Immersive virtual reality is increasingly regarded as a viable means to support learning. Cave Automatic Virtual Environments (CAVEs) support immersive learning in groups of learners, and is of potential interest for educational institutions searching for novel ways to bolster learning in their students. In previous work we have shown that the use…

Abundant prior research has compared effects of physical and virtual manipulatives on students' conceptual learning. However, most prior research has been based on conceptual salience theory; that is, it has explained mode effects by the manipulative's capability to draw students' attention to conceptually relevant (visual or haptic) features.…

Recent developments in Virtual Reality (VR) technology has prompted the manufacturing industry and software vendors to investigate VR's potential for process enhancement. In this paper, we present a study to investigate whether using VR could reduce an individual's cognitive workload during the process of programming an industrial robot. The…

Students in undergraduate premedical anatomy courses may experience suboptimal and superficial learning experiences due to large class sizes, passive lecture styles, and difficult-to-master concepts. This study introduces an innovative, hands-on activity for human musculoskeletal system education with the aim of improving students' level of…

The current study hypothesized that integrating partly observational learning into virtual reality training systems (VRTS) can enhance training efficiency for procedural tasks. A common approach in designing VRTS is the enactive approach, which stresses the importance of physical actions within the environment to enhance perception and improve…

Research on haptic feedback has demonstrated limited empirical evidence of its positive learning effects. This research contrasts supportive anecdotal evidence and reports of increased motivation. In an attempt to unify these contrasting results we attempted to identify empirical evidence supporting haptic feedback's effect on learning by…

Attaining the insight needed to solve the Mutilated Checkerboard problem, which requires discovery of an effective problem representation (EPR), is described. Performance on insight problems can be predicted from the availability of generators and constraints in the search for an EPR. Data for 23 undergraduates were analyzed. (TJH)