The Use of Virtual Reality System for Education in Rural Areas

The Use of Virtual Reality System for Education in Rural Areas Iping Supriana Suwardi 1, Victor 2 Institut Teknologi Bandung, Jl. Ganesha 10 Bandung 40132, Indonesia 1 iping@informatika.org, 2 if13001@students.if.itb.ac.id Abstract Virtual reality (VR) system is known as an expensive system which is commonly used in specific and private areas such as surgery or military. However, this system can also be very useful in more open areas, for example to create a better education for all. This paper explores the use of VR system for education, especially education in rural areas. The use of VR system for education is possible because virtual environments generated by VR system can replace various educational environments in the real world; moreover it can create a new educational environment never exists before. To be able to use VR system for educational purposes, we have to cut the cost needed to develop and run one, therefore in this paper we are making a prototype implementation of VR system with the lowest cost possible without sacrificing its immersion level, and hopefully it is suitable for education. Index Terms virtual reality, education, rural I. INTRODUCTION In the late 80 s a new technology became a trend. The new technology promised a human-computer interaction never had existed before. The trend was so strong that some movies were made based on the new technology. This technology is virtual reality (VR). However, in the next few years, VR disappeared into thin air, caused by the lack of computational resources at those times that VR system cannot deliver the expected multi-sensory experience to its users. At present, computational resources once expected several years ago are available, yet hardware needed to run a complete VR system with a high precision level still has a high price. This is why VR system is used only in specific and private areas such as surgery and military. It is hardly possible to even consider bringing VR system for general use in education. On the other hand, education is the most important step in one s life. Higher education level leads to a successful life. Educational process is a success when a student can receive knowledge about what he/she is learning with a high retention level. According to Les Giblin [5], learning method is associated with the retention level (see Figure 1). Figure 1 describes that someone will absorb 90% of what he/she has learned if he/she experience it personally. This is one of many reasons why VR system can be used in educational purposes. VR system can help a student to experience something personally by creating a specific virtual environment based on what he/she is currently learning. 100 80 60 40 20 0 10 20 30 read list en see list en & see t alk experience personally Fig 1 Effectiveness of Learning Method (Giblin) Moreover, this technology can also be very useful in rural areas, where schools there are lack of equipments and facilities needed by their students. Using VR system, we can create any equipments or facilities virtually, thus creating an equal education level with schools in big cities. However, as stated before, VR system is closely related to its high price thus making it unsuitable for education. That s why in this paper we are making VR system prototype with the lowest development cost and using the cheapest VR devices available in the market, thus making it suitable for education. The rest of this paper is organized as follows. Section 2 discusses the impacts of VR system for education, both basic and in rural areas. The VR system architecture we use to make a prototype implementation is presented in Section 3 and the details of current prototype implementation is reported in section 4. Section 5 concludes this paper. II. IMPACTS OF VR SYSTEM IN EDUCATION A. A. Basic Impacts for Education Below are the basic impacts of VR system in education. 1. VR system as an edutainment system Generally people will choose playing over learning. This is because the fun factor more commonly occurs during playing; while the boring factor commonly occurs during learning. Edutainment [4] is a process which combines entertainment and education. Using edutainment, learning process can also have the fun factor. 50 70 90

