Virtual ReaJity for Education?
Don Allison
Mathematical Sciences Department
SUNY College at Oneonta
Oneonta, NY 13820
01-607-436-3439
allisodl @ oneonta.edu
ABSTRACT
It is still unclear what, if any, impact virtual reality will have on
public education. The virtual reality gorilla system is being used
as a testbed to study if and how virtual reality might be use ful as
an aid in educating middle school children, and to investigate the
issues that arise when building virtual reality systems for
knowledge acquisition and concept formation.
Keywords
Virtual reality, education, middle school.
1. INTRODUCTION
In the late 80's and early 90% Virtual Reality (VR)caugh
the imagination of the public and press, especially the science
fiction reading public. Books by Vernor Vinge, William Gibson,
Neal Stephenson, and others presented an engaging view of the
world in which VR technology was pervasive, and readers
assumed that it wouldn't be too long until the scenarios described
would be fact and not fiction. It seemed everyone wanted their
own personal Holodeck, and based on the press coverage, the
thought it was just a matter of working out a few details until
Holodecks would be generally available. More than one VR
researcher has said that VR was in danger of disappearing into its
own "hype".
One area where the hype was especially intense was
education. With stories in the American press about how schools
were failing to educate students and how test scores were
continually declining, people were searching for a panacea to cure
all the ills of the educational system. There was a contingent of
technophiles in the education community who advocated VR as
the wave of the future in education, although what was meant b
VR was very much in dispute--definitions ranged from a CAVE
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Copyright 2000 ACM 1-58113-3 t6-2/00/0010...$5.00
160
Larry F. Hodges
GVU Center/College of Computing
Georgia Institute of Technology
Atlanta, GA 30332-0280
01-404-894-8787
hodges@cc.gatech.edu
for each student all the way down to web surfing.
2. RELATED WORK
The growing public popularity of virtual reality, combined
with public concern about the education system has resulted in
almost any program that uses a computer display to do something
remotely related to education being touted as being a virtual
reality educational application. Part of this confusion is
engendered by people sometimes referring to any computer
simulation as virtual reality, since the action is taking place inside
of a computer instead of in the real world. This project focuses
on virtual reality in a more restricted sense. One distinguishing
criterion is that it involves simulating an environmen
interactively and viewing the results in an immersive fashion
using a head-tracked display.
There have been relatively few systems bull and tested to
determine the usefulness of a virtual reality system as a tool for
knowledge acquisition. Brelsford[2] reported on a physics
simulator designed to give students better intuition about physics.
In this system the students were given a contro lable length
pendulum and three balls of variable mass. They were allowed to
manipulate gravity, air drag, friction and several initial conditions
and were directed to perform experiments for an hour (after some
introductory instruction about the system). A control group of
students was given a lecture for an hour over the same material.
Four weeks after the exposure, the students were recalled and
given a surprise exam over material covered in the experiments.
Both the junior high and the college student groups who had
experimented in the virtual laboratory showed better retention
than the groups who had been given the lecture
The University of Washington's Human Interface
Technology Lab (HITL) has also been doing some work on
systems to test the uses o f virtual reality in education. One
system that they had proposed, which was targeted at K -12
education, was the Spatial Algebra system of Winn and
Bricken[8]. To address the conceptual difficulties some students
had mastering basic algebraic manipulations required to transform
expressions and solve equations, they proposed constructing a
system where variables and constants were represented by boxes,
and operations were represented by relative positions of these
boxes. The students would manipulate these boxes instead of the
formal symbols of the equation being solved. Unfortunately, this
system wasn't implemented, so any discussion of possible results
is just speculation.
A second project that has seen a couple of incarnations uses
virtual reality to teach K-12 students about virtual reality itself.
Run initially as a summer camp[3], it has more recently been
implemented as the Virtual Reality Roving Vehicle Project[7].
As the VRRV, this project had two phases, both of which
involved installing a complete VR system (with HMD, trackers
for head and hand, audio, and a hand held interface "wand") into
a van. This van was then driven to the participating schools. The
first phase of the project involved going to a school, giving a
presentation about VR, a nd then spending the rest of the da
demonstrating commercially produced virtual worlds to a select
group of students. In the second phase, selected classes were
allowed to build (with help from the project researchers) their
own virtual worlds. These worlds were organized around
teacher-chosen content area. Preliminary results indicated tha
participants who actually constructed virtual worlds learned the
content material equally well, regardless of general ability, and
ended the experience with consistently better attitudes toward
science and computers.
