iVirtualWorld: A Domain-Oriented End-User Development Environment for Building 3D Virtual Chemistry Experiments

Abstract

Virtual worlds are well-suited for building virtual laboratories for educational purposes to complement hands-on physical laboratories. However, educators may face technical challenges because developing virtual worlds requires skills in programming and 3D design. Current virtual world building tools are developed for users who have programming abilities. Nevertheless, many virtual world users (e.g. chemistry or biology teachers) neither have nor are expected to learn programming skills. This situation has been a barrier to broader adoption of virtual worlds in education. This dissertation seeks to ease the process of building virtual laboratories by applying End-User Development (EUD) technologies. A domain-oriented end-user development environment has been designed and developed for educators to create virtual chemistry experiments. This solution uses domain-oriented end-user interfaces and multi-level adaptation to enable end-users to create and modify virtual experiments according to the requirements. Case studies and usability studies have been conducted on participants from the target audience, mainly educators, to evaluate this solution on learnability, efficiency, effectiveness, and user satisfaction. Twenty-eight out of 32 participants of the usability studies were able to build a 3D virtual chemistry experiment within one hour. The solution was considered easy to learn by 80% of the participants and easy to use by 52% of the participants in the usability studies. A comparative case study revealed that the solution was more straightforward and less distracting than a commercial system. The contributions of the work presented in this dissertation include: 1) it develops a new tool for non-technical end-users, especially educators, to build virtual experiments without programming or 3D modeling skills; 2) it extends the application of EUD technologies to 3D virtual chemistry experiment domain and provides research experience on the area of EUD tools; 3) it applies domain-specific modeling technologies and, as the result, a domain model of chemistry experiments has been sketched up and implemented in 3D virtual environments; and 4) it conducts empirical research and collects experimental data for evaluation and analysis of the usability of the proposed solution. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone [phone]. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]