Exploring the Pedagogical Affordances of Immersive Virtual Reality in the context of developing Training for Airline Cabin Crew

Author(s):

Rupert Wegerif(presenting / submitting)Jonathan Doney(presenting)Gabriella Giannachi

Conference:

ECER 2016

Network:

16. ICT in Education and Training

Format:

Paper

Session Information

16 SES 06, Virtual Reality and Virtual Team Building

Paper Session

Time:

2016-08-24

15:30-17:00

Room:

OB-H1.49 (ALE 2)

Chair:

Stefanie A. Hillen

Contribution

2016 has been flagged by many technology trend watchers as the year when Immersive Virtual Reality (IVR) will take off and become much more widely used. This is because several large tech companies are launching new affordable headsets. In the light of this it is timely to explore the potential of this new technology in education.

The literature suggests and IVR can offer some advantages for education (Freina and Ott 2015), enabling a direct feeling of objects and events that are physically out of reach, supporting training in a safe environment and so avoiding potential real dangers (Barot et al 2013) and also, especially when there is a game approach, increasing the learner’s involvement and motivation while widening the range of learning styles supported. The use of IVR in aircraft pilot training has received a significant investment, and the use of VR technologies in this sector is commonplace; however, this same investment has not occurred for cabin crew training. Our paper reports on a project to explore the pedagogical affordances of IVR through the specific context of developing a training course for cabin crew. The project from which the data is gathered is funded by the National Aerospace Technology Programme (NATEP). The project partners are a University, Exeter, a small high tech company, INVIRT Reality, and a large European airline, Flybe.

Our main research objectives were to evaluate the effectiveness of the IVR augmented training in relation to the previous training and to investigate any distinct pedagogical affordances of the IVR approach that could be transferred to other educational contexts, particularly school-based education. These pedagogical affordances (Fowler, 2015) were investigated through a design-based research approach.

Our theoretical framework is dialogic theory within a broadly socio-cultural tradition (Wegerif, 2013). One of the hypotheses we explore that derived from this framework is the potential of IVR to accelerate learning through operating within a virtual reality that was already partially abstracted and mediated in the direction of the pedagogical objectives.

Another aspect of IVR education we are exploring is the significance of presence to educational outcomes. Presence has been described as the ‘defining experience of VR’ (Steuer 1992). In virtual environments presence indicates the degree to which participants feel that they are somewhere other than where they physically are while experiencing a computer-generated simulation (Sheridan, 1992a and 1992b; Barfield and Weghorst 1993; Slater and Usoh 1994; Barfield, Sheridan, Zeltzer, and Slater 1995). Therefore, presence in virtual reality is concerned ‘the illusion of being here or there’ (Biocca 2001: 550, original emphasis). Our conjecture is that presence is intimately associated with the quality of the learning.

Method

A design-based research methodology was applied. That involves University researchers working closely with the technical developer to assess and refine the pedagogy at each stage of implementation. The initial stage was developing a first design framework after a literature review and detailed observation of current training including interviews with trainers and students. This design framework is a theory which generates a range of conjectures that are tested through the evaluation of the implementation of a programme based on the design framework. While some of these conjectures are quite practical and close to the specific situation of the implementation, others are more theoretical and general in scope. The project uses a low cost, highly portable Head Mounted Display (HMD) (or headset) with an integrated head tracker, which supports synthetically produced stereoscopic ‘photo-realistic’ imagery. A number of CGI simulation environments are developed to explore different learning approaches and outcomes.. The system developed is being tested against Flybe’s existing training methods for a comparison of effectiveness.

Expected Outcomes

The project is in progress but in the ECER conference at Dublin we will be able to report on the final results. Here we describe our anticipated results based on work so far. Perhaps the most obvious benefit of using IVR in this case is financial. The requirement to train cabin crew on specific physical aircraft led to costs that using virtual simulations of those aircraft interiors could greatly reduce. Costs can also be reduced by having a more structured timetable not at the mercy of the availability of aircraft. It is clear that much of the impact of IVR lies in restructuring the experience of space and time in a way that accelerates and deepens the learning experience. Current training is limited by spactial restrictions. Firstly the location of the aircraft in hangers some way from the classroom leads to time spent travelling. Secondly each essential training event such as opening doors and lockers, leads to a bottlenext in which some can act while others can only watch. The spatial limitation leads to wasted time as students are waiting for others to have their key experience. The current training requires the trainers to monitor the students, watch them doing taks and ticking them off as having done the task. There is a paper trail of auditing events that accompanies this. All of this is replaced by the IVR training system. The IVR system makes it much easier for students to follow a personalised route in their learning, repeat tasks that they find hard as many times as they like without embarrassment and revise the training whenever they want. Although some of these findings are specific to cabin crew training, others can be generalized to a wide range of educational settings.

References

Barfield, W., and Weghorst, S. (1993) ‘The sense of presence within virtual environments: a conceptual framework.’, in G. Salvendy and M. Smith (Eds.) (1993) Human Computer Interaction: Software and Hardware Interfaces, Elsevier Publisher, 699–704. Barfield, W., Sheridan, T., Zeltzer, D., and Slater, M. (1995) ‘Presence and performance within virtual environments’, in W. Barfield and T. Furness III (Eds.) (1995) Virtual Environments and Advanced Interface Design, Oxford: OUP, pp. 473–513. Barot, C. Lourdeaux, D., Burkhardt, J-M., Amokrane, K. and Lenne, D. (2013). 'V3S:A Virtual Environment for Risk-Management Training Based on Human-Activity Models'. Presence 22 (1) Winter 2013, 1–19. Biocca, F. (2001) ‘Inserting the Presence of Mind into a Philosophy of Presence: A Response to Sheridan and Mantovani and Riva’, Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments, 10 (5), 546-556. Dalgarno, B. and Lee, M.J.W. (2010) ‘What are the learning affordances of 3-D virtual environments?’, British Journal of Educational Technology 41(1) 10-32. Fowler, C. (2015). Virtual reality and learning: Where is the pedagogy?.British journal of educational technology, 46(2), 412-422. Freina, L. and Ott, M. (2015). A Literature Review on Immersive Virtual Reality in Education: State Of The Art and Perspectives. Proceedings of eLearning and Software for Education (eLSE), Bucharest, Romania, April 23-24, 2015. Sheridan, T. B. (1992a) ‘Musings on telepresence and virtual presence’, Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments, 1 (1), 120–125. Sheridan, T.B. (1992b) ‘Defining our terms’, Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments, 1 (2), 272–274. Steuer, J. (1992) ‘Defining virtual reality: Dimensions determining telepresence’ Journal of Communications, 42, 73–93. Wegerif, R. (2013). Dialogic: Education for the Internet age. Routledge.

Author Information

Rupert Wegerif (presenting / submitting)

University of Exeter

Graduate School of Education

Exeter

Jonathan Doney (presenting)

University of Exeter

Graduate School of Education

Exeter

Gabriella Giannachi

University of Exeter, United Kingdom

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