The Electronic Visualization Lab (EVL) at the University of
Illinois at Chicago has recently begun experimenting with using
their CAVE as an educational tool for young children. They have
constructed a virtual garden in which the children can plant and
tend various flowers and vegetables, and learn about gardening
and working together[6]. In addition to allowing several children
to collaborate together in the CAVE, other children can be at
remote sites and help work in the garden.
Building on their experiences with the NICE project, as it
was known, the EVL has implemented a new instructional virtua
environment, the Round Earth project[5]. The goal of this virtual
environment is to help teach concepts that are counter-intuitive to
the mental model of the world the children have. The specific
focus of this system is on the fact that the earth is round, even
though our experience seems to show it as flat, and some of the
ramifications that would follow if the earth really were round
instead of flat.
Finally, there is the ScienceSpace collection of virtual
worlds[4] whose intent is to help children understand difficult
nonintuitive concepts from physics. Consisting so far of three
virtual worlds, these three environments focus on concepts fro
mechanics and Newton's laws of motion (NewtonWorld),
electrostatic forces and fields (MaxwellWorld), and on the
structure of molecules using various representations
(PaulingWorld).
3. VIRTUAL GORILLAS, INITIAL WORK
Aside from the few systems described above most of the
work studying the use of VR educationally has focused on
specific task training. The Virtual Reality Gorilla Exhibit was
designed to study using VR as a more general educational
technology, and focuses on using VR for general knowledge
acquisition and concept formation. The first version of the
system focused on teaching middle school students concepts
about gorilla behaviors and social interactions that Zoo Atlanta
felt were important for students visiting their exhibits to learn, but
which they did not seem to be learning just by visiting the zoo.
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The goal of the :first version of the VR Gorilla Exhibit was to
create an experiential educational tool for middle school students
to learn about gorillas' interactions, vocalizations, social
structures, and habitat.
3.1 Motivation
As part of its mission, Zoo Atlanta educates visitors about
the different animals it houses. Because of its close ties to the
Yerkes Primate Center, its gorilla exhibit is one of the best in the
world, and it has many special programs that it runs in
conjunction with local schools and the community to help educate
people about gorillas, their lifestyle, and their plight as an
endangered species.
Figure 1. Unobservable Habitat Area
There are many aspects of gorilla life that students can only
learn through third hand reading and not by first person
observation at a zoo exhibit. For example, the introduction of a
new gorilla to a group is done off-exhibit, so students rarely get
the chance to observe the establishment or reinforcement of the
dominance hierarchy, and challenges to it. Also, for the animals'
own protection from disease and because of the logistics
problems it would cause the keepers, visitors normally are no~
allowed to observe the night quarters, or the routine involved in
letting the gorillas out in the morning and bringing them in at
night. When on exhibit, the distance separating the gorillas fro
the students makes it hard to hear gorilla vocalizations or observe
facial expressions, although they play an important part in
indicating gorilla moods. Finally, gorillas are active in earl
morning and late afternoon, sleeping most of the middle of the
day, but because of the logistics of class scheduling, most middle
school students visit the zoo during the sleep period.
The virtual reality gorilla exhibit solves these logistical
problems, letting students observe a broader set of gorilla
behaviors, time-shifting behaviors that they would normally no
see, and letting them visit areas that are normally off limits. B
letting students become a gorilla themselves, they can experimen
with various stimuli to see how gorillas react to events that the
might not normally get to see by observing the gorillas on displa
from afar.
Pedagogically, constructivist theories of education advocate
that the more viewpoints presented to the student, the more he
learns and the better he retains what he learns. With the virtual
reality gorilla exhibit, not only does the student get to explore
areas that are normally off limits to him (thus allowing him a
broader variety of experiences than he would get simply b
visiting the zoo), he also gets to assume a gorilla identity and
interact with or her gorillas as a peer, getting a differen
perspective on gorillas by experiencing gorilla life from a firs
person point of view. By interacting with other virtual gorillas,
the student learns through first hand experience the social
structure of a gorilla group and accepted social interactions. This
first-person interaction also tends to hold the student's attention
longer, allowing more information to be presented by the syste
and retained by the student.
Figure 2' Student Interacting with the Virtual Gorilla Exhibit
3.2 The System from a User's Viewpoint
While students are in the virtual environment, they stand on
a circular platform that has a handrail completely encircling them.
The HMD provides a biocular (both eyes see the same image)
display and monaural audio to the user, and has a single tracker
attached to it to provide head tracking (position and orientation).
