Virtual and Augmented Reality for Edutainment

A special issue of Informatics (ISSN 2227-9709).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 September 2018) | Viewed by 15990

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
Department of Control and Computer Engineering, Politecnico di Torino, 10129 Torino, Italy
Interests: extended reality; HCI; computer graphics; machine learning; serious games
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

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Guest Editor
Politecnico di Torino, Department of Architecture and Design, viale Mattioli, 39, 10125 Torino, Italy
Interests: museography; technologies for communication/enhancement of cultural heritage; virtual tourism

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Control and Computer Engineering, Politecnico di Torino, 10129 Torino, Italy
Interests: extended reality; HCI; computer graphics; serious games; computer-supported collaboration; learning and training
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) are increasingly being recognized for their educational potential, and are seen as an effective way to convey new knowledge to people. These technologies allow the development of compelling teaching and training environments, where learners can analyze problems and explore new concepts. Users can be immersed into interactive scenarios where the core concepts can be made explicit. These environments also offer the potentiality to involve students and trainees in collaborative activities, which encourage discussion and reflection about the learning material.

The term edutainment refers to the integration of education and entertainment, and edutainment software is usually developed in the form of computer games, or serious games, which have found applications in several areas, from education to training, exercise and rehabilitation in medicine, cultural heritage, and so on. Nowadays, this domain can benefit from a new generation of high-quality consumer-level products, which expand the possibilities for instructors, designers and developers to create novel, compelling and engaging edutainment environments. However, these new opportunities requires as well addressing several theoretical and practical aspects. Among them, which design frameworks are most suited to maximize the learning impact? Which tools are most effective to improve the users’ feeling of immersion? How to foster collaboration? To which extent are edutainment applications effective with respect to their expected outcome?

This Special Issue focuses on the opportunities, impact and challenges provided by VR/AR technologies for edutainments. We encourage authors to submit their original research articles dedicated to explore the relationship between edutainment, serious games and VR/AR technologies. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following:

  • Virtual environments for edutainment
  • Augmented Reality for edutainment
  • Design frameworks for VR/AR serious games
  • Human Computer Interaction
  • User/Player experience in edutainment
  • Collaborative learning environments in VR/AR
  • Distributed environments
  • Interactive digital storytelling
  • Virtual actors in edutainment
  • User-related studies
Prof. Andrea Bottino
Prof. Valeria Minucciani
Dr. Francesco Strada
Guest Editors

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Published Papers (2 papers)

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Research

13 pages, 2005 KiB  
Article
Multimodal Interaction of Contextual and Non-Contextual Sound and Haptics in Virtual Simulations
by Mohammed Melaisi, David Rojas, Bill Kapralos, Alvaro Uribe-Quevedo and Karen Collins
Informatics 2018, 5(4), 43; https://doi.org/10.3390/informatics5040043 - 26 Nov 2018
Cited by 9 | Viewed by 7034
Abstract
Touch plays a fundamental role in our daily interactions, allowing us to interact with and perceive objects and their spatial properties. Despite its importance in the real-world, touch is often ignored in virtual environments. However, accurately simulating the sense of touch is difficult, [...] Read more.
Touch plays a fundamental role in our daily interactions, allowing us to interact with and perceive objects and their spatial properties. Despite its importance in the real-world, touch is often ignored in virtual environments. However, accurately simulating the sense of touch is difficult, requiring the use of high-fidelity haptic devices that are cost-prohibitive. Lower fidelity consumer-level haptic devices are becoming more widespread, yet are generally limited in perceived fidelity and the range of motion (degrees of freedom) required to realistically simulate many tasks. Studies into sound and vision suggest that the presence or absence of sound can influence task performance. Here, we explore whether the presence or absence of contextually relevant sound cues influences the performance of a simple haptic drilling task. Although the results of this study do not show any statistically significant difference in task performance with general (task-irrelevant) sound, we discuss how this is a necessary step in understanding the role of sound on haptic perception. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Virtual and Augmented Reality for Edutainment)
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14 pages, 2418 KiB  
Article
Designing the Learning Experiences in Serious Games: The Overt and the Subtle—The Virtual Clinic Learning Environment
by Joshua G. Peery and Celen Pasalar
Informatics 2018, 5(3), 30; https://doi.org/10.3390/informatics5030030 - 29 Jun 2018
Cited by 9 | Viewed by 7910
Abstract
Serious Games are becoming more common in the educational setting and must pass muster with both students and instructors for their learning experience and knowledge building. The Virtual Clinic Learning Environment has recently been developed and implemented at East Carolina University using a [...] Read more.
Serious Games are becoming more common in the educational setting and must pass muster with both students and instructors for their learning experience and knowledge building. The Virtual Clinic Learning Environment has recently been developed and implemented at East Carolina University using a design framework based on Bloom’s variables, and in the process of refining those design questions, identifies the methods of how serious games provide an overt and subtle learning experience. The overt learning experience is based in the design questions defined and the subtle experience was derived by examining the idea of sense of place as it relates to the virtual environment. By considering these two streams of learning, designers can avoid pitfalls and build on these design elements of a virtual learning environment. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Virtual and Augmented Reality for Edutainment)
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