Advanced Instructional Design & Education Technology - Discussion 2 - Chi

Active-Constructive-Interactive: A Conceptual Framework for Differentiating Learning Activities
- Michelene T. H. Chi

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Really great food for thought, this article.

One very important question to our own research on Virtual Reality (VR) occurred to me as I read Dr. Chi's abstract.  Dr. Chi, describing her methods writes, "[s]tudies from the literature are cited to provide evidence in support of this hypothesis."  Given the paucity of research in the domain of VR, and especially the scarcity of research on VR used by teachers in the classroom, could our group not do something similar?  

The majority of the sources that we have found are secondary - literature reviews of literature reviews, meta-analyses, and conference reports.  There is very little in the way of actual experimentation with VR in classrooms.  Certainly, we will use and cite these sources to bolster our argument that VR may be useful to educators and learners who are well trained in its implementation.  A thought - I'd love to hear your opinions on this.

Also, a very decent question comes up - which category does VR fall under, according to Dr. Chi's taxonomy?

I would argue, that depending on the virtual environment accessed, VR may be active, constructive, or interactive.  

Chi suggests that students "steering and peddling a stationary bike while they travel through a virtual environment" are involved in an "active activity" (Chi, 2009, p. 76).  I agree. Students have this option with many Cardboard VR apps.  For example, students may explore a prehistoric jungle and discover names and simulated behavior of dinosaurs in the mobile app "Dinoland VR."Dinoland VR (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site. Activating the device's accelerometer, gyroscope, and compass, the student can walk around the room, with three degrees of freedom, walk towards the approaching dinosaurs, pausing to view them, and, of course, backing up (walking backwards) if they are a bit frightened.

Moving forward (the VR apps that exist today did not exist in 2009), VR may also be very constructive, that is, "[p]roducing outputs that contain ideas that go beyond the presented information" (Chi, 2009, p. 77).  Google Cardboard Camera  (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.allows students to create 360 degree footage of a scene in which there is a story they would like to illustrate - something that our colleague John Lyman is using to explore empathy conveyed by means of VR immersion.  Also, there is a Minecraft VR (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site. for the Samsung Gear VR (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site. that enables student to literally contruct historical, geographical, and literary scenes (to name just a few learning domains).  Quite constructive and very engaging.

Something that has surfaced on the VR ocean only recently is collaborative VR.  Using Altspace (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site., students may enter self-constructed (or mutually-constructed) virtual spaces where other learners from around globe may share ideas, "[d]ialoguing substantively" (Chi, 2009, p. 77).  Google Expeditions (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.immerses both educator and learner in virtual fieldtrips.  Content of the Great Pyramid of Giza and the Sphinx, for example, may be explored, the teacher selecting certain foci and directing students' attention to them (a large virtual arrow appears in the students' headsets).  The educator may then read from the lead-in questions (provided by content creators) about the chosen content to get students' feedback and emergent ideas on their immersive exploration.

Thank you for this article - we will no doubt use it as one of our primary sources to cite in our research.