Additional audio feedback is provided by a subwoofer concealed
beneath the circular platform. Movement in the virtual world is
accomplished by "virtual walking," using the buttons on a
joystick handle connected through the mouse port to contro
movement.
In this version of the system, the student would don an HMD
and find himself in a model of the interpretive center at Zoo
Atlanta. Moving through the glass out into gorilla habitat 3, the
student could then explore the habitat and interact with the other
gorillas of the habitat. Since the user was perceived as a juvenile
gorilla by the other virtual gorillas, they would react to his actions
accordingly. If the student was too disruptive, he would be
removed from the habitat and temporarily placed in a "time out"
location, after which he would have to start o v e r i n t h e
interpretive center. By trying out various types of actions, the
student could learn what was, and what was not, acceptable
behavior ~br a juvenile, and also how the other gorillas of the
family unit would interact with each other and the student (as a
juvenile gorilla).
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3.3 Informal Evaluation
This system was tested by several groups of students ranging
in age from elementary through high school, and many others
were observed interacting with the system. Overall the reactions
of users have been very positive. People have stated that they had
fun in the system, and their interactions with the system showed
that they were learning about appropriate and inappropriate
gorilla behaviors as they spent more time interacting with the
system.
These observations, would suggest that it is possible to use
virtual reality as a general educational tool for middle school
students, allowing thereto experience the real world fro
viewpoints other than their own, and letting them learn from first-
hand experience in environments that would normally be too
dangerous or impossible for them to experience in the real world.
By providing a rich, factual environment in which to interact,
students would be able to personalize their experiences, and
internalize the content presented through first person interactions.
A more detailed description of observations and conclusions
about the first version of this project can be found in CG&A[1].
Even with the problems that pilot testing pointed out, Zoo
Atlanta was impressed enough with the system and its utility that
they found the funds to enable them to install a permanent cop
of the system in their Conservation Action Resource Center.
They are also actively licensing the system to other interested
sites.
4 . VIRTUAL GORILLAS: CURRENT
WORK
The first implementation of the system showed that it was
possible for middle students to acquire concepts through the use
of virtual reality. A more formal evaluation of the learning that
occurs using this system is currently being conducted. Given the
apparent success of the first version, a se cond version is being
developed to study the usefulness of VR for teaching more
abstract scientific concepts. Instead of focusing on specific
concepts about gorilla behavior, this version focuses on teaching
students methods of doing research by taking observations,
making models that abstract from the observations, using the
models to predict, and then testing those predictions.
In this version of the system, instead of providing the
motions and behaviors of the virtual gorillas that the students
interact with, the students build the motions and behavior
controllers themselves, based on their observations of the actual
gorillas at the zoo. The controllers and motions that the students
build are then plugged into the current virtual gorilla system, and
students become virtual gorillas and test the verisimilitude of their
models by trying out different stimuli on their gorilla models to
see how they react.
Instead of making VR the centerpiece of a student's learning
experience as the first system did, this system uses it as one of a
s e t of tools that enhance a student's learning experience. The
student makes observations of real gorillas to gain the knowledge
needed to model motions or behaviors correctly. They then work
together in groups on computers translating their observations
into models that are in a form that the virtual gorilla system can
understand. Finally, they use VR as the most natural tool to test
their models, by interacting with them to see if they react as their
observations predict the should. This seems to be a better shot
term model for using VR in education since it doesn't require
students to have continual access to an expensive technology, and
it focuses on acquiring skills that are generally applicable in life
instead of specific content.
Figure 3. The Motion Modeling Interface
This new version of the system required modification of the
current virtual gorilla system, as well as the construction of some
new tools for the students to use. Although a large part of the
current virtual gorilla system is modular and controlled b
external data files, tile details of the behavior control system at
the lowest level are coded in C, something that it is unreasonable
for middle school students to master over the six week period of
Zoo Atlanta's typical Young Scientists program! The curren
version of the program is being modified to accept behavior
controllers expressed in a simple scripting language that should
be easier for the students to work with.
In addition, the motion modeling tool has been updated and
an easy to use interface has been created for it so that students can
easily modify motions that already exist in the system or add new
motions to it. Users can control joint angles by moving sliders,
one for each degree of freedom in the model. Individual poses
can be modified, new poses can be created, or existing poses can
be removed. As can be seen from Figure 3, different body parts
are colored different colors to make them easily distinguishable
when one occludes another.
