Investigating Virtual Reality as A Situated Learning Tool for Supporting General Education

PhD Thesis Proposal Defence


Title: "Investigating Virtual Reality as A Situated Learning Tool for 
Supporting General Education"

by

Mr. Zhenjie ZHAO


Abstract:

General education courses like culture, history, and oral communication 
are hard to be taught in classrooms due to the lack of authentic contexts. 
Virtual reality (VR) can offer immersive environments for a situated 
learning experience, and is also well grounded in learning theory, 
constructivism in particular, which encourages learning from experiences. 
However, there are still few existing guidelines on how to design such VR 
situated learning systems to support general education. The situated 
cognition theory suggests three key principles of situated learning: an 
authentic learning context, social interaction and collaboration, and 
progressively training. In this dissertation, we conduct three empirical 
studies to investigate the three principles separately in the context of 
general education with VR.

In the first study, we propose ShadowPlay2.5D, a 360-degree video 
authoring tool for immersive appreciation of classical Chinese poetry. 
Because of the lack of authentic contexts, learning and appreciating 
classical Chinese poetry is challenging. Using Chinese shadow play as a 
metaphor, we design and implement a sketch-based authoring tool to help 
novices create 360-degree videos of classical Chinese poetry easily. 
Through two user studies, we show that ShadowPlay2.5D can help novices 
make a short 360-degree video in about 10-15 minutes, and the 2.5D 
stylized illustrations created can bring about a better immersive 
experience for poetry appreciation. In the second study, we propose Live 
Emoji, a live storytelling VR system with programmable cartoon-style 
emotion embodiment. While existing storytelling systems for democratizing 
VR technology, e.g., Google VR Tour, have contexts and use 360-degree 
images to immerse users in a real environment, how to engage learners in a 
socially interactive and collaborative way is difficult. The emerging live 
streaming shows the role of a presenter, especially the conveyance of 
emotion, for promoting audience involvement and enjoyment. To lower the 
requirement of emotion embodiment, we borrow experience from cartoon 
animation and comics, and propose a novel cartoon-style hybrid emotion 
embodiment model to increase a storyteller’s presence during live 
performance, which contains an avatar with six basic emotions and 
auxiliary multimodal display to enhance emotion expressing. We further 
design and implement a system to teleoperate the embodiment model in VR 
for live storytelling. We conduct two preliminary qualitative studies to 
explore the potential of the hybrid model and the storytelling system, 
including interviews with three experts and a workshop study with local 
secondary school students. Results show the potential of the VR 
storytelling system for education. In the third study, we explore whether 
a VR coach with embodied feedback can foster a simulated situated learning 
e xperience. Although off-the-shelf 3D scenes or contexts for practicing 
elevator speech exist, it is non-trivial to design training strategies for 
developing learners’ skills progressively. To inform the design, we 
interview experts and observe real elevator speeches. We then design a VR 
coaching system with three different embodied feedback strategies. Through 
a between-subject experiment with 40 participants, we find that receiving 
embodied feedback can create a stronger sense of cognitive apprenticeship, 
i.e., coaching and helping from experts, and also help improve the 
perception of the virtual character and the effect of learning.

Through the three studies, we summarize important design guidelines of VR 
systems for supporting general education from different aspects of 
situated learning. Finally, we conclude the dissertation by sketching 
further plans on using natural language to construct VR experiences and 
mixing virtual and physical worlds to enhance learning experiences in VR.


Date:			Friday, 6 December 2019

Time:                  	10:00am - 12:00noon

Venue:                  Room 3494
                         (lifts 25/26)

Committee Members:	Dr. Xiaojuan Ma (Supervisor)
 			Prof. Huamin Qu (Chairperson)
 			Dr. Pedro Sander
 			Prof. Chiew-Lan Tai


**** ALL are Welcome ****