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Multisensory immersion as a modeling environment for learning complex scientific concepts

Dede, C., Salzman, M., Loftin, B., & Sprague, D. (accepted for publication). Multisensory immersion as a modeling environment for learning complex scientific concepts. To appear in Nancy Roberts, Wallace Feurzeig, and Beverly Hunter, Computer modeling and simulation in science education. New York: Springer-Verlag.

Abstract

The virtual reality interface has the potential to complement existing approaches to model-based instruction about science. An overarching theme in our ScienceSpace research is to develop a theory of how multisensory immersion aids learning. In our virtual worlds, we can simultaneously provide learners with 3-D representations; multiple perspectives and frames-of-reference; a multimodal interface; simultaneous visual, auditory, and haptic feedback; and types of interaction unavailable in the real world (e.g., seeing through objects, flying like Superman, teleporting). With careful design, these capabilities all can synthesize to create a profound sense of motivation and concentration conducive to mastering complex, abstract material.

By themselves becoming part of phenomena, learners gain direct experiential intuitions about how the natural world operates. Instructional design can make those aspects of virtual environments that are useful in understanding scientific principles salient to learners' senses; and multisensory cues can heighten this saliency. Our experimental results indicate that transducing data and abstract concepts into mutually reinforcing multisensory representations is a valuable means of enhancing understanding of scientific models. Providing experiences that leverage human pattern recognition capabilities in three-dimensional space, such as shifting among various frames-of-reference (points of view), also extends the perceptual nature of a visualization. In addition, the social construction of knowledge among students immersed in a shared virtual environment may enable innovative, powerful types of collaborative learning.

Overall, we believe that these various aspects of multisensory immersion, when applied to scientific models, can provide learners with experiential metaphors and analogies that aid in understanding complex phenomena remote from their everyday experience and can help in displacing intuitive misconceptions with alternative, more accurate mental models. This chapter describes the unique contribution of our virtual reality research to model-based learning of complex scientific concepts. Beyond its implications for model-based learning of science, we believe that our research illuminates larger issues related to students understanding complex information spaces.

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