The NICE Pro ject Learning Together in a Virtual World Andrew Johnson Maria Roussos Jason Leigh Christina Vasilakis Craig Barnes Thomas Moher Electronic Visualization Lab oratory Interactive Computing Environments Lab oratory University of Illinois at Chicago Chicago IL USA voice fax niceiceeecsuicedu wwwiceeecsuicedu nice Abstract VR and Education Virtual realityenvironments designed for education typi This paper describes the NICE project an immersive cally fall into three categories networked textbased vir learning environment for children implemented in the tual environments desktop virtual reality simulations CAVE and related multiuser virtual reality VR tech and immersive virtual environments nologies The NICE project provides an engaging set ting where children construct and cultivate simple virtual ecosystems col labor ate via networks with other remotely Textbased Virtual Worlds located children and create stories from their interac tions in the real and virtual world Textbased virtual worlds commonly known as MUDs and MOOs supp ort realtime interactive use by a large numb er of users sharing the same virtual world from re motely lo cated computers The advo cates of textual VR cite two educational virtues of textdep endence the cre Intro duction ation of a communitycontext and the encouragementof reading and writing Textbased VR has develop ed The NICE pro ject is an eort to build Narrative a strong connection to narrative and the area of Inter based Immersive ConstructionistCollab orative Envi active Fiction as participants can assume various iden ronments for children Develop ed at the Interactive tities develop situations cast in storylike formats and Computing Environments Lab oratory and the Electronic interact with ob jects and characters On the other Visualization Lab oratory of the University of Illinois at hand the lack of a sp ecic learning structure and di Chicago NICE aims to create a virtual learning envi rection mayleavemany participants oundering without ronment that is based on current educational theories sp ecic goals The lackof multisensory representation of contructionism narrative and collab oration within a may also render MUDs incomplete learning environments motivating and engaging context in and of themselves and textdep endence assumes liter Designed to work in the CAVE tm and related ate children pro jectionbased VR hardware NICE allows groups of children to learn together b oth in the same physical lo ca Desktop Virtual Reality tion as well as from remotely lo cated sites Additionally awebbased comp onentallows other children to partici Desktop virtual reality applications on p ersonal comput pate from less exp ensive desktop hardware ers allow users to walk through simulated environments In section we rst briey describ e other currentwork created via readily available commercial software Some involving VR and education In sections and we slightly more exp ensive systems add p eripheral devices to describ e the theoretical foundation and the implementa The VR pro jects provide a higher degree of interactivity tion of the NICE pro ject In section we discuss evalua develop ed using these lowend technologies are limited tion and then nally give our conclusions and plans for in size and complexity and lack immersive and interac future work tive qualities Typical pro jects resemble D multimedia simulations and mayinvolve the creation of simple mo d NICE els and minimalist worlds which can b e exp erienced via NICE Narrative Immersive Constructionist Collab o walkthroughs rativeEnvironments is an exploratory learning environ mentdevelop ed for use bychildren b etween the ages of and It is set on a virtual fantasy island where the Immersive Virtual Environments fairly large terrain includes a variety of spaces that in vite exploration When the children arrive on the island Immersive educational environments are b eing develop ed they are greeted by the talking signp ost one of the many using highend equipment They are consequently lim intelligent guides or genies on the island which directs ited to situations with sp ecial funding such as academic them to several p oints of interest The children can climb and researchenvironments Most of the pro jects are de down a dormantvolcano to access the catacombs b eneath velop ed esp ecially for headmounted display systems the island lo ok for sh in the sea or help tend the garden A large part of this educational research has b een as shown in Figure fo cused on science education as in the ScienceSpace In the garden there are several crates of seeds for the pro jects Other pro jects such as the Virtual Real children to cho ose from When they drop a seed on the ity Roving Vehicle and summer camp programs in VR ground the corresp onding vegetable b egins to grow The for students at the Human Interface Technology Lab children must make sure the plants are not to o close to oratory at the UniversityofWashington fo cus on world gether and that they get enough water and sunlight building activities where students create the ob jects of They can water the plants by pulling the raincloud over their own virtual worlds using desktop D mo deling soft top of them When a plant has had enough water it p ops ware Although this gives the opp ortunity for students up a little umbrella and the children can pull the cloud to understand the pro cess involved in creating a virtual away When the sunlightistoobringtheplants put on setting the actual immersive exp erience is limited to a their sunglasses when they feel crowded they moverest short minute visit of the predesigned virtual worlds lessly The children must keep the weeds from crowding wers out the plants and decide what to do with the o which o ccasionally blo om They can also shrink down to the size of a mouse to get a closer view of the plants and The Promise of VR for Education to explore underneath the soil VR oers promiseasalearning to ol as it allows access The garden is p ersistent and continues to evolve so the to the unreachable or the unrealizable it can provide kids can come backandcheck on its progress at a later multiple or alternative representations and it can help time Multiple children can interact with the garden and make abstractions more concrete VR is also touted each other from remote sites Teachers or parents can as a medium for interactive collab orative and engaged participate either as memb ers of the groups or disguised learning While highly resp onsiveinteractive virtual en as genies This allows teachers to advise the children in vironments can provide immediate feedbackand be ex p erson or to direct parts of the activity from b ehind the tremely motivating they may also foster automaticity scenes They can also determine the pace at whichthe thoughtlessness and lack of problem solving Telepres world evolves they may cho ose to see the plants grow the integration of VR and highsp eed network ence very quickly or in the case of a scho ol pro ject extend ing creates new p ossibilities for distance learning and their growth over the p erio d of a semester the exploration of so cial b ehavior amongst remotely lo NICE is an outgrowth of two previous systems cated learners sharing the same space However as the CALVIN and the Graphical StoryWriter CALVIN number of simultaneous users increase issues of control is a networked collab orative environment for designing and the structure of learning will emerge Virtual en architectural spaces The Graphical Storywriter is vironments are also valued as b eing extremely motivat a shared workspace where young children can develop ing esp ecially for students with nontraditional learning and create structurally complete stories Building on el styles but this engagement is due in part to the novelty ements from these previous works we have created a eect and not necessarily inherent in the design of the prototyp e learning environment for young users which learning environment presents simplied ecological mo dels within a fantasy set ting The NICE pro ject which is seeking to explore the p o tential of this promising to ol is describ ed next This highly graphical immersive virtual space has pri Figure A child represented by an avatar planting carrots in the NICE garden marily been designed for use in the CAVE a multi p erson ro omsized virtual reality system develop ed at the Electronic Visualization Lab oratory of the Univer sity of Illinois at Chicago As the CAVE supp orts mul Figure a small NICE story on the web tiple simultaneous physical users a number of children can participate in the learning activities at the same time Since the CAVE library can supp ort heteroge another pro duct of constructiveactivityinNICEisthe neous VR display devices ImmersaDesktm Innity narrative the stories formed by the kids that participate Walltm BOOMtm shtank VR systems children The narrative revolves arotnd tending the garden and can join in the collab oration from a numb er of dierent the reactions or decisions taken while interacting with VR hardware platforms the genies Every action in the environment adds to the NICE fo cuses on bringing together concepts of con story that is b eing continuously formed The narrative structive group activity and narrative within the nexus structure captures these interactions in the form of simple of motivation and exploration In the following sections sentences such as Amy pulls a cloud over the carrot we will describ e the underlying p edagogical principles as patchand waters it The tomato