PhD internship in Strasbourg (France)

Immersion, Interaction, Learning

Location:
LSIIT, University of Strasbourg, France (http://lsiit.u-strasbg.fr/)

PhD advisors:
Dominique BECHMANN and Antonio CAPOBIANCO

Starting date:
March 2012 to September 2011

Ending date:
3 years from the starting date

Funding:
This PhD topic is part of European INTEREG EVEIL3D project. The net salary will be approximately 1280 Euros per month (enough for living in France).

Transmit your resume to : bechmann@unistra.fr

Context:
Informatique Géométrique et Graphique (IGG) team, LSIIT Lab. of Strasbourg University is looking for PhD candidates for the European project INTERREG EVEIL3D.

Description of the work
The potentialities of virtual reality environments in terms of learning opportunities are creating a strong enthusiasm in the research community. This topic is currently at the center of many research projects in education sciences, cognitive psychology, virtual reality, medicine, etc. In medicine, for example, one of the objectives is to build learning environments for learning surgical techniques. In education sciences, it is the possibility to offer a better understanding of complex concepts, through immersion, that motivates research.
However some studies show that in some cases, providing rich interaction during learning tasks can be detrimental (1). It is therefore important to understand how virtual reality environments can be beneficial for learners in order to offer appropriate learning tools (2-6).

This work is part of a German-French project called EVEIL3D, aiming at proposing immersive environments for the learning of foreign languages. The objective of this work is to identify more precisely the aspects of virtual reality, i.e. the possibility of being immersed in an interactive environment, that really represent an asset for learners in the learning process. We want to explore the concepts of immersion and interaction and to determine their influence on learning.

The internship will take place as follow. Firstly, the intern will realize the bibliographic research in order to define the concepts of immersion and presence, and to define the best technique to quantitatively evaluate them. The state of the art should also focus on existing approaches of using VR environment for learning, including the type of educational scenarios used. This will lead to the definition of the learning scenario that will be used during the experimental study.

Secondly, the intern will develop the software tools necessary to implement the selected scenario. The application developed will allow the realization of tests in several types of environments (3D glasses, 3D screens, workbench or immersive wall).The environment will offer several levels of interactivity (no interaction, medium level of interaction, high level of interaction) and several levels of immersion (low, medium, high) and allow the use of different interaction devices (data gloves, flystick, Wiimote, etc.).

Finally, the intern will assist the participants of the project during the realization of the experimental study and the statistical analysis of the results.

Some references:
1. Virtual reality and brain anatomy: a randomised trial of e-learning instructional designs.
2. A Model for Understanding How Virtual Reality Aids Complex Conceptual Learning.
3. What are the learning affordances of 3-D virtual environments?
4. The Effect of Interactivity on Learning Physical Actions in Virtual Reality
5. Immersive Interfaces for Engagement and Learning
6. A Review of Using Virtual Reality for Learning