In a ten-week project with nine school classes across the North West of England we explored ocean health with IT-enabled solutions. We describe the activities carried out under headings of participation, learning, and design. Participation activities, which included recruitment, focused on setting the parameters for children’s inclusion and ensuring they understood how data might be used, and that handing in artefacts to the research team was their choice. Learning happened in an environment of contextual relevance that enabled children to develop data literacy whilst we could explore relevant research questions. Design was a journey from individual to whole-class design, while developing engineering thinking and social cohesion. We reflect on the journey showing that children learned from the activities and acquired a new enthusiasm for their local coastline. We reflect on how our inclusive approach can broaden HCI research to wider communities of children and encourage others to apply our model.

The elements of presence and interaction have been connected with high-quality learning in online learning environments. This can be achieved by offering learning environments and material that can engage the learner throughout the learning experience, allowing them to connect with the content, find relevance, construct meaning and critical thinking. Hybrid VR applications offer great potential for engaging learners in environments that accurately capture the world, allowing them to make personal connections and find relevance. Coupled with a branching narrative, computer-generated imagery (CGI) and interactivity can lead to highly engaging learning experiences. Hybrid VR applications, though, are bandwidth-demanding that can impact the learning experience. This paper presents a study comparing the Quality of Experience (QoE) of a hybrid VR application streamed over the standard internet and POINT network under increased network load. The paper presents the project motivations, a pilot study and its output. It closes with conclusions about the effect of the QoE and presence in learning and future directions.

Several research projects in spatial cognition have suggested Virtual Environments (VEs) as an effective way of facilitating mental map development of a physical space. In the study reported in this paper, we evaluated the effectiveness of multimodal real-time interaction in distilling understanding of the VE after completing gamified educational tasks. We also measure the impact of these design elements on the user's experience of educational tasks. The VE used reassemble an art gallery (namely REVERIE VG), and it was built using REVERIE (Real and Virtual Engagement In Realistic Immersive Environment), a framework designed to enable multimodal communication on the Web. We compared the impact of REVERIE VG with an educational platform called Edu-Simulation for the same gamified educational tasks. We found that the multimodal VE had no impact on the ability of students to retain a mental model of the virtual space. However, we also found that students thought that it was easier to build a mental map of the virtual space in REVERIE VG. This means that using a multimodal Collaborative Virtual Environment (CVE) in a gamified educational experience does not benefit spatial performance, but also it does not cause distraction. The paper ends with future work and conclusions and suggestions for improving mental map construction and user experience in multimodal CVEs.

Human embodiment/representation in virtual environments (VEs) similarly to the human body in real life is endowed with multimodal input/output capabilities that convey multiform messages enabling communication, interaction and collaboration in VEs. This paper assesses how effectively different types of virtual human (VH) artefacts enable smooth communication and interaction in VEs. With special focus on the REal and Virtual Engagement In Realistic Immersive Environments (REVERIE) multi-modal immersive system prototype, a research project funded by the European Commission Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013), the paper evaluates the effectiveness of REVERIE VH representation on the foregoing issues based on two specifically designed use cases and through the lens of a set of design guidelines generated by previous extensive empirical user-centred research. The impact of REVERIE VH representations on the quality of user experience (UX) is evaluated through field trials. The output of the current study proposes directions for improving human representation in collaborative virtual environments (CVEs) as an extrapolation of lessons learned by the evaluation of REVERIE VH representation.