Education and Information Technologies 2 131–142 (1997)

Virtual realities in environmental education: the project LAKE TASSOS MIKROPOULOS

Department of Primary Education, University of Ioannina, Ioannina GR 45110, Greece. E-mail: [email protected]

ANTHIMOS CHALKIDIS

Department of Primary Education, University of Ioannina, Ioannina GR 45110, Greece.

APOSTOLOS KATSIKIS

Department of Primary Education, University of Ioannina, Ioannina GR 45110, Greece.

PHOTINI KOSSIVAKI

Department of Primary Education, University of Ioannina, Ioannina GR 45110, Greece.

This article proposes the use of virtual realities (VR) in environmental education. It also presents the first results of an application to the phenomenon of eutrophication in lakes. Although our virtual environments are not immersive, they give the opportunity to students and educators to develop their own worlds and understand the population dynamics in a lake. The learning environment can be manipulated and controlled in a powerful way, enhancing students experiences leading to knowledge construction, and sensitizing students to current environmental problems. Our pedagogical approach is to build a theoretical model for virtual learning environments, expanding constructivism and combining it with experiential learning. Our operational and practical approach is to exploit the characteristics of desktop VR systems in virtual learning environments. KEYWORDS: Computer Assisted Instruction (CAI); Human Computer Interface (HCI); open systems; simulation; Virtual Reality (VR). 1360–2357

# 1997 IFIP

132

Mikropoulos et al.

Introduction The evolution of educational systems based on technology is currently undergoing radical revision. Passing by the behaviourism to student–instruction interaction, we have developed systems mainly based on the learning model of constructivism where knowledge is constructed by the students themselves, not delivered by the courseware (Winn, 1993). It is also based on the educational theories of experiential education and social learning (Bricken, 1990). According to these models, instruction cannot be designed and each student has to be provided with an environment where he=she and the educator can develop anything they want. Human-computer interaction design is a matter of sensory ergonomics (Waterworth, 1995). Computer artefacts function not only as cognitive tools but also as perceptual enhancers. It is difficult for media to help students to think better, but they can allow them to experience more. So, there is a need for environments for experience enhancement leading to the construction of knowledge. These can be natural or artificial, and for reasons that will be shown later in this article, artificial environments are more fruitful for most of the cases. The present article proposes the use of virtual realities in environmental education. The developed application is on the phenomenon of eutrophication in lakes. After the definitions of terms, the relations between virtual realities and education, and especially environmental education are reported, the design and development of the project LAKE (virtuaL Approach to the Kernel of Eutrophication) is presented, as well as the current stage of the empirical research. Virtual reality (VR) is a multisensory interactive computer-based environment, where the user becomes an active participant in a virtually real world (Helsel, 1992). VR systems are in general classified as simulators, telepresence systems, fully immersive systems and desktop VR. A virtual learning environment is designed to educate the user. It should at the minimum have an educational objective and preferably only provide users with an experience they would otherwise, within practicality, not be able to experience in the physical world (Taylor, 1994). The usefulness of VR in education can be seen if we separate the technological from the conceptual orientation. There is a big difference between the last one as a mental phenomenon that is developed by a specific technology, and the orientation giving the first role to the technologies used. Under the conceptual point of view, the design and development of a VR system for educational applications focuses on the cognitive, intellectual, social and emotional processes of the student.

