28.Collaborating and Learning a Second Language in a Wireless Virtual Reality Environment

8/2/2019 28.Collaborating and Learning a Second Language in a Wireless Virtual Reality Environment

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Int. J. Mobile Learning and Organisation, Vol. 2, No. 4, 2008 369

Copyright 2008 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.

Collaborating and learning a second languagein a Wireless Virtual Reality Environment

Miguel A. Garcia-Ruiz* and Arthur Edwards

College of Telematics,

University of Colima, Ave.,

Universidad 333, Colima, 28040, Mexico

Fax: +52(312) 316 1075

E-mail: [email protected]


*Corresponding author

Samir A. El-Seoud

Princess Sumaya University for Technology,

P.O. Box 1438 Amman 11941, Jordan

Fax: +962 6 534 7295


Raul Aquino-Santos

College of Telematics,

University of Colima, Ave.,Universidad 333, Colima, 28040, Mexico

Fax: +52(312) 316 1075


Abstract: Virtual Reality (VR), a computer-generated 3D space that ismultisensorial, interactive and engaging, is today one of the new frontiers inComputer-Assisted Language Learning (CALL). VR can be used to promotelanguage learning and practice as it simulates reality, while offering astimuli-rich environment for language students. The purpose of this paper istwofold: To provide an introduction to VR applications in CALL, and todescribe the implementation of a Collaborative Virtual Reality Environment(CVRE) running on a wireless network, which is currently being assessed byMexican Engineering students for listening comprehension practice of theEnglish language.

Keywords: CALL; computer-assisted language learning; VR; virtual reality;computer networks; CSCL; computer-supported collaborative learning.

Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Garcia-Ruiz, M.A.,Edwards, A., El-Seoud, S.A. and Aquino-Santos, R. (2008) Collaboratingand learning a second language in a Wireless Virtual Reality Environment,Int. J. Mobile Learning and Organisation, Vol. 2, No. 4, pp.369377.


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370 M.A. Garcia-Ruiz et al.

Biographical notes: Miguel Angel Garcia-Ruiz graduated in Computer

Systems Engineering and obtained his MSc in Computer Science from theUniversity of Colima, Mexico. He received his PhD in Computer Science andArtificial Intelligence from Sussex University, England. At present, he is doingresearch on virtual reality in education.

Arthur Edwards is a Senior Professor/Researcher at the College of Telematicsof the University of Colima, where his primary interest is Computer AssistedLanguage Learning, multimedia applications, collaborative learningenvironments, educational information systems, virtual reality applications andwireless and mobile learning systems.

Samir Abou El-Seoud received his BSc Degree in Physics, Electronics andMathematics in 1967, his higher Diploma in Computing from TechnicalUniversity of Darmstadt (TUD) /Germany in 1975 and his Doctor of Sciencefrom the same university (TUD) in 1979. He joined PSUT in 2004. His

research interests include among others Parallel Algorithms, NumericalScientific Computations, Computer Aided Learning, and Computational FluidMechanics.

Raul Aquino-Santos holds a PhD from the Department of Electricaland Electronic Engineering of the University of Sheffield, England.His current research interests include wireless and sensor networks and theimplementation of Quality of Service for both online and wireless educationalapplications.

1 Introduction

At present, Virtual Reality (VR) technology offers the opportunity for students to

immerse themselves in language learning contexts. VR can be defined as a technology

that creates a computer-generated graphical space (also called a virtual environment),

where users can interact while using various senses within a multimodal interface.

A virtual environment can be defined as a graphical representation of a particular

context that is rich and diverse in stimuli. One of the main features of VR is that it

produces an effect in participants called immersion, where users feel as if they are

actually there as they interact from inside the virtual environment (Burdea and Coiffet,

2003; Sherman and Craig, 2003). According to Dede et al. (2000), both immersion and

multimodality in VR are important because students receive different stimuli within a

virtual environment, which promote learning according to stimuli and constructionist

theories. Early studies of Collaborative Virtual Reality Environments (CVREs) showed

the potential of this technology to engage a group of students in meaningful learning

tasks (Jackson et al., 1999).

A collaborative (or multi-user) virtual reality environment (CVRE) is a shared virtual

environment, where people can meet and communicate via chat, live, synchronous voice

and gestures, and navigate (Burdea and Coiffet, 2003; Preece et al., 2002), which is based

on Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC) theories. In the virtual environment, each

person is represented as an avatar (the incarnation of a god in Hindu mythology),

a graphical personification that represents a persons gestures, and navigates, and


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Collaborating and learning a second language 371

transmits the live, and real-time voice. The sounds and events activated in the virtual

environment can also be shared.In the context of VR, a Wireless Virtual Reality Environment (WVRE) is defined as a

mobile application of a collaborative virtual environment. A CVRE resides in a computer

server and can be accessed by a mobile computer, such as a laptop or Personal Digital

Assistant (PDA), using a wireless Local Area Network (LAN) or Wide Area Network

(WAN), depending on the network protocols and equipment configuration.