This will attract people to learn things or subjects that they disliked before and to start liking them. VR system can deliver learning materials as an attractive visual presentation since VR system is rendered in 3D visual environment. It can also create a real time interaction with its student. For example: a student can learn how to assemble an electric component by simulating the real thing in virtual simulation. This kind of thing is more interesting for a student rather than he/she reads about how to assemble one on a book. 2. VR system as a substitute for school laboratories Rather than building biology, chemical, and physics laboratories, a computer laboratory equipped with VR system can replace them all. This is because VR system can generate various environments virtually, including all school laboratories. Besides replacing standard functionality of those school 3. VR system as a substitute for destructive experiments Even though preparation for a destructive experiment has been done carefully, the risk still exists. VR system eliminates all the risks without eliminating the purposes or the full experience of a real destructive experiment since it is done virtually. Experience gained using VR system is similar with experience gained in the real world. Besides that it is possible that the cost needed to run a virtual experiment is cheaper than to run a real experiment. 4. VR system supports active learning method Active learning is a method where a student performs certain actions according to what he/she is currently learning. It is totally different with passive traditional classes where students come to class, sit down, listen to their teacher, watch slides, or read their book. Research shows that such passive involvement generally leads to a limited retention of knowledge by students, as indicated in Fig 2 The Cone of Learning laboratories, VR system can also add a new functionality to each laboratory. For example in standard biology laboratory, a student observes cells using a microscope, with this method a student can only observe the cells in flat visual or 2D visual. However, using VR system a student can virtually becomes smaller as little as a cell and walk through the observed cells, observing cells from the inside in full 3D visual. The use of VR system to replace school laboratories can also cut school expenditures. Besides cutting the initial cost of building all those laboratories, annual expenses can also be reduced because there will be no cost for disposable lab items such as chemical substances used in chemical laboratory all experiments are done in virtual environment with virtual items. the 'cone of learning' shown in Figure 2. [2] VR system can reach the 90% level by allowing the students to simulate the real experience by themselves. 5. VR system supports constructivism Constructivism sees a learning process as a process where students construct new ideas or new concepts based on their previous knowledge combined with their responses of the current learning situation they are dealing with. [3] Using VR system, students can interact with their learning subject and make their own conclusions based on actions they do in the overall learning process. It is also possible to design VR system where future learning conditions are made from students past conclusions, this will allow each student to have his/her own current

learning condition based on what he/she has learned before, thus generating a specific personal experience for each of them. B. Impacts in Rural Areas It is hardly possible for schools in rural areas to have equipments or facilities such as complete laboratories needed by their students. There are many factors behind this, some are the cost to build one laboratory is unaffordable and the location of the schools are very remote that buying laboratory items, for example chemical substances, is hardly done. Those factors are also limiting them from other educational activities such as going to a museum or planetarium. The answer to this problem is VR system. As stated in previous section, VR system can act as a substitute for school laboratories in addition to other basic impacts. As for going to educational places, we reverse the process: bring the educational places to them. Using VR system, a museum or a planetarium can be generated as a virtual environment. Moreover this virtual environment can deliver more information rather than a real museum or planetarium since we can add real time interactions, events and information in it. Of course the government is the one responsible to deliver VR system to schools in rural areas. But when VR system is available in each school in rural areas then it can deliver equal educational material with schools in big cities even more. By doing this the government will also help UNESCO in one of its program: Education for All (EFA) [10]. III. VIRTUAL REALITY SYSTEM ARCHITECTURE Currently there are some commercial VR system software builders available in the market. This software allows VR system developers to create a complete VR system, yet unfortunately they come with high prices. Open source software also available in the internet, but it doesn t give its user enough freedom in creating a desired VR system. Since the target development of this VR system is for education, using expensive software is not possible, neither using free software because of its limitations. Based on that reason, we are going to build VR system from various sub-engines: 3D, physics, sound, and input-output for VR devices. If VR system will support network use, then a networking sub-engine will be used. For this prototype we are not going to use a networking sub-engine since we assume that internet is not a common feature in rural areas. VR system has to run in 3D graphic processing, since adequate immersion level can only be achieved through 3D visual environment, that s why a good 3D rendering engine is important. Good rendering engine has to be able to create a believable visual to a user to maintain immersion level while ensuring there is no time lag when it does a real time rendering process. Other example of a good rendering engine is the ability to do the culling process, which is a process where an object is not rendered when there is another object in front of it. This will reduce the computational complexity and thus enhance the overall rendering process. The use of physics becomes important in VR system to ensure a dynamic virtual environment. Without implementation of physics, all objects interaction has to be defined in form of static animations. This exhausting job will take most of the time when building a complete virtual environment. Physics enables computation of momentum, gravity and other physics between objects so a dynamic animation can be done. This will also make a virtual environment to be more believable to a user. Sound is also an important factor in VR system. Sound can help maintaining immersion level, for example as a feedback when a user touches an object or as footsteps sound when a user walks forward. Location of each sound occurring in an event is also important. Sound occurring in a different location where an action is done because of time lag or wrong sound source positioning will reduce immersion level. Therefore a correct implementation of 3D sound, where each object can have its own sound source, is vital. IV. PROTOTYPE IMPLEMENTATION There is a major concern when building VR system, especially if it is built for education in rural areas, which is the cost. This brings up two points to consider. First is the cost of the sub-engines we use to build the VR system. As stated before VR system is a combination of several subengines. To build each and every of those engine is a big job that will not finish in a short amount of time, that s why this VR system will be built using existing subengines. Because of the cost constraint, this VR system will use GPL or LGPL sub-engines. These are the subengines used in prototype implementation: OGRE [6] as a 3D rendering engine, PhysX [9] as a physics engine, and OpenAL [7] as a sound engine. Second is the devices used in this VR system. VR system is well known for their high prices. Actually, if we look more closely to this matter, the high prices are caused by the use of high precision and haptic enabled VR devices. For example, VR system used in surgery training program uses a very high precision and haptic enabled device because a slight error in real surgery might cause a patient to lose his/her life. It s a different case when VR system is to be used in education. This kind of VR system does not need a high precision level, leave alone a haptic technology. As long as VR system has an adequate immersion level then that VR system can be used in education. To maintain an adequate immersion level, minimum devices required are a head-mounted display (HMD), a data glove, a head tracker and a hand tracker. We use emagin Z800 [1] for the HMD, which uses a separate OLED displays and comes with an integrated head tracker, and P5 [8] for the data glove, which is also comes with an integrated hand tracker. It is a good thing that both the HMD and the data glove have trackers integrated into them, this will save us some money since most trackers are available with high prices. Unfortunately, the minus point of P5 is its tracker which uses an infrared system so the precision level is not so