Virtual realities in environmental education

133

DISCUSSION

VR and education: a general pedagogical approach Today’s physical environment where the child is shaping up is a more or less electronic world. It is characterized by unformed structures that do not compose a direct reality, but are representations of an easily modified and=or destroyed real or built world. Thus, difficulties in perception, understanding, conservation and formation of stable conception patterns, do exist. Media set up a symbolic world and culture, and configure the perception of the world and human communication (Becker, 1986, p. 43). Thus, children show a strong tendency to communicate and acquire experience from the world. But this is a mainly visual tendency having a passive state, without provoking autonomous thinking processes attained by active speech and participation (Bruner, 1974). Computers in the educational process, provoke and undoubtedly give an impulse to thinking processes contributing against the withdrawal of the student from the real world (Hentig, 1984, p. 30). Of course, we have to keep in mind that experience, knowledge, skills’ acquirement, as well as the change of an ability into a skill, presuppose active participation and interactivity. Educators have to search for didactic positions that will help students to acquire knowledge in a continuously changing world. This search is directed to both learning and instruction theories and to media that are the space where the child develops. Our belief is that cyberspace belongs to this space. According to the modern theories of social and human sciences, space is not only mathematical but is also invested with subjective, social and technological factors. More specifically, the relationship between human beings and space has been studied by the psychology of ecological evolution (Bronnfenbrenner, 1981) and anthropological pedagogy (Bollnow, 1983). These theories consider space a children’s activity environment, which positively affects the processes of knowledge-beliefs, understanding, abilities, skills and practice acquirement (Schulz, 1986). This relationship has been studied through the concepts of sociocultural, physical or artificial environments. We believe that VR is a tool for the study of these three kinds of environments in both micro and macro worlds. In pedagogy, the environment and the didactic context is an important parameter that coexists with students and educators. It is a source of stimuli for learning and education and an instruction arena bringing school life closer to real life. VR is placed in this environment, and we will try to show its learning involvement. Humans and especially students do not have a deterministic behaviour in space. They create their own relationships with it and become a subject of this relationship. Students exploit the above relationship as a tool or medium for mental models, communication, action practices and intervention in the environment. The pedagogical process has to go out of the school environment where this is possible, or to import the real world into the classroom (Reinhardt, 1992). These two become possible with the introduction of VR in the educational process,

134

Mikropoulos et al.

offering a taste of reality through experiences in time–space terms. Space is distinguished by ‘space-object’, ‘space-representation’ and ‘space-action’. VR, involving all these, makes students’ actions more attainable, and their intervention more conscious. The set ‘mental models – activities in space’ forms an important mechanism for children’s relationships with the physical, anthropogenic and social environment (Piaget and Inhelder, 1971). In our paradigm, the lake is the physical environment, the phenomenon of eutrophication is the anthropogenic, and the formation of conscious positions for protection of the environment, the social one. We believe that VR helps to activate mechanisms for direct communication with the physical world, develops observation, recognition, assimilation, expression and intervention of the students in the physical world. It also strengthens the ability to create mental models and to transform them into representations in real conditions. Students do not simply imagine but combine causes with results and the imminent development zone is strengthened. This results in a transfer from ‘learning by doing’ to the ‘doing is learning’ process (Krueger, 1991, p. 192). This is not achieved by adapting people to technology, but by adapting technology to them.

Virtual realities in education A VR system shows and exploits pedagogical principles (Bricken, 1990). Passive learning is transformed into active with the experiential education provided from virtual environments. In a virtual environment the scale, information density, interaction and response, the time and the degree of user participation, can be defined and altered. Virtual learning environments allow the students to exercise different facets of their minds, which is not encouraged by symbolic interaction with ordinary computer systems. At the same time, the students’ collaboration and socialization skills are developed, with the participation of many users in the same virtual environment (Stuart and Thomas, 1991). Virtual worlds could present a variety of causal laws rather than teaching facts or concepts. VR is connected with natural behaviour. Programming, keyboard and mouse usage are replaced by more natural actions, such as friendly three-dimensional manipulators, speech, gestures and motion. In this way, the students and the system interact using physical objects without the need of any explanation. VR plays an important role in one of the main aims of education, i.e. problem detection and solving. User participation into the virtual environment exploits the cognitive context of the interfacing systems involved through the natural characteristics of virtual objects. Thus, the machine becomes ‘invisible’ and does not limit the user to achieve his=her main goal. Concerning the conceptual basis for education applications of VR, Winn (1993) proposes that constructivism is the best one for building a theory of learning in virtual environments. Although Winn connects constructivism with fully immersive VR systems: we believe that his assumptions are fulfilled with desktop systems too.

Virtual realities in environmental education

135

Users in desktop VR systems are not immersed in virtual worlds, although there are such possibilities, but they get ‘windows’ to the virtual worlds. The most important reasons for the use of desktop VR in education are (Mikropoulos et al., 1995): • • • • •

allows extreme close-up examination of an object; allows learners to proceed through an experience at their own pace; provides experience with new technologies through actual use; requires interaction, (encourages active participation rather than passivity); allows expandability to an immersive and telepresence system, although immersion causes the VR sickness; and • the cost for the classroom routine, using personal computers available at schools. Especially in environmental education, we believe that VR provides the following possibilities, expanding the ones reported by Stuart and Thomas (1991); • explores existing places and things that students would not otherwise have access to; • explores real things that, without alterations of scale in size and time, could not otherwise be examined effectively; and • interacts with real people in imaginary spaces to support interactive design. We believe that VR not only contributes to the realization of the learning processes as introduced by constructivism, but also gives opportunities to the students to get out of the limited school environment in space and time domains, experientially and physically in an indirect way. They have the opportunity to make creative leaps in the space of imagination and mental models that contribute to the modification of learning processes and intervention in the real world.

