This work-in-progress paper documents the development of a desktop-based virtual field environment (VFE) to enable students and park visitors to explore the geological processes that have shaped Rock Bridge Memorial State Park, Columbia, Missouri, USA. Our rapid design process utilized a suite of pre-existing tools, allowing greater focus on the intended learning goals. Prototype implementation revealed limitations on integrating assessment into the VFE and has guided further development utilizing the educational platforms ThingLink and Articulate Storyline. This VFE addresses a paucity in virtual scientific education experiences relating to regional geology within the US midcontinent.

Although the COVID-19 pandemic has made the need for remote data collection more apparent than ever, progress has been slow in the virtual reality (VR) research community, and little is known about the quality of the data acquired from crowdsourced participants who own a head-mounted display (HMD), which we call crowdXR. To investigate this problem, we report on a VR spatial cognition experiment that was conducted both in-lab and out-of-lab. The in-lab study was administered as a traditional experiment with undergraduate students and dedicated VR equipment. The out-of-lab study was carried out remotely by recruiting HMD owners from VR-related research mailing lists, VR subreddits in Reddit, and crowdsourcing platforms. Demographic comparisons show that our out-of-lab sample was older, included more males, and had a higher sense of direction than our in-lab sample. The results of the involved spatial memory tasks indicate that the reliability of the data from out-of-lab participants was as good as or better than their in-lab counterparts. Additionally, the data for testing our research hypotheses were comparable between in- and out-of-lab studies. We conclude that crowdsourcing is a feasible and effective alternative to the use of university participant pools for collecting survey and performance data for VR research, despite potential design issues that may affect the generalizability of study results. We discuss the implications and future directions of running VR studies outside the laboratory and provide a set of practical recommendations.

Virtual field trips have been thought of and implemented for several decades. For the most part, these field trips were delivered through desktop computers and often as interactive but strictly two-dimensional experiences. The advent of immersive technologies for both creating content and experiencing places in three dimensions provides ample opportunities to move beyond the restrictions of two dimensional media. We propose here a framework we developed to assess immersive learning experiences, specifically immersive virtual field trips (iVFTs). We detail the foundations and provide insights into associated empirical evaluations.

In this paper, we present the architecture of an online collaborative decision making learning environment, the mRx. The goal of this prototype is to present a simple; yet, reasoned and systematic, tool to help members of the natural resources community to collaboratively negotiate decisions for prescribed burns. The architecture of the mRxhas been designed by mapping key learning strategies to technological affordances that support these strategies. Initial user testing indicates that learners and professionals find the tool useful in gaining insights into different perspectives and, thereby, creating a more reasoned and inclusive decision to burn.