The process a student goes through to generate a new motion
involves three different parts, First the student must create the
motion as a set of poses to be cycled through, using the motion
modeling system, Once this is done, the student must specify
which motions can transition to this motion, and to which motions
this one can transition. This is necessary since, for instance, i
looks strange and is physically unrealistic to interpolate directl
from a lying position to a walking one. To look natural, the
sequence should be lying to sitting to standing to walking. The
transition table specifies the state machine that controls allowable
motion interpolations. Finally, the higher level behavior
controller must be specified to control when the virtual gorillas
perform the new motions. For now this is done by a simple rule-
based system in which preconditions are tested sequentially unti
one is satisfied, and then that corresponding action is performed.
163
Allowing students to croat their own controllers and
motions will also hetp the original implementation of the system.
since it will provide a larger repertoire of motions and behaviors
that can be used in the system where the student just explores and
interacts with pre-scripted behaviors,
4.1 Preliminary Testing
A preliminary version of the second system was tested last
summer at the zoo, using students from one of their summer
camps. These camps are a week tong, and the camp theme vm'ies
from week to week and by age group, Pilot tes ting of the new
system was done by a group of middle school kids whose camp
theme was animal behaviors.
Students attended camp from 9AM to 4PM Monday through
Friday. tn addition to studying animal behaviors, they had a to
of other activities scheduled, including visits from several animals,
tours of behind-the-scenes areas at the zoo, presentations b
keepers ~md other employees on what their jobs entailed, etc. The
behavior modeling part was structured around the normal camp
schedule by the camp director with input from team members.
Students spent the first three days making observations of the
actval gorillas at the zoo, learning how to do timed behavioral
observations as well as observing various interactions, taking note
of what actions were perfor ed and trying to determine the
interaction triggers. Students also had awdlable video tapes of
their various interaction types for additional study, which helped
them with more infrequent interactions.
Action modeling started late Wednesday and Continued into
Thursday: Thursday afternoon students developed behavior rules
based on their observations, which were inco~orated intothe
system for them to test on Friday. The students were divided into
four groups and each group was assigned a type of action
locomotion, social behavior, foraginJfeeding, and solitar
belaavior. There were four students in each group, working in two
team,s of two students. Students were able to use the motion
modeling interface to generate their own poses. For testing
purposes it was assumed that any pose they generated could be
directly transitioned to or fi'om by any other pose. Since the
behavior control specification system was still being developed,
the students were given the predicates they could use and the
format of the rules they shoukl generate, and were asked to just
write their rules down on paper, These were then collected, and
translated into C code Thursday night so that the students could
test their initial system in toto using the HMD on Friday.
4.2 Observations and Preliminary Results
While the overall idea sounded great, the implementation left
a bit to be desired. At the end of t h e week, the Students had
produced gorillas that breakdanced, a n d godllas thatdid
synchronized bobsledding. These were intended t o be resting
motions and foraging motions, so obviously there were a few
glitches that the students needed to work on. Unfommately, the
ran out of time betbre having a chance to revise their mOtionS and
behaviors, due in part to having spent so much of the first part of
the week making observations, to the point of boredom and
frustration. However, even t h o u g h tile students had some
problems with this second version of the system, their overal
experiences were positive, and pointed out several areas to t arget
for improvement while refining it.
4.2.1 Positive Results carl capture the full range of gorilla behaviors is still an open
One quite obvious result was that the students were problem. This problem was compounded by allowing the
fascinated by the technology, and couldn't wait to get to use it. students to write their rules down on paper. We ended up with
Even though computers are becoming more common now in rules like "1) The first time you meet up with a juvenile gorilla
schools and homes, the h ead-mounted display was still novel not a silverback" as a rule for specifying when to do a social
enough that students looked for excuses to use it. In -fact, some of exam, and "1) Facing-Walk to the food and do gathering" as a
the more intelligent, energetic students would put the HMD on rule for foraging. The students evidently needed a more
even if it was turned off! This enthusiasm kept the students restrictive system for rule specification to constrain them to the
motivated even through some of the less exciting parts of the types of specifications that the behavior control system could
program, such as making actual animal observations. We also understand and use.
