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A domain-oriented end-user design environment for generating interactive 3D virtual chemistry experiments

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Abstract

Three-dimensional virtual worlds are potentially feasible for building virtual educational environments. However, educators face technical challenges to apply these technologies because creating virtual educational environments based on virtual worlds demands 3D modeling and programming skills. This paper proposes a method to lower the technical barriers through domain-oriented interfaces with languages and environments that are familiar to educators. A domain-oriented end-user design environment, iVirtualWorld, is designed and developed to implement the proposed method in a specific educational domain, namely introductory chemistry experiments. This web-based environment provides end-users with domain-oriented building blocks, which can be assembled to create 3D virtual chemistry experiments. A usability evaluation and a comparative case study are designed to evaluate the system among chemistry educators, who are the target audience. The usability evaluation contains a task requiring participants to create a 3D virtual chemistry experiment and a voluntary semi-structured interview. The case study compares a virtual experiment generated using iVirtualWorld with an experiment in a commercial virtual chemistry laboratory system. The results show that 1) the domain-oriented end-user design environment enables participants to generate the 3D virtual chemistry experiment within 30 min; 2) participants gain confidence on creating 3D virtual experiments by themselves using iVirtualWorld; 3) participants confirm the usefulness of applying the system in introductory chemistry education; and 4) iVirtualWorld is considered more intuitive and straightforward for students to focus on finishing the experiment without being distracted than the commercial virtual chemistry laboratory system. Areas that can benefit from the system most and areas where the system is less effective are identified by participants. The responses also reveal the limitations of the current system and suggest directions for future improvement.

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Acknowledgments

The authors would like to acknowledge Professor Frazier Nyasulu of the Department of Chemistry of Ohio University for providing materials and instructions on the TDS experiment, as well as permitting authors to conduct a physical TDS experiment in the laboratory of the Department of Chemistry. The authors would like to appreciate Professor Brian Woodfield of the Department of Chemistry of Brigham Young University for providing the sampler version of Virtual ChemLab for the comparative case study. The authors also thank Mrs. Theresa Andre and Mr. Mike Andre for helping on recruitment of participants and Mr. Nathan Andre for his assistance on the transcription.

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  1. School of EECS, Ohio University, Athens, OH, USA

    Ying Zhong & Chang Liu

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  1. Ying Zhong
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  2. Chang Liu
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Correspondence to Chang Liu.

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Zhong, Y., Liu, C. A domain-oriented end-user design environment for generating interactive 3D virtual chemistry experiments. Multimed Tools Appl 72, 2895–2924 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11042-013-1554-1

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