Evaluation of a Virtual Reality Game for Education - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

About This Presentation
Title:

Evaluation of a Virtual Reality Game for Education

Description:

teaching fashion than that of. conventional educational software. ... commercial games and therefore. they have high expectations from. the game environment. ... – PowerPoint PPT presentation

Number of Views:347
Avg rating:3.0/5.0
Slides: 20
Provided by: BigCityC8
Category:

less

Transcript and Presenter's Notes

Title: Evaluation of a Virtual Reality Game for Education


1
Evaluation of a Virtual Reality Game for
Education
Maria Virvou, Constantinos Manos, George
Katsionis, Kalliopi Tourtoglou
Department of Informatics University of
Piraeus Piraeus 18534, Greece
mvirvou_at_unipi.gr kman_at_singular.gr
gkatsion_at_singular.gr ktourtog_at_internet.gr
2
Evaluation of educational software
Evaluation is a crucial part of the design
process of educational software that has to be
iterative to a large extend.
The educational material must be tried out on
students and refined and then tried again and the
cycle continued for as long as necessary (Jones
et al.,1993)
3
The Multi-Tutor Game
  • A virtual reality game that teaches students
  • several subjects such as mathematics, history,
  • geography and spelling.
  • It aims at increasing student's engagement by
  • providing a popular and motivating VR environment.

4
The Multi-Tutor Game
Each domain is taught in a different VR world
  • History is taught in a virtual world of lands
  • with castles and warriors.
  • Biology is taught in a virtual water
  • world.
  • Spelling is taught in a virtual world of
  • woods.
  • Mathematics is taught in a virtual
  • world of planets of the outer space.

5
Images
6
The Multi-Tutor Game
  • The player tries to reach the
  • "land of knowledge" and find the
  • treasure which is hidden there.
  • To achieve this, the player has to
  • obtain a good score, which is
  • accumulated by all four domains.
  • The game aims at motivating students
  • to have a good standard in lessons
  • which are different from each other.

7
The Multi-Tutor Game
  • Common student modelling component
  • for all four domains.
  • Error diagnosis The student receives
  • points for his/her total score
  • depending on the severity of the error.
  • Domain independent student features are
  • common for all four domains (e.g carelessness/
  • carefulness of the student)

8
Evaluation
One important aspect of the evaluation is the
reason why educational software is adopted in the
first place , i.e. what the underlying rationale
is (Jones et al.,1993)
In the case of the Multi-Tutor Game, the
objective was To make educational software
more engaging and motivating than other forms of
software while retaining and even improving the
underlying reasoning mechanisms.
9
Parts of the evaluation
One part Comparison between The Multi-Tutor
Game and educational software with a
conventional user interface but with the same
underlying reasoning mechanisms.
Second part Finding out the extend to which
the Multi-Tutor Game could be used by children at
their leisure time.
10
Classroom experiment participants
  • 16 school children of 11-12 years old.
  • 4 human teachers of history,
  • biology, spelling and mathematics
  • respectively.
  • 2 computer assistants.

11
Classroom experiment
  • A class of 16 school children
  • were divided into two groups of
  • 8 children.
  • The first group were given the
  • the Multi-Tutor Game to work with.
  • The second group were given
  • educational software with a simple
  • interface but with the same
  • underlying mechanisms.

12
Classroom experiment results
  • After having interacted with the software,
  • the players of the Multi-Tutor Game
  • remembered the correct answers to a
  • higher extend than the other group.
  • This showed that the game had
  • achieved its aim of being at least
  • as effective as conventional educational
  • software in the learning outcomes
  • (in fact slightly better)

13
Classroom experiment results
Time On average, the students who had used the
Multi-Tutor Game had spent more time with the
system. a) More to explore the game. b) More
time to read lessons. This showed that the
Multi-Tutor Game was indeed more engaging.
14
Classroom experiment results
  • Interviews
  • The players of the Multi-Tutor Game
  • were fascinated by the idea of a
  • game in the classroom.
  • They were more enthusiastic about the
  • software they had used than the other
  • group of students.

15
Lab experiment
  • Assessment of the entertaining effects
  • of the Multi-Tutor Game.
  • 20 children of 11-12 years old from
  • the same school and class.
  • No human teachers present.
  • 3 computer assistants.

16
Lab experiment results
  • Since the game was not a school
  • assignment, children focused
  • on the game environment.
  • 73 pointed out that the game
  • would be better as a game if
  • it was more adventurous with
  • more sounds and more virtual
  • objects.

17
Lab experiment results
  • 46 commented on the educational
  • aspect of the game and said
  • they had liked it.
  • 35 made no comment.
  • 19 said that they were annoyed by
  • the fact that the game reminded
  • them of the school syllabus.
  • However, most of them remembered what
  • they had learned from the game in
  • the domain of lessons.

18
Conclusions
  • Children would be quite happy
  • to work with a computer game
  • which represents a more amusing
  • teaching fashion than that of
  • conventional educational software.
  • The educational benefits of the
  • game are at least as good as
  • those of conventional educational
  • software.

19
Future work
  • Children are quite familiar with
  • commercial games and therefore
  • they have high expectations from
  • the game environment.
  • The virtual environment of the Multi-Tutor
  • Game is planned to be enhanced in
  • the near future.
Write a Comment
User Comments (0)
About PowerShow.com