Immersive Teaching and Learning Environments

我的研究项目将研究推进沉浸式技术的新机会，以提升高等教育学生的远程教学和学习体验，并减少教育障碍。利用虚拟现实（VR）技术进行远程教学具有深远的影响。当前教育体系缺乏可及性，可能成为来自不同社会经济背景（例如加拿大偏远社区）的学生的障碍。远程学习可以跨越这些障碍，VR技术非常适合提供身临其境的远程学习体验。目前的远程学习通常局限于电脑屏幕和视频会议。它的体验与学生在实际课堂上的体验相去甚远。现有的VR教育技术仍在发展中，并受到一些限制，包括缺乏可访问的沉浸式协作，有效的个性化实践学习内容，以及对学习的持续激励。我的团队将专注于三个主题来解决这些挑战：主题1：沉浸式虚拟学校：我的团队将设计并实现一个可扩展且可访问的虚拟学校平台，学生将能够在VR中与彼此和教师充分互动，同时将他们的身体表示为虚拟化身。我们将研究可访问的用户界面的空间运动和协作，以适应不同能力的学生访问技术。主题2：沉浸式个性化学习：我的团队将构思和实施VR内容创作的新方法，为学生提供根据所需学科领域的实践学习经验。我们将开发用户建模技术，以支持使用眼动追踪技术的个性化学习体验。主题3：沉浸式游戏化：我的团队将研究和评估沉浸式虚拟学校中的游戏元素，并专注于如何利用游戏化技术来提高学生在沉浸式学习环境中的内在动机和参与度，以及它们对学生学习成果的影响。我的研究项目的首要目标是推进沉浸式技术，使其成为我们社会未来的虚拟学习空间。为了实现这一愿景，我的HQP和我将致力于设计和实现一套沉浸式界面、技术和方法，以满足不同学生的需求，适应虚拟环境的个性化，以及学生学习的内在动机游戏化。该计划将有助于提供有关未来学习技术和未来学习环境的技术见解，为不同社会经济背景的学生提升沉浸式学习体验，并最终减少远程教育的障碍，特别是在后COVID-19大流行时代。

My research program will examine novel opportunities for advancing immersive technologies to elevate remote teaching and learning experiences for post-secondary students and reduce barriers to education. Leveraging virtual reality (VR) technology for remote teaching and learning has far-reaching impacts. Lack of accessibility in the current education system can become a barrier for students in diverse socioeconomic backgrounds (e.g. remote communities in Canada). Remote learning can bridge these barriers and VR technology is well suited for providing an immersive remote learning experience. Current remote learning is often limited to a computer screen and video conferencing. Its experience remains far from what students encounter in the physical classroom. Existing VR technology for education is still developing and suffers from several limitations including the lack of accessible immersive collaborations, effective personalization of hands-on learning content, and consistent motivating stimulus for learning. My team will address these challenges focusing on three themes: Theme 1: Immersive Virtual School: My team will design and implement a scalable and accessible virtual school platform where students will be able to fully interact with each other and the instructor in VR, while having their bodies represented as virtual avatars. We will examine accessible user interfaces for spatial movement and for collaboration that accommodate students with different abilities to access technology. Theme 2: Immersive Personalized Learning: My team will conceptualize and implement novel methodologies for VR content creation that provide students with hands-on learning experiences according to the desired subject area. We will develop user modeling techniques to support personalized learning experiences using eye-tracking technology. Theme 3: Immersive Gamification: My team will research and evaluate gaming elements in the immersive virtual school, and focus on how gamification techniques can be utilized to increase students' intrinsic motivation and engagement in immersive learning environments and their effects on student learning outcomes. My research program's overarching goal is to advance immersive technologies, adapting them to serve as our society's future virtual learning spaces. In order to facilitate this vision, my HQP and I will contribute to the design and implementation of a suite of immersive interfaces, techniques and methodologies that would allow for the accommodation of different student needs, adaptive personalization of the virtual environments, and intrinsically-motivated gamification of student learning. This proposed program will help provide technological insight on future learning technology and future learning environments, elevate immersive learning experiences for students of various socioeconomic backgrounds, and ultimately reduce barriers of remote education, especially in the post COVID-19 pandemic era.