Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 1996. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves [80]-86).

Thesis (M. S.)--Psychology, Georgia Institute of Technology, 2007. / Richard Catrambone, Committee Chair ; John T. Stasko, Committee Member ; Wendy A. Rogers, Committee Member.

<p>Emerging technologies in the classroom are paving the way towards high-quality, hands-on distance learning. Augmented Reality (AR), which overlays virtual information into the physical world, provides a promising solution for the development and delivery of collaborative educational content. Frameworks such as ARkit, ARCore, have enabled AR experiences to become available to a wider audience. However, there are still several challenges to implementing an AR-based curriculum in classrooms, such as difficulty to create AR content, lack of an architecture capable of supporting collaboration between users, and questions about the user experience. This thesis introduces the MetaAR project, a series of solutions to enable instructors and designers to prototype AR experiences in collaborative and distant classrooms. We designed and tested interactive systems, each targeted towards solving a different problem: (1) MetaAR, an augmented reality authoring platform for instructors and students; (2) RobotAR, a robotics toolkit to create augmented reality-based makerspaces; (3) ColabAR, a toolkit for quick-prototyping of Tangible Augmented Reality (TAR) laboratories; (4) Grove-Blockly, a website with a STEAM curriculum involving IoTs, crafting and coding aimed at middle-schoolers; (5) Towards Modeling of Human Skilling for Electrical</p> <p>Circuitry using Augmented Reality Applications, which provides a model to cluster microskills found in AR (perceptual, cognitive, motor) and aligns them to educational content design for AR. Our preliminary results, obtained from user studies involving more than 120 participants, provide evidence of the sustainability and the positive reception of our prototypes in learning environments. We demonstrated an improvement in several of students’ key competencies and in the overall user experience for both instructors and students. Our hope is that this thesis provides a pathway towards more natural interactions and advances in our understanding of distance learning technology, which is becoming increasingly important in today's society.</p>

<div>With rapidly increasing mobile computing devices and high speed networks, large amounts of digital information and intelligence from the surrounding environment have been introduced into our everyday life. However, much of the context and content is in textual and in 2D. To access the digital contents spontaneously, augmented reality~(AR) has become a promising surrogate to bridge the physical with the digital world. Thanks to the vast improvement to the personal computing devices, AR technologies are emerging in realistic scenarios. Commercially available software development kits~(SDKs) and hardware platforms have started to expose AR applications to a large population. </div><div> </div><div>In a broader level, this thesis focuses on investigating suitable interactions metaphors for the evolving AR. In particular, this work leverages the spatial awareness in AR environment to enable spatially-aware interactions. This work explores (i) spatial inputs around AR devices using the local spatial relationship between the AR devices and the scene, (ii) spatial interactions within the surrounding environment exploiting the global spatial relationship among multiple users as well as between the users and the environment. In this work, I mainly study four spatially-aware AR interactions: (i) 3D tangible interactions by directly mapping input to the continuous and discrete volume around the device, (ii) 2D touch input in 3D context by projecting the screen input to the real world, (iii) location aware interactions which use the locations of the real/virtual objects in the AR scene as spatial references, and (iv) collaborative interactions referring to a commonly shared AR scene. This work further develop the enabling techniques including a magnetic sensing based 3D tracking of tangible devices relative to a handheld AR device, a projection based 3D sketching technique for in-situ AR contents creation, a localization method for spatially mapping the smart devices into the AR scene, and a registration approach for resolving the transformations between multiple SLAM AR devices. Moreover, I build systems towards allowing pervasive AR experiences. Primarily, I develop applications for increasing the flexibility of AR contents manipulation, creation and authoring, intuitively interacting with the smart environment, and spontaneously collaborating within a co-located AR scene.</div><div> </div><div>The main body of the research has contributed to multiple on-going collaborative projects. I briefly discuss the key results and visions from these projects including (i) autonomous robotic exploration and mapping of smart environment where the spatial relationship between the robot and the smart devices is resolved, and (ii) human-robot-interaction in AR where the spatial intelligence can be seamlessly exchanged between the human and the robot. Further, I suggest future research projects leveraging three critical features from AR, namely situatedness, mobility, and the capability to support spatial collaborations.</div>

Physical disabilities hinder some students when performing physically demanding school subjects. Virtual reality could provide students with the maneuverability and accessibility which they lack. What do teachers think of Virtual Reality as a substitute for educational woodworking? Prior research show teachers are overall supportive of virtual reality but certain aspects make the integration difficult. As part of the project, a virtual woodworking tool will be developed. Upon watching a video of a student performing tasks in said virtual woodworking environment, to understand the opinion of teachers, the system usability scale shall be utilized. The results show a resemblance to prior research. Teachers state certain positives with virtual reality, usability for example. However they also bring up negatives, for example, the complexity of the tool. Overall teachers saw the virtual reality woodworking environment as a below-average tool.

<p dir="ltr">The interactive computer-generated simulation, virtual reality (VR), is growing as an educational and training tool. The primary objective of this research is to explore the effectiveness of VR in teaching in-flight engine failures to beginner flight students, with the intention of integrating it for Purdue University’s curriculum. The methodology for this study is a quantitative descriptive data analysis method. Participant progression and test scores were monitored and translated to statistical data to represent the findings. From the nationwide Flight Academy program, 30 Purdue University JROTC (Junior Reserve Officers' Training Corps) and ROTC (Reserve Officers' Training Corps) cadets with little to no flight experience were selected to participate. The population flew a C172S at Purdue Aviation through the Flight Academy program and were tested on in-flight engine failure knowledge to measure student comprehension. Experimental participants practiced in the TakeFlight Interactive flight training program in a virtual C172R and were able to interact and control the simulated aircraft with the use of the HP Reverb G2 head mount display (HMD), Logitech joystick, and Logitech rudder pedals. The statistical analysis revealed no significant difference in comprehension between the VR and control groups, challenging the initial hypothesis.</p>