Virtual realities and environmental education The aims of environmental education are cognitive (understanding of concepts with environmental characters), scientific (analysis and synthesis of results, conclusions), the development of skills, and social (responsibility, participation, collaboration). It also has an interdisciplinary approach. The connection between environment and education is pursued in three ways: as a discipline ‘about the environment’, as a learning tool ‘from and through the environment’, and as a point of care ‘for the environment’, all of them acting in parallel. Investigating the goals and practice of environmental education, we find out that it has parallel ambitions with virtual environments, favouring learning through senses, providing a sense of freedom and reducing the tendency for homogeneous behaviour. The results of an empirical research by Taylor (1994) show that virtual reality is a potentially beneficial tool in environmental education; especially VR applications that allow students to ‘visit’ natural environments. The suggestions made by Pantelidis (1994) on when to use VR in education, are adapted well regarding VR as a tool in environmental education. So, we use VR when:

136

Mikropoulos et al.

• teaching using the real thing is impossible, dangerous and inconvenient; • mistakes made by the learner using the real thing could be harmful to the environment; • interacting with a model is as motivating or more motivating than interacting with a real thing; • the experience of creating a simulated environment or model is important to the learning objective; • visualization, manipulation and rearrangement of information is needed, so as to become more easily understood, using graphic symbols; • developing participatory environments and activities that can only exist as computer-generated worlds. As one can see, the use of VR favours knowledge acquisition about the environment, hoping that it will give a future life attitude and care for the physical environment.

Project LAKE (virtuaL Approach to the Kernel of Eutrophication) The instructional development model we used for our virtual environments follows a generalized four-dimensional model, consisting of the definition, design, development and dissemination of virtual learning environments (Taylor, 1994).

Definition Our model of the mechanism of eutrophication is a continuous, dynamic and deterministic one. The initial assumptions are a shallow lake, and an increase in the amount of salts coming from surrounding agricultural activities. Although there are some mathematical models for the eutrophication processes in lakes (Del Furia et al., 1995) we do not take into account rigorous quantitative relations for the variables included. Because of the didactic aims in our first approach, we do not give a structural description of all components and processes and the equations related to them. This will probably be included in our model after the first results of the empirical research currently carried out. The steps for the development of eutrophic situations have been simplified in order for them to be understood easily. Thus the increase in the usage of fertilisers causes an increase in phosphates in the lake, which causes increase in plankton, which consumes the dissolved oxygen, leading to a decrease in the fish population. At the same time, the lake water turns green because of the plankton, and the vegetation around the lake grows. The decision variables are the rate of increase in fertilisers into the lake, and the initial populations of fish and plankton. The responsive variables are the final quantities of fish, plankton and oxygen. Events happening in the environment are the variation of oxygen, and the fish and plankton populations. The objectives of the virtual environment are the discovery of the factors involved in eutrophic lakes (biotic and abiotic ones) and their relation, the consequences of the phenomenon and the development of students’ critical abilities (responsibilities and environmental consciousness).

Virtual realities in environmental education

137

Design The final form of LAKE gives the user the possibility to interact, participate, intervene and determine the degree of the pollution, as well as to follow the evolution of the phenomenon and the results of his=her choices. Before this, we believe that a stage for the observation of some stable conditions having different degrees of pollution would be useful. In this way, the students will each interact with the virtual worlds for an initial period of observation and navigation at their will. Because some students will be hyperactive and others almost still, each will observe different objects and situations. They will discover that they will have some different experiences, and thus they can acquire knowledge by communicating among them, just as real scientists do (Krueger, 1991, p. 192). The virtual environment we have developed offers possibilities to understand related concepts and to observe the behaviour of the system directly using the conceptualization tools of the students without making reference to data representation techniques or languages. The students perceive the system directly and have some control over the behaviour of the system or structure depending on the flexibility of the system itself (Degli Antoni and Pizzi, 1991). The general characteristics of the virtual environment contain possibilities for the evolution of ready made scenarios, charts showing the time dependence of the main variables and different views. The student can also dive into the lake, move and manipulate objects, or even be a fish.

