Development of cutting-edge geoscience virtual reality applications for classroom instruction and pedagogical evaluation of the impact on learning of VR technology

利用从先前开发的虚拟龙卷风雷暴中获得的知识，正在开发一个虚拟的火山活动，使学生能够像火山学家那样进行发现。越来越复杂和逼真的虚拟现实应用为教育用途提供了巨大的潜力；然而，有限的测试已经完成，看看这种现象的现实表现是否显着提高学习。虚拟龙卷风风暴是一个很好的测试平台，因为它展示了迄今为止任何地球科学现象的最视觉逼真的虚拟现实表示，并包括完整的数据探测能力。科学写作启发式是一种新颖的教学方法，基于引导探究的概念来学习科学，它被用来指导活动，并提示学生对数据的推理，这些任务显示出大大提高学习效果。虚拟火山活动改进了虚拟龙卷风风暴，允许用户设计系统的初始条件（例如，构造环境，岩浆成分），火山类型和喷发风格是初始输入的函数。目前正在广泛的学校和环境中测试这两种活动对学生学习的影响，包括一所城市环境中的两年制学院，一所西班牙裔人口较多的大学，一所非裔人口占主导地位的大学，以及三所位于该国地质和地理不同地区的研究型学校，以便衡量对美国学生群体中具有代表性的一部分的影响。正在进行广泛的访谈，以确定对龙卷风和火山的普遍理解或误解，并提出指导虚拟工具开发和使用的自利问题。正在开发与模拟相结合的适当教学方法。这些方法将极大地影响未来在广泛的教育环境中模拟的发展和实施。

Earth System Science (40)Using knowledge gained from prior development of a virtual tornadic thunderstorm, a virtual volcano activity is being developed to permit students to make discoveries as a volcanologist would. Increasingly sophisticated and realistic virtual reality applications offer great potential for educational use; however, limited testing has been done to see if such realistic representations of phenomena significantly improve learning. The virtual tornadic storm serves as an excellent test bed because it demonstrates the most visually realistic virtual reality representation of any geoscience phenomenon yet developed and includes full data probing capabilities. Science writing heuristic, a novel teaching approach based around concepts of guided inquiry to the learning of science, is being used to guide activities and prompt student reasoning about data, tasks shown to considerably improve learning. The virtual volcano activity improves upon the virtual tornadic storm by allowing the user to design the initial conditions of the system (e.g., tectonic setting, magma composition), with the type of volcano and eruptive style being a function of the initial input. Testing of the impact of both activities on student learning is being conducted in a broad range of schools and settings, including a two-year college in an urban setting, a university with a large Hispanic population, a university with a dominant African-American population, and three research schools in both geologically and geographically different parts of the country so that impacts on a representative subset of the American student population are being measured. Extensive interviewing is being performed to determine prevailing understandings or misconceptions about tornadoes and volcanoes and to develop self-interest questions that guide the development and use of the virtual tools. Appropriate teaching approaches to use with the simulations are being developed. These approaches will greatly impact future development and implementation of simulations across a broad range of educational settings.