SBIR Phase I: An Easy-to-use Virtual Reality Development Toolkit for Education

这项小企业创新研究（SBIR）第一阶段项目的更广泛影响/商业潜力是开发一个易于使用的虚拟现实（VR）工具包，以实现教育虚拟现实体验的快速开发和部署。2019冠状病毒病大流行表明，实现远程学习的技术对各级教育至关重要。然而，教师通常不使用这些技术，因为他们不了解如何在课程中有意义地部署这些技术。为了让VR在教育中发挥作用，它不仅必须易于学习者使用，而且必须易于教师学习使用。这个项目将创建一个用户友好的工具包，教育工作者可以用它来创建有针对性的、特定学科的VR教育体验。这种学习工具可能成为未来教育的重要组成部分，因为它将为所有年龄和教育水平的不同学生群体提供访问，这些学生可能无法亲自出席（由于疾病，位置或其他社会或社会经济障碍）完成课程和课程。这个小企业创新研究（SBIR）第一阶段项目填补了行业空白和教育模拟的未解决需求。对学生和教师的研究表明，他们都希望将VR体验作为对可消费教学内容的更广泛需求的一部分。然而，开发这种内容存在两个相互关联的技术障碍：(1)开发现有数字资源可用于创建VR资产的管道；(2)在K-12和高等教育的非标准化计算环境中为非技术用户创建整体用户体验。目前最先进的VR系统对于非技术用户来说往往过于复杂，需要用户具备广泛的编程技能，而许多教育工作者却没有。该项目旨在开发方法，轻松地从非VR数字资源中创建VR资产，并围绕教学设计的“向后设计”方法构建用户体验（UX）。通过构建手势界面的最新功能来反映与物理空间和对象的交互，并开发模板来指导教学设计师完成这一过程，该项目将使教学设计师能够开发出现实的、引人注目的、具有教育价值的VR学习体验。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project is to develop an easy-to-use virtual reality (VR) toolkit to enable rapid development and deployment of educational VR experiences. The COVID-19 pandemic made it clear that technology to enable remote learning is critical to education at all levels. However, instructors often do not use these technologies because they lack understanding of how to meaningfully deploy it in their courses. In order for VR to be useful in education, it must not just be easy for learners to use, but also must be easy for instructors to learn to use it. This project will create a user-friendly toolkit with which educators can create targeted, subject-specific, VR educational experiences. This learning tool may become an important part of future education as it will provide access for a diverse group of students of all ages and education levels who may be unable to be physically present (due to illness, location, or other social or socio-economic obstacles) to complete courses and curricula where on-site attendance is not possible.This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project fills an industry gap and unaddressed demand for educational simulations. Studies of students and instructors have shown that both want VR experiences as part of a broader demand for consumable instructional content. Developing this content, however, presents two interconnected technical hurdles: (1) developing pipelines by which existing digital resources can be used to create VR assets, and (2) creating a holistic user experience for non-technical users in the non-standardized computing environment of K-12 and higher education. Current state-of-the-art VR systems are often too complicated for non-technical users, requiring the user to have extensive programming skills, which many educators do not. This project seeks to develop methods to easily create VR assets from non-VR digital resources and a user experience (UX) structured around the “backward design” approach to instructional design. By building on the latest functionality for gestural interfaces to reflect interactions with physical spaces and objects, and developing templates to guide the instructional designer through the process, this project will enable instructional designers to develop realistic, compelling, and educationally valuable VR learning experiences.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.