Development The hardware requirement for the desktop VR system is a powerful IBM compatible personal computer equipped with Superscape VRT software. It allows users to build their own virtual worlds and enables the end user to walk around and interact with the virtual world using a variety of peripheral devices, such as a spaceball, a three-dimensional spacemouse, a joystick, or even a data glove and a head-mounted display. Concerning the structure of the world, it consists of the lake limits (bottom, surface, walls), the inner objects (fish, oxygen, plankton, salts), the outer objects (vegetation, landscape) and various hints (Fig. 1). All virtual objects have physical properties (gravity, velocity, angular velocity, friction, etc.), as well as behaviour rules. The whole approach is fully object orientated and event driven. The factors involved in the design of the application are the degree of naturalism of the representations, the accuracy of the object behaviour, the different viewpoints, and the degree of interactivity and experimentation. Concerning the naturalism Stuart and Thomas (1991) report that there are two different types of representations in cyberspace. One representation uses naturalistic scenes that semi-realistically display objects, attributes and relationships. The other uses abstract scenes in which objects, attributes and relationships are not as they appear in the real world, but are designed to highlight conceptual relationships. In our approach we give the most possible naturalism to objects well known to

138

Mikropoulos et al.

Figure 1. An inner view of the virtual lake under construction (one can see some fish swimming, the representations of plankton and salt, and some reed grasses outside the lake)

children (fish, plants) (Fig. 2), but we choose some simple representations for plankton, oxygen and salts (different colour spheres), objects invisible to the naked eye. The bottom and the walls of the lake have some naturalism so that they do not prevent the smooth run of the program. Simulated fish behave like real ones, having their own code. Representations of salt and plankton can be found in the lake, and oxygen bubbles up from the bottom to the surface of the lake where it is destroyed. The user has a variety of choices for viewpoints outside or inside the lake (Fig. 3), and can follow or drive a fish. The user is informed about the values of the parameters involved, and the degree of eutrophication, things that are not obvious from direct experience. The software has a hypermedia character and consists of four linked virtual environments. The first one is for the students to become familiar with the working environments and the peripheral devices, as well as the conventions and representations that have been chosen. The rest of the worlds show the three conditions of the lake (no, little and a high degree of eutrophication). The virtual worlds have 15 viewpoints. There are views inside or outside the lake, start views for free or standard navigation, and views for the informing and help of users (objects–actors, variables and their relations, consequences of the phenomenon).

Virtual realities in environmental education

139

Figure 2. A three-dimensional fish (for the naturalism of the object it consists of 275 facets; for animation of the fish 33 appropriate frames are needed)

The interconnections of the virtual worlds, the choice of the viewpoints, and the navigation are limitless. The software is developed in such a way that the user can use any input device for navigation (joystick, mouse, or three-dimensional device). The difference in the degree of eutrophication in each of the three worlds is represented by the different colours of lake bottom, walls, surface and the informative screens. Moreover, there are differences between the quantities of alive and dead fish, dissolved salts, plankton, plants around the lake, and the rates of oxygen formation.

Dissemination For the evaluation of the developed virtual worlds, we have designed a pilot empirical research. Its main goal is to see if virtual environments function as a cognitive tool beyond their role as experience enhancers, especially for the understanding of complex phenomena. Other goals are optimization of the software through feedback from the users, and the improvement of the methodology we have followed. The subjects of the study are 31 students of the Department of Primary Education, future teachers. An initial questionnaire records the knowledge of the students on

140

Mikropoulos et al.

