This paper describes the design, evaluation, and lessons learned from a project involving the implementation of an immersive virtual environment for children called NICE (Narrative-based, Immersive, Constructionist/Collaborative Environments). The goal of the NICE project was to construct a testbed for the exploration of virtual reality as a learning medium within the context of the primary educational reform themes of the past three decades. With a focus on informal education and domains with social content, NICE embraces the constructivist approach to learning, collaboration, and narrative development, and is designed to utilize the strengths of virtual reality: a combination of immersion, telepresence, immediate visual feedback, and interactivity. Based on our experiences with a broad range of users, the paper discusses both the successes and limitations of NICE and concludes with recommendations for research directions in the application of immersive VR technologies to children's learning. 1

Despite the intuitively compelling adage "a picture is worth a thousand words," attempts over the past decade to use animations to explain algorithms to students have produced disappointing results. In most cases interesting algorithm animations were designed, but no formal, systematic evaluations were conducted. When such evaluations were performed the results were mixed, with compelling evidence for the instructional superiority of algorithm animations failing to emerge. It is in this context that we embarked on a research program to develop educationally effective algorithm visualizations. This program was based on the premise that animations needed to be embedded in a knowledge and context providing hypermedia environment in order to effectively harness their power to enhance learning. This paper describes the architecture of the resulting Hypermedia Algorithm Visualization system HalVis. Four empirical studies with HalVis are described, which demonstrated that the extent of learning exhibited by students who used HalVis was significantly greater than that of students who used means of traditional instruction or a typical algorithm animation.

In this paper we review the current state of the problem solving environment (PSE) field and make projections for the future. First we describe the computing context, the definition of a PSE and the goals of a PSE. The state-of-the-art is summarized along with sources (books, bibliographics, web sites) of more detailed information. The principal components and paradigms for building PSEs are presented. The discussion of the future is given in three parts: future trends, scenarios for 2010/2025, and research

Designing computer-based learning environments must account for the context in which activity occurs, the tasks that students perform, and the tools that facilitate these tasks. When designing for school use, it is also crucial to consider how the software will be integrated into the organization of the classroom workplace and how teacher practices influence the adoption and success of interactive learning environments. This paper discusses our experiences in designing and deploying an interactive video tool to high school classrooms. We stress a classroom-centered design that tries to integrate usable software with interactions that occur "outside of the box" to alter traditional school learning. Keywords Children, collaborative learning, educational applications, interaction design, multimedia, social issues, video.

While there are numerous types of electronic learning environments including collaboratories, construction toolkits, systems with "scaffolding" and simulations, it is difficult to find authoring tools to build these systems. We have developed an application framework for constructing simulation-based learning environments called SimPLE (Simulated Processes in a Learning Environment). Environments developed with SimPLE use dynamic simulations and visualizations to represent realistic timedependent behavior and are coupled with guidance material and other software aids that facilitate learning. The software architecture enables independent contributions from developers representing educational content (e.g., simulation models, guidance materials) and software development (e.g., user interface). We provide a user interface template and accompanying software aids to reduce the software development effort.

Abstract⎯This paper reports on the elicitation of requirements for Virtual Actors in Collaborative Virtual Learning Environments (CVLEs). The methodological approach followed involves the phased development of a series of learning environments which are observed in use by parents, children and teachers. The focus of study is on the interactivity and social communication issues that arise in the learning situation. The research uses as its case study the work of the Manchester Museum Education Service with children at Key Stage Level 2 (9-11 years old) of the National Curriculum. The particular learning situation is based on senet, an ancient Egyptian board game from the Museum’s collection of artefacts from the pyramid builders ' town of Kahun. Results are presented of the first phase prototype, a single display groupware system where interactions take place face-to-face in the “real-world ” external to the environment. Results are also presented of the second phase prototype, a multi-user groupware environment in which the users are remotely located and interaction is mainly internal to the environment. The paper discusses how the results from these two phases are being used to establish requirements for a CVLE to be developed in the third phase of research. Keywords⎯co-operative/collaborative learning, virtual reality, human-computer interface, interactive learning

This paper presents ModelsCreator version 3 (MC3) an environment that supports collaborative building of various kinds of models. MC3 is an environment that permits synchronous interaction of students at a distance who collaborate in building models out of primitive objects. The open character of MC3 means that students have access to an open set of primitive objects that can be used for building these models. A result of this characteristic is that the collaborating partners may reason using heterogeneous sets of primitive objects, in order to obtain a solution. In this paper we concentrate on the architecture of MC3 and the basic functionality of the environment. In particular we study the effect of the open character of the environment in collaboration and problem solving. Through experimentation it is demonstrated that the users of MC3 can have rich interaction in order to build or exchange at run time the necessary primitive objects for model building.

: This paper describes and discusses the NICE project, an immersive learning environment for children implemented in the CAVE and related multi-user virtual reality (VR) technologies. The NICE project provides an engaging setting where children construct and cultivate simple virtual ecosystems, collaborate via networks with other remotely-located children, and create stories from their interactions in the real and virtual world. The NICE project is an effort to build Narrative-based, Immersive, Constructionist/Collaborative Environments for children. Developed at the Interactive Computing Environments Laboratory (ICE) and the Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) of the University of Illinois at Chicago, NICE aims to create a virtual learning environment that is based on current educational theories of contructionism, narrative, and collaboration, while fostering creativity within a motivating and engaging context. NICE is an outgrowth of two previously designed systems, CALVIN a...

The task of specializing programming environments for novices begins with the recognition that programming is a hard skill to learn. The lack of student programming skill even after a year of undergraduate studies in computer science was noted and measured in the early 80’s [32] and again in this decade [20]. We know that students have problems with looping constructs [31], conditionals [8], and assembling programs out of base components [33]—and there are probably other factors, and interactions between these factors, too. What are the critical pieces? What pieces, if we “fixed ” them (made them better for novice programmers), would make programming into a more manageable, learnable skill? If we developed a language that changed how conditionals work or loops, or make it easier to integrate components, would programming become easier? That’s the issue that developers of educational programming environments are asking. Each novice programming environment (or family of environments) is attempting to answer the question, “What makes programming hard? ” Each answer to that question implies a family of environments that address the concern with a set of

This paper presents design implications for educational groupware as revealed by GHT (Group Homework Tool), a same time di#erent place groupware tool built to support synchronous, collaborative coding among novice programmers. We detail the design, implementation, evaluation, and redesign of GHT, focusing on the issues of awareness, control, evaluation and sca#olding. GHT capitalizes on trends of technology and collaboration in the traditional learning environment by supporting distance learning, remote access to TAs and tutors, and facilitating co-located and remote group work. Constructing such software for a computer science curriculum provides unique challenges as one must integrate the tools used by a programmer, the resources used by a learner, and the widgets used to support group interaction. By combining common groupware components with our own shared editor we were able to exploit the educational benefits in a modified version of extreme programming [1]. Our research informs future design e#orts by building upon previous investigations of integrated, cooperative software in a learning environment [10, 12, 11].