Immersive Teaching and Learning Environments

我的研究计划将研究推进沉浸式技术的新机会，以提升中学后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）技术进行远程教学和学习具有深远的影响。当前教育系统缺乏无障碍环境，可能成为不同社会经济背景（例如加拿大偏远社区）学生的障碍。远程学习可以弥合这些障碍，VR技术非常适合提供沉浸式远程学习体验。目前的远程学习通常仅限于计算机屏幕和视频会议。它的体验与学生在实体课堂上遇到的体验相去甚远。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，实践学习内容的有效个性化以及持续的学习激励。我的团队将围绕三个主题来应对这些挑战：主题1：沉浸式虚拟学校：我的团队将设计和实现一个可扩展的、可访问的虚拟学校平台，学生们将能够在VR中与老师和其他人进行充分的互动，同时将他们的身体表现为虚拟化身。我们将研究可访问的用户界面的空间运动和协作，以适应学生不同的能力来访问技术。主题二：沉浸式个性化学习：我的团队将概念化并实施VR内容创建的新方法，根据所需的主题领域为学生提供实践学习体验。我们将开发用户建模技术，以支持使用眼动跟踪技术的个性化学习体验。主题三：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。我的研究计划的总体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，我和我的HQP将致力于设计和实施一套沉浸式界面、技术和方法，以适应不同的学生需求、虚拟环境的自适应个性化以及学生学习的内在动机游戏化。这项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，提升不同社会经济背景学生的沉浸式学习体验，并最终减少远程教育的障碍，特别是在COVID-19大流行后的时代。

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.