Designing Engaging Visualisations to Support History Learning
Nic Earle, Shelley Hales
University of Bristol, United Kingdom
As part of our JISC funded project, we have created a visualisation of the Pompeii Court of the 1854 Sydenham Crystal Palace within Second life, a popular online multi-user 3D virtual world. The original Court was a life size model of an ancient Pompeian house that presented a collection of copies of paintings from recent excavations. It was designed both to entertain and educate visitors by providing an immersive environment which they explored with the aid of a printed guidebook. Our aims are (a) to make the collection and immersive experience once again accessible to learners and (b) to explore how their educational value can be enhanced by exploiting the possibilities of modern virtual world technology.This paper presents innovative approaches to building an engaging visualisation for identified user groups in the education sector. Our approaches are informed by ongoing consultations with the user groups, which have enabled us better to meet needs and expectations and to provide an enriched user experience. Within the Model we have created structured learning activities that map onto KS2, GCSE and undergraduate curriculum learning objectives both in terms of content and skills. Students complete these activities during a class held in a computer lab. The class offers an experience that might be thought of as a ‘virtual field trip’. In designing the activities, we have combined social constructivist principles with game theory to take advantage of the enjoyable, stimulating and out of the ordinary nature of the field trip, reflecting the ‘edutainment’ environment that Salmon has credited to virtual world technology. The activities exploit the motivational advantages and unique possibilities this technology provides students such as exploring spaces that no longer exist and experiencing different learning styles. This is achieved by making metadata accessible in a variety of media such as text, image and audio and in formats unique to the 3D virtual environment; students learn through spatial sequencing and observation of and interaction with (ro)bot avatars in Victorian dress. By these means, we are able to express difficult concepts about the present’s relation to the past in an engaging, stimulating and accessible way.no references included