INESC TEC - INESC Technology and Science

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Immersive learning experiences for understanding complex systems

Publication . Fernandes, Luís; Morgado, Leonel; Paredes, Hugo; Coelho, António; Richter, Jonathon

Complexity is core part of our lives. Aware or not, people need to understand and communicate complex ideas and perspectives. Understanding and communicating complexity can be facilitated through interactive simulations. Doing so in the physical world is often impractical, however. Users and developers are overloaded with information and ambiguity, costs are prohibitive, and unsupervised physical simulations raise safety concerns. Novel immersive technology might hold the key to transforming how we tackle understanding and communicating complexity. In this position paper, we propose empowering user agency and perception to take part in complex learning experiences and create their own, combining two factors: enhanced visual and spatial context provided by location-awareness, immersive environments, and somatic, embodied agency; and enhanced cultural and social context by leveraging as input methods the rich semantics of cultural-social gestures and rituals. To deem the feasibility of this argument, we propose developing two culture-aware prototypes, one for the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes in Montana, United States, and another for a Western Europe cultural context.

2019Conference object

Open access

Method for evaluation and classification of self and co-regulation of learning in immersive narratives

Publication . Bonfim, Cristiane Jorge; Pedrosa, Daniela; Morgado, Leonel; Krüger, Jule; Pedrosa, Daniela; Beck, Dennis; Bourguet, Marie-Luce; Dengel, Andreas; Ghannam, Rami; Miller, Alan; Pena-Rios, Anasol; Richter, Jonathon

Self and co-regulation of learning (SCRL) are strategies that students can adopt to become more active and committed to their learning. Encouraging students to adopt these strategies is a challenge for teachers that can be met by using narratives as a teaching resource. To support teachers in this process, we present a method for evaluating, classifying, and reflecting on excerpts from immersive narratives for SCRL, so that you can objectively base your decision when applying the method. The method was developed as an artifact of Design Science Research (DSR). In the Design stage of DSR, a 4-stage scheme was developed, and 38 criteria were described to identify and classify narratives that guide or encourage students to adopt SCRL strategies. In the DSR demonstration stage, we tested the method in an asynchronous e-learning curricular unit (UC) in Portuguese higher education, which uses a narrative-oriented immersive learning approach for SCRL, called e-Sim(Programming). The results show that the graphic visualization of the classification made it possible to perceive the occurrence of the SCRL categories in the narratives, enabling the teacher to be inspired and reflect on the categories to be enhanced for necessary changes in the narrative in line with their pedagogical objectives.

2025Conference object

Open access