Abstract
This paper explores the use of Activity Theory for the evaluation of user behaviour in immersive virtual environments. Specifically, the study of user behaviour focuses on interactivity, which is argued to be one of the most important processes that take place between a user and the system in virtual reality. The ultimate intention is to study the role and the effect of interactivity on learning and conceptual change and to examine how interaction and conceptual learning are related in the context of virtual environments developed primarily for informal educational settings. As a first step to this study, a set of exploratory experiments was carried out with children aged 7–12. The children were asked to complete tasks, such as the assembly of ancient columns from parts, which were designed to promote constructivist learning and explore the methods of carrying out in-depth experiments with children. This paper describes the analysis of these exploratory case studies from an Activity Theory perspective.
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Notes
The online database ‘Theory into Practice’ presents and provides references for over fifty different theories on learning, http://www.tip.psychology.org/theories.html [last accessed: April 2006].
The CAVE (CAVE Automatic Virtual Environment) is a Registered Trademark of the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois, originally designed by the Electronic Visualization Laboratory of the University of Illinois at Chicago (http://www.evl.uic.edu). Although the VR display actually used for these experiments was not an original CAVE, for the purpose of brevity and simplicity, we will be using the word CAVE throughout the paper when referring to it.
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Acknowledgments
The authors wish to thank the children and their parents who participated in the exploratory studies. Many thanks are due to George Drettakis and his group (Alexandre Mangon-Olivier, in particular), Dimitris Christopoulos, George Papaioannou, and Athanasios Gaitatzes for their help in creating the virtual environments and performing the experiments. We also thank Angela M. Sasse for her comments on the report that preceded this paper. The studies for this research have been approved by the UCL Committee on the Ethics of Non-NHS Human Research, Study No. 0171/001.
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Roussou, M., Oliver, M. & Slater, M. Exploring activity theory as a tool for evaluating interactivity and learning in virtual environments for children. Cogn Tech Work 10, 141–153 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10111-007-0070-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10111-007-0070-3