saw this enthusiasm from the users of the first version of the Table 1. Behavior Rules Syntax (first version)
system, and this augers well for using VR as an educational tool, Predicates:
since you have to get a student's attention and get him excited Facing(object, value) True if object is within value
before you can teach him anything. However, it was obvious that degrees of front
the system needed some major redesign before it was ready for Near(object, value) True if object is within value
general use. meters
Random(value) True if random number
4.2.2 Lessons Learned between 0 and 1 is less than
The first obvious change needed was a reorganization of the value
schedule of events. In the pilot camp, the students did all their Hungry(value True if hunger (between 0 and
observations the first part of the week and their modeling at the 1) is greater than vaoue
end of the week. A better approach would have been to have the Tired(value) True if fatigue (between 0 and
students mix the two activities together, so that after making so e 1) is greater than value
observations, they would try to model what they had observed. Dominate(object) True if object is submissive
This would give them an idea of the types of things they should Objects:
have been paying attention to, so that when they went back for Food Any edible ite
the next round of observations, they could do a much more Stick or other manipulable
Toy
informed job of data collection. Instead, the kids were getting object
bored by the second day with just going and watching gorillas for Gorilla Another gorilla
hours, and when they finally got to try to generate their motion Rules:
poses, they discovered that they hadn't paid attention to particular If predicatel0 Then motion~
things they needed to know to model their set of motions
correctly.
If predicaten0 Then motionn
It also turned out that the process of generating a series of
poses that will produce a desired motion pattern when played Finally, the problem of specifying acceptable transitions was
back was a difficult one for the students to grasp. They had ignored in the interest of time, and because it would involve
problems determining what kinds of poses would make good explaining the internals of the VR gorilla system to the students in
keyframes, generating the desired motion via the interpolation a lot more detail than they were ready for. However, this is an
process. After not getting anything useable done the first day, we important part of specifying a gorilla behavior, and so we are
had them start all over again the second day with another brief working on an easy to use interface that will let the students
explanation of the process. In addition, before letting the specify transitions for their new motions without overloading
actually use the motion modeling software, they had to generate them with details.
their poses using pipe cleaners, to show that they understood the
process and had reasonable ideas for each pose. Even with that,
though, there were still enough "gotchas" with motion modeling 5. CONCLUSIONS
that no student ended up with realistic-looking motions. Given the fact that computers are just now becoming
widespread in schools, and even then there are only two or three
Another problem with the motion modeling software was per classroom in many schools, it seems reasonable to expect that
that to use it, the user needed to start at the torso (center of mass) VR won't show up in the classroom for ten years or more.
and work out from there, positioning the more extremal bod However, as the Virtual Gorilla project has shown, there is a
parts after positioning the proximal ones. However, the mindset place for VR now in such educational institutions as zoos, science
of the students was such that they persisted in wanting to start at and technology museums, and other similar public places. When
the feet and work up. This led to frustration since after they had deploying a system, care should be taken to insure that the
the fee perfectly placed, they would try to rotate the torso, and application truly benefits from VR in some way.
the feet would move.
While VR can be used to teach concepts, such systems have
Rule specification brought with it its own set of challenges. a chicken and egg proble ---it takes a lot of time and effort to
First, the language they were given had limited expressivity, and generate enough content to make a system that teaches concepts
in fact finding a language for the production rules that is both worth while. This content is not feasible to generate until there
easy enough to understand and use that middle school students are enough systems deployed to make the effort economicall
can work with it, but at the same time is expressive enough that i viable, but until such content becomes readily available, few VR

164
 systems will be deployed to teach content. Because of this, mos
likely the first systems to be successfully deployed wilt focus on
broad methods rather than specific concepts.
Finally, it appears that there are educational applications of
VR in which the technology is the centerpiece, but there ~ue other
equally useful applications that make effective use of VR as just
one part of the learning environment. This type of application
seems to have the most utility for the near future as the price of
the hardware continues to drop and VR systems become more
readily available.
For those interested in the results we obtain or looking for
more information about the project, be sure to visit the project
web site, ht~p//, www.cc.,,atech:edu/igfads/~dDon.Atlison?/g/~orilla/.
6. A C K N O W L E D G M E N T S
Thanks to all the people at Zoo Atlanta who ha ve patienti
answered questions and tested versions of the system :for us,
Special thanks go to gorilla experts Loft Perkins, Kristen Lukas
and Kyle Burks for their help in keeping the system grounded in
reality. Thanks also to Ken Hay and the education specialists at
Zoo Atlanta (Bert, Beth, Angela, Michelle, and Meredith, among
others) who are working with us on the second generation of the
virtual gorilla to make sure that it is grounded in good pedagog
and to assist us in a more formal evaluation of this next version,
Finally, thanks to Zoo Atlanta and the Center{br
Educational Technology at Georgia Tech for providing initial
funding for this project..
7. REFERENCES
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[3] Byme, C., "V rtual Reality and Education," Technical
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[4] Dede, C.. M. Salzm~m, and B. Loftin, "ScienceSpace: Virtu~d
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165