ViLeArn_more - Virtual Situated Learning and Teaching with Avatars and Agents in Social Cyberspace: multimodal, action-oriented, regulated, extended.

Information

Start: 01.04.2022
Duration: 30 Month
Funded by: BMBF
Local Head of Project: Prof. Dr. Elisabeth André
Web: 
CC BY-NC-ND

About the Project

ViLeArn_more explores novel didactic and pedagogical design concepts for action-oriented and situated teaching/learning scenarios in the combination of social augmented reality with AI-supported multimodal regulatory signals. ViLeArn_more combines innovative media didactic principles of face-to-face teaching and learning as an interactive and collaborative process using digital media. Based on the extremely positive results from ViLEArn, this follow-up project significantly expands the extensive design space of immersive and intelligent media by two particularly promising approaches with high innovation potential: ViLeArn more picks up current techniques of augmented reality (previously focusing on virtual reality) and artificial intelligence for behavioral analysis (previously focusing on the simulation of virtual agents) for a quality and innovation leap in higher education. Teachers and learners interact live in hybrid avatar agents and now hybrid real-virtual teaching-learning scenarios. Embodied by virtual avatars, participants engage in social interaction during the teaching-learning process and thereby use the full range of socially effective signals, especially to attention control and learning regulation, for positive reinforcement and sense of belonging. Agent technology supports teachers and learners when needed by simulating positive behaviors of virtual agents. Virtual environments support immersion, focus, and positive escapism. Augmented (Extended) environments, on the other hand, support physical situatedness, trust, and sovereignty by preserving familiar surroundings. Furthermore, the acquisition and analysis of cognitive and social-affective behavioral signals enable the integration and exploration of important regulatory mechanisms that modulate teaching/learning behavior and significantly determine teaching/learning success. ViLeArn more researches and develops the necessary basic technologies in the interplay between didactics and technology in close interdisciplinary cooperation between media didactics, teaching-learning research, human-computer interaction (MCI) and computer science and with a consistently accompanying empirical usability and effectiveness review. The proven successful joint preliminary work of the Würzburg applicants in combination with the outstanding specific competences of the new consortium partners from Augsburg and Munich establish an internationally competitive research competence in a highly innovative field of university teaching.

 

 

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