Virtual Learning and Object Reconstruction

In his familiar deadpan style, comedian Steven Wright once said, “In school they told me ‘practice makes perfect,’ and then they told me ‘nobody’s perfect.’ So I stopped practicing.” Although we certainly hope learners reach a di erent conclusion, his obser vation highlights the central role of practice during knowledge and skill acquisition. Studies on human learning have demonstrated that providing learners with opportunities to practice improves their performance over time, reveals gaps in their knowledge, uncovers their misconceptions, and leads them to correct their errors. In so many words, practice is learning. Enter virtual learning environments (VLEs). With virtual practice of a target skill, educators and researchers can design realistic scenarios that address speci c needs, provide levels of di culty and delity that match developmental aspects of learning, and allow learners to practice as long as required or desired. Multiuser VLEs connected online essentially remove any physical barriers to collaboration, teaching, and learning. These bene ts are exempli ed in Stephanie August and her colleagues’ work at Loyola Marymount University, as described in “Virtual Engineering Sciences Learning Lab: Giving STEM Education a Second Life” (IEEE Trans. Learning Technologies, vol. 9, no. 1, 2016, pp. 18–30). In their paper, the authors introduce the Virtual Engineering Sciences Learning Lab (VESLL), a VLE developed for use in Second Life, a widely used free online virtual environment. They extol the exibility of open and free virtual worlds, explaining how they enable both traditional, lecture-style presentations and highly interactive, collaborative, and self-directed work. In stark contrast to massive open online courses and other less immersive platforms, learners move freely within the virtual space, using chat, action, and movement to accomplish their learning goals. VESLL focuses on key engineering education topics, including number systems, circuit design, and di erential equations. These tasks are embedded “in-world,” allowing learners to design, share, and interact. The authors also report on a user evaluation of the system, breaking down the appeal of the approach from a learner’s perspective. Further, preliminary knowledge assessments from use of VESLL suggest that the system is at least as e ective as classroom learning— an important result considering that learners work entirely virtually. This is an exciting period for educational technology research. Nonstop innovation in human–computer interaction, including computer graphics, virtual reality, and user-sensing technologies, has made new and powerful pedagogical approaches possible. Schools, museums, and workplace learning environments are some of the most important bene ciaries of computer science’s broad advances, and should serve as critical contexts for future investigations.