Evaluation of a Virtual Reality Game for Education

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Evaluation of a Virtual Reality Game for
Education
Maria Virvou, Constantinos Manos, George
Katsionis, Kalliopi Tourtoglou
Department of Informatics University of
Piraeus Piraeus 18534, Greece
mvirvou_at_unipi.gr kman_at_singular.gr
gkatsion_at_singular.gr ktourtog_at_internet.gr
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Evaluation of educational software
Evaluation is a crucial part of the design
process of educational software that has to be
iterative to a large extend.
The educational material must be tried out on
students and refined and then tried again and the
cycle continued for as long as necessary (Jones
et al.,1993)
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The Multi-Tutor Game

• A virtual reality game that teaches students
• several subjects such as mathematics, history,
• geography and spelling.
• It aims at increasing student's engagement by
• providing a popular and motivating VR environment.

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The Multi-Tutor Game
Each domain is taught in a different VR world

• History is taught in a virtual world of lands
• with castles and warriors.
• Biology is taught in a virtual water
• world.
• Spelling is taught in a virtual world of
• woods.
• Mathematics is taught in a virtual
• world of planets of the outer space.

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Images
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The Multi-Tutor Game

• The player tries to reach the
• "land of knowledge" and find the
• treasure which is hidden there.
• To achieve this, the player has to
• obtain a good score, which is
• accumulated by all four domains.
• The game aims at motivating students
• to have a good standard in lessons
• which are different from each other.

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The Multi-Tutor Game

• Common student modelling component
• for all four domains.
• Error diagnosis The student receives
• points for his/her total score
• depending on the severity of the error.
• Domain independent student features are
• common for all four domains (e.g carelessness/
• carefulness of the student)

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Evaluation
One important aspect of the evaluation is the
reason why educational software is adopted in the
first place , i.e. what the underlying rationale
is (Jones et al.,1993)
In the case of the Multi-Tutor Game, the
objective was To make educational software
more engaging and motivating than other forms of
software while retaining and even improving the
underlying reasoning mechanisms.
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Parts of the evaluation
One part Comparison between The Multi-Tutor
Game and educational software with a
conventional user interface but with the same
underlying reasoning mechanisms.
Second part Finding out the extend to which
the Multi-Tutor Game could be used by children at
their leisure time.
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Classroom experiment participants

• 16 school children of 11-12 years old.
• 4 human teachers of history,
• biology, spelling and mathematics
• respectively.
• 2 computer assistants.

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Classroom experiment

• A class of 16 school children
• were divided into two groups of
• 8 children.
• The first group were given the
• the Multi-Tutor Game to work with.
• The second group were given
• educational software with a simple
• interface but with the same
• underlying mechanisms.

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Classroom experiment results

• After having interacted with the software,
• the players of the Multi-Tutor Game
• remembered the correct answers to a
• higher extend than the other group.
• This showed that the game had
• achieved its aim of being at least
• as effective as conventional educational
• software in the learning outcomes
• (in fact slightly better)

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Classroom experiment results
Time On average, the students who had used the
Multi-Tutor Game had spent more time with the
system. a) More to explore the game. b) More
time to read lessons. This showed that the
Multi-Tutor Game was indeed more engaging.
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Classroom experiment results

• Interviews
• The players of the Multi-Tutor Game
• were fascinated by the idea of a
• game in the classroom.
• They were more enthusiastic about the
• software they had used than the other
• group of students.

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Lab experiment

• Assessment of the entertaining effects
• of the Multi-Tutor Game.
• 20 children of 11-12 years old from
• the same school and class.
• No human teachers present.
• 3 computer assistants.

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Lab experiment results

• Since the game was not a school
• assignment, children focused
• on the game environment.
• 73 pointed out that the game
• would be better as a game if
• it was more adventurous with
• more sounds and more virtual
• objects.

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Lab experiment results

• 46 commented on the educational
• aspect of the game and said
• they had liked it.
• 35 made no comment.
• 19 said that they were annoyed by
• the fact that the game reminded
• them of the school syllabus.
• However, most of them remembered what
• they had learned from the game in
• the domain of lessons.

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Conclusions

• Children would be quite happy
• to work with a computer game
• which represents a more amusing
• teaching fashion than that of
• conventional educational software.
• The educational benefits of the
• game are at least as good as
• those of conventional educational
• software.

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Future work

• Children are quite familiar with
• commercial games and therefore
• they have high expectations from
• the game environment.
• The virtual environment of the Multi-Tutor
• Game is planned to be enhanced in
• the near future.