Literature reports successful research and applications on Computer-Supported

Collaborative Learning (CSCL) in the context of foreign language learning (Dlaska,

2002; Hudson and Bruckman, 1999; Zurita and Nussbaum, 2004), but very little has been

done on CVREs, in part, because until recently, personal computers and their graphics

video cards and network infrastructure were not fast, powerful, or efficient enough to

support CVREs.

A number of collaborative virtual reality software applications have beendeveloped in various research centres and commercially around the world. One of

them is Distributed Interactive Virtual Environments (DIVE), an open source

software for displaying VR environments developed at the Swedish Institute of

Computer Science (Carlsson and Hagssan, 1993). DIVE is versatile and has been

used in a variety of operating systems, including IRIX, Linux, and Windows,

among others. Through DIVE, users can share a virtual environment using a LAN

or the internet. DIVE has a 3D graphical interface where a virtual environment is shown.

In DIVE, users can communicate with each other by microphone (Voice over IP,

or VoIP) or text messages. To ease identification, each participant is represented

by an avatar, a personification or cartoon-like representation of the users participating

in the virtual environment. It is also possible to hear almost real-life 3D (spatial)

sounds in DIVE, and even the participants voices in real time. In addition, avatars

can be programmed to communicate with gestures, an important element in

non-verbal communication. DIVE can work as a stand alone program, or it can be

distributed as a virtual environment over a network, using a multicast protocol.

It is necessary, however, to install a DIVE server and a proxy to work as the carrier of the

peer-to-peer communications between computers that share the virtual environment over

the network.

DIVE has been used at the University of Colima, Mexico, for various research

projects related to collaborative virtual environments. For instance, a CVRE was created

to show bone foot trauma to a pilot group of medical students (Cervantes-Medina and

Garcia-Ruiz, 2004). Participants in the study communicated using their own voices over

IP (VoIP) and text messages using a chat window, both of which are provided by DIVE.

The results of this research showed that CVRE helped students overcome language

barriers, in the sense that the CVRE facilitated their oral and written clinical diagnosisabout bone injury simulation that they had to clinically diagnose in the virtual

environment.

2 Development

Having outlined some of the technological and educational theories and aspects of

CVREs, we are currently researching whether CVREs applied to CALL on a wireless

network using a multicast algorithm can be effectively used to assist the listening


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comprehension of students practising foreign language. We believe that fully immersive

VR applications using expensive equipment in traditional VR laboratories cansuccessfully be modified to meet the demands of computer laboratories and traditional

classroom settings, using semi-immersive VR.

To test our research questions, we created a CVRE that represents a small

and typical town called Realtown, which includes an entire city of virtual

buildings, including a supermarket, schools, a pharmacy, a bank, etc. Realtown

contains background sounds and can be played through hi-fi headphones or

speakers to help increase realism. Some of these sounds include traffic noise,

children playing, sirens, and other common environmental noises. What makes

Realtown interesting is that students simultaneously perceive and interpret three

different stimuli to help them incorporate their knowledge: visual, auditory and

kinaesthetic.

Realtown runs on a DIVE server, which in this study is a Dell Poweredge 1800computer with two 3.2 GHz processors running in parallel and 2 gigabytes of RAM,

using a Ubuntu Linux operating system that is connected to the internet. Three 3 GHz

laptops with Windows XP and 512 Mb of memory were wireless connected through

a LAN, based on a Linksys wireless router model BEFW11S4, with a data transfer rate of

11 Mbps, connected to the internet. For our tests, the router was placed in the same room

as the laptops at a distance of 8 m. Interestingly, the set-up used in this research operates

across operating systems as the server functioned with Linux and the laptops used

Windows.

Figure 1 depicts a basic WVRE configuration running locally. The laptops

are running a DIVE. In this configuration, the laptop on the right works both

as a server and a peer (participant) of the collaborative virtual environment.

Both laptops (peers) share the same virtual environment, and both peers update all the

interactions and navigations made by each participant, respectively. Each participant is

represented as an avatar that can be easily identified in DIVE as each avatar has a

different colour and the students name or nickname written over the avatars head.

The router, or access point, shown between the laptops, controls the network traffic via

wireless, thus connecting the laptops via their wireless network cards. Interestingly,

preliminary results show that the Realtown CVRE can be accessed synchronously among

peers working with the routers network signal. This aspect is interesting and can have a

particular relevance in rural settings that have no access to traditional or wireless internet

infrastructure.