Figure 3. An outer view of the virtual lake (the user may dive into the lake using any input device)

the phenomenon of eutrophication, their experience on computers and VR, as well as their attitude to new technologies in education. In general the sample has a homogeneous behaviour. Students have some experience on computer use, no experience on VR, and they have a positive attitude towards new technologies in the educational process. Students’ knowledge on the phenomenon of eutrophication disperses. The sample is divided into three groups. Each of them is engaged with the phenomenon of eutrophication using a different medium. The first uses text and pictures, the second a hypermedia=multimedia application developed by our group, and the last one uses the virtual worlds. By comparison of the initial and final questionnaire we investigate the efficiency of each medium. The third group also gives us feedback of the sense of using virtual environments for the first time, the interaction with different navigation devices, and opinions for improvement of the virtual worlds. The first results show that students have a positive response to the use of virtual learning environments. This concerns a sense of freedom navigating in cyberspace, and mental skill development. Quantitative results follow in a forthcoming paper. There are two prospects for the optimization, concerning technical and operational orientations. The first includes some more natural peripherals and the usage of

Virtual realities in environmental education

141

sound, the second at an increase in interactivity and the users’ possibility for experimentation. CONCLUSIONS The present work proposes virtual environments for environmental education, specializing in eutrophic lakes. Although the system is not immersive, it gives the opportunity to students and educators to develop their own worlds, to live in them and to understand the population dynamics in the lake. For this reason, the environment contains artificial reality too. The learning environment can be manipulated and controlled in a powerful way, constructing knowledge and sensitizing the students for the current environmental situation. Our pedagogical approach is to built a theoretical model for virtual learning environments, expanding constructivism and combining it with experiential learning, and sensory ergonomics. This will be achieved not only by the use, manipulation and combination of virtual objects to construct new complex ones by the students, but also by building totally new objects and tools for the understanding of new concepts and ideas. Moreover, virtual environments will bring the real world into the classroom and vice versa, leading to experiential learning through VR. Our operational and practical approach is to exploit the characteristics of desktop VR systems, and mainly the first person-user-viewpoint that has complete movement at will in real time. It is also the ability of the user to manipulate and=or change the virtual environments by natural actions in real time. The final purpose is to ‘hide’ the computer, building an ‘invisible’ interface for communication with virtual worlds. REFERENCES Becker, G. U. (1986) Erfahrungen aus erter Hand-Erfahrungen aus zweiter Hand. Westermanns Paedagogische Beitrage H2, pp 40. Bollnow, O. F. (1983) Anthropologishe Paedagogik. Stuttgart: Hauptverlag. Bricken, W. (1990) Learning in virtual reality. Report No. HITL-M-90-5. University of Washington. Bronnfenbrenner, U. (1981) Die Oekologie der Menschlichen Entwicklung. Stuttgart: Klett. Bruner, J. S. (1974) Entwurfeiner Unterrichts Theorie. Berlin: Schwann. Degli Antoni, G. and Pizzi, R. (1991) Virtuality as a basis for problem solving? Artificial Intelligence and Society 5 239–254. Del Furia, L., Rizzoli, A. and Arditi R. (1995) Lakemaker: a general object-oriented software tool for modelling the eutrophication process in lakes. Environmental Software 10 43–64. Helsel, S. K. (1992) Virtual reality and education. Educational Technology May 38–42. Hentig, H. (1984) Das Allmaehliche Verschwinden der Wirklichkeit. Muenchen: Hanser. Krueger, M. W. (1991) Artificial Reality II. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley. Mikropoulos, T. A., Katsikis, A., and Chalkidis, A. (1995) Virtual environments for environmental education. In Proceedings of ED-MEDIA ‘95 World Conference on

142

Mikropoulos et al.

Educational Multimedia & Hypermedia. H. Maurer (ed.), Graz, June, pp. 788. Pantelidis, V. S. (1994) Suggestions on when to use and when not to use virtual reality in education. Report. East Carolina University. Piaget, J. and Inhelder, B. (1971) Die Entwicklung des Raeumeichen Denkens Beim Kinde. Stuttgart: Klett. Reinhardt, K. (1992) Oeffnung der Schule. Basel: Weinheim. Schulz, W. (1986) Die Lehrtheoretische Didaktik. In H. Gudjons and R. Winkel (eds), Didaktische Theorien. pp 29–45. Hamburg: Bergmann & Herbig. Stuart, R. and Thomas, J. C. (1991) The implications of education in cyberspace. Multimedia Review Summer 17–27. Taylor, L. G. (1994) The potential role of virtual reality in environmental education, unpublished MSc thesis, The Ohio State University, OH. Waterworth, J. A (1995) HCI design as sensory ergonomics: creating synaesthetic media. Report No. 7. Proceedings of IRIS-18, Gothenburg Studies in Informatics. Winn, W. (1993) A conceptual basis for educational applications of virtual reality. Available: ftp.u.washington.edu, =public=VirtualReality=. August.