Learning theories and instructional principles behind the scenes are constructivism, embodied cognition, scaffolding and rewarding systems, multimedia cognitive load theories, and others. The study is to find answers to research questions such as (but not limited to):
- Will the iVRLab with embodied features bring positive learning effects in a college engineering lab training? Will it be a feasible complement to the current engineering lab training curriculum?
- How do college students perceive their embodied experience and cognitive load when participating the iVRLab training?
- How to incorporate design elements into iVRLab to better accommodate learners’ needs and learning characters in an immersive VR context?
iVRLab is proudly funded by the University of Missouri Research Council grant, and is a joint project between SISLT TELL lab and the College of Engineering.
Virtual Reality Graduation Celebration amidst the Pandemic
We created a 3D Virtual Environment for celebrating the College of Education class of 2020 on May, 15.
The ultimate goal of doing research is to solve problems and offer solutions to real-world matters. This project brings a timely solution of a 3D virtual-reality-enabled graduation celebration (VRGC) that provides an alternative approach to celebrating university graduation amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. The VRGC is carefully designed with fun, engaging, and interactive activities to compensate for the cancelation of the conventional commencement due to the pandemic. Class of Spring 2020 students may attend this 3D virtual celebration from their home, mingle with their peers, and meet their professors — an unforgettable experience!
Watch the video to see more details：
https://www.facebook.com/mizzoueducation/videos/244944256776559/
VR Media Gallery: A case study of sense of presence and engagement in an online digital media course
Virtual Reality has been used to enrich gaming experiences with later inclusion in learning practices. However, its applications to online collaborative education experiences has been reduced due to its limitations in synchronicity (North-Samardzich, Braccini, Spagnoletti, & Za, 2014).
This study is intended to create an asycronich virtual reality media gallery where students of an online digital media course can present their media creations in an environment created following interactive design guidelines (Kaur, 1997; Parés & Parés, 2001). Their peers can collaborate by reviewing their creations synchronically or asynchronously to their convenience. Thus, enhancing their experience regardless of existing constraints for synchronous interaction. Presence (Witmer & Singer, 1998) will be measured to determine the effectiveness of the Virtual Reality Environment (VRE), and engagement (Webster & Ho, 1997; O’Brien & Toms, 2008) will be measured and contrasted with traditional online methodologies.
This study is also aiming to exploit known learning benefits from using 3D virtual learning environments (Fowler, 2015) while training students (mostly teachers) in the use of an open source virtual reality environment so they can implement similar experiences in their teaching practices.