We are currently conducting usability studies (Dumas and Redish, 1999) to measure

efficiency, efficacy, and user satisfaction of the Realtown CVRE, and assess

collaborative learning aspects related to student interaction. Additionally, the hardware

needed to run the CVRE is being studied, particularly from a multicast peer-to-peer perspective, where the actual set-up is comprised of laptops and a server. One of the

first tests conducted in this project was carried out by Hernandez-Diaz and

Yanez-Garcia (2007).


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Figure 1 Two laptops accessing the wireless CVRE (Realtown) (see online version for colours)

3 Preliminary usability study to evaluate navigation

A limited usability study of the CVRE has been carried out to assess navigation issues in

the virtual environment. This is important because in order to have an easy-to-use

VR interface in a virtual town, users need to seamlessly walk through the virtual streets,

without cumbersome input devices that affect navigation negatively and createdistractions. A conventional mouse, a keyboard, a computer game joystick, and a wireless

mouse were evaluated for navigating in CVRE to see which device proved to be the most

satisfactory for navigation.

3.1 Method

The Think Aloud Protocol usability method (Preece et al., 1994) was used for this study.

This usability method permits a user to explore a particular computer interface and

receive qualitative data about its use. In this method, the user is asked to say out loudly

what he or she is thinking and doing when selecting or conducting any specific activity

(task) in the interface. Qualitative interview comments were recorded on paper for further

analysis.

3.2 Materials

A wireless laptop, part of the CVRE described in this paper, was used for this study.

A wireless trackball mouse and a Genius MaxFigther F31U computer game joystick

(shown in Figure 2) were also used. A piece of software for emulating the joystick

to work as the computer mouse was also used (Joymouse, http://www.soft32.com/

download_9201.html). This software allowed users to navigate with the joystick within

the CVRE.


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Figure 2 Joystick used in the pilot usability test (see online version for colours)

3.3 Participants

Participants in this study were four Telematics Engineering undergraduates of the

University of Colima, Mexico (three males and one female), with an age averaging

21 years. Only one male had extensive experience in playing videogames, particularly in

using game joysticks.

3.4 Procedure

Each participant was informed about the purpose of the test, how DIVE might be applied

to CVRE, and how to navigate in DIVE using a mouse, keyboard arrows or a joystick.The participants main task was to navigate around a virtual house using the keyboard

arrows, the mouse, and the joystick separately, one device at a time. Participants had

unlimited time to do the tests. Figure 3 shows a participant testing the joystick in the

wireless laptop. Participants verbal comments were recorded on paper. Figure 4 depicts

another participant holding the wireless mouse.

Figure 3 A participant using the joystick for navigating in the CVRE (see online versionfor colours)


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Figure 4 A participant testing the wireless mouse (see online version for colours)

3.5 Results of the preliminary study

According to qualitative data of participants verbal comments and experimenters

observations, the keyboard arrow keys were the easiest to use for navigating in the

CVRE. All participants felt comfortable using them. However, they reported they could

make more precise turns with the mouse than with any other device. The wireless mouse

showed the poorest performance. Participants commented that they were tired after a few

minutes, as they had to hold the wireless mouse in the air without support. The wirelessmouse also proved to be overly sensible, which made the students uncomfortable with

realising turns within Realtown. In addition, difficulty was that most of the participants

had to hold the wireless mouse using both hands. The comments about the joystick were

better than the wireless mouse, but not as positive as using the direction keys.

As expected, the participant with greatest previous experience with videogames and

joysticks proved to be the most skilful regardless of the navigation input device used.

All participants reported feeling motivated when using the CVRE, declaring they

considered it much like a videogame. This is particularly significant since playing game

lowers anxiety, which has been negatively correlated to language learning (MacIntyre

and Gardner, 1991).

4 Conclusion

There are currently insufficient materials for developing and practising listening

comprehension, and most of the materials available today do not reflect technological

advancements. Because communication is primarily bilateral or multilateral in nature,

we hypothesise that VR can function to teach languages in a collaborative manner.

Collaborative learning along with visual, auditory and kinaesthetic stimuli serve to

contextualise language within a specific context. Because language results from the

linguistic function and purpose of communication that is contextually specific, the


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Hernandez-Diaz, M. and Yanez-Garcia, K. (2007) Technical Aspects of the Implementation of a

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Jackson, R.L., Taylor, W. and Winn, W. (1999) Peer collaboration and virtual environments:a preliminary investigation of multi-participant virtual reality applied in science education, Proceedings of ACM 1999 Symposium on Applied Computing, San Antonio, Texas, USA28 February2 March, pp.121125.

MacIntyre, P. and Gardner, R. (1991) Methods and results in the study of foreign languageanxiety: a review of the literature,Language Learning, Vol. 41, pp.2557.

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28.Collaborating and Learning a Second Language in a Wireless Virtual Reality Environment