good. As addition, we will also use a joystick to move our character around. All the devices used in this prototype implementation can be seen in Fig 3. Fig 3 VR Devices for Prototype Implementation Up until this paper is written, the prototype has been able to load 3D meshes built using external application and also has been successfully joint with the VR devices. With the devices integration, user can look around in 360 degree using his/her head, use the glove to move the virtual hand in three axes, use the glove to move the virtual fingers based on real fingers, walk around in virtual environment using the joystick, interact with the object using the virtual hand, and use the data glove to interact with the menu. (Fig 4) Fig 5 Example Application: Space Observatory Next example application we re going to build is a virtual chemical laboratory and a virtual biology laboratory. In the virtual chemical laboratory, a user can do various chemical experiments using virtual substances and tools, application concept can be seen in Fig 6. In the virtual biology laboratory, as stated above, a user can observe small object such as cell in 3D environment. Fig 4 Input/output Demo The example application we are developing right now is a space observatory application. A user can navigate in free roam mode in space or use the menu to fly to a certain planet. When a user touch a planet using the virtual hand, several information windows will pop up and give more interactive menus according to what planet is selected. For example when a user touches the earth, a new menu will occur and allow the earth to be seen in night view. (Fig 5) Fig 6 Virtual Chemical Laboratory Concept

V. CONCLUDING REMARK VR system delivers positive impacts for education where it can deliver a fun yet informative edutainment, substitute school equipments and facilities, substitute destructive experiments, support active learning and support constructivism. Those positive impacts also support the fact that VR system is very suitable for education in rural areas where schools there are lack of equipments and facilities needed by their students. By bringing VR system for education in rural areas, students there can have equal education level with students in big cities. Doing this also helping UNESCO in its program: Education for All (EFA). This paper also proofs that it is also possible to make a low cost VR system without sacrificing much of its immersion level. Using various GPL and LGPL subengines available in the internet and low cost VR devices we can develop and run VR system suitable for education. REFERENCES [1] 3Dvisor. http://www.3dvisor.com/ (last access April 27, 2007) [2] Active Learning. http://courses.science.fau.edu/~rjordan/active_learning.htm (last access 27 April 27, 2007) [3] Constructivism. http://carbon.cudenver.edu/~mryder/itc_data/constructivism.html (last access April 27, 2007) [4] Edutainment. http://edutainmenteng.wordpress.com/2006/11/06/what-is-therole-of-fun-in-learning/ (last access April 27, 2007) [5] Les Giblin. 2005. Skills with People. Gramedia Pustaka. [6] OGRE. http://www.ogre3d.org/ (last access April 27, 2007) [7] OpenAL - Cross-Platform 3D Audio. www.openal.org (last access April 27, 2007) [8] P5 Glove. http://www.vrealities.com/p5.html (last access April 27, 2007) [9] PhysX by Ageia. www.ageia.com (last access April 27, 2007) [10] UNESCO About Education for All. http://portal.unesco.org/education/en/ev.php- URL_ID=47044&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html (last access June 22, 2007)