Presence and tele-presence in education. A plan for future collaborative research Daniel Andler*† Roberto Casati‡ Elena Pasquinelli* (*)Groupe Compas, France (*†)Département d’Etudes Cognitives, ENS, France - Groupe Compas (‡)Institut Jean Nicod, CNRS, France – Groupe Compas E-mail: [email protected], [email protected], [email protected]

Abstract A widely diffused interrogation concerns the usefulness of introducing new technologies into education. This question has recently been extensively discussed in the pages of the Economist [1] and has received a positive answer. However, there are many possible scenarios for this mutation, with widely differing potentialities and sideeffects. The Compas Group is strongly committed to the idea that technology is not good “per se” and that it is important to identify the scenarios, positive and negative, which are made possible by introducing technologies, and could not be possible otherwise.

1. Introduction The development of virtual and augmented reality media is giving rise to new, hitherto unexplored opportunities of interaction with virtual objects, exploration of virtual environments, and interaction with virtual people. One important application is the development of educational interfaces and of Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) systems, which enable learners to experience otherwise inaccessible objects and to actively operate upon them in order to extract information, and plan and execute activities of exploration and investigation. Another set of applications allow learners and teachers to interact at a distance through perceptual representations (avatars), or by more conventional means (videos or even just email). These applications affect both formal and informal learning. In the following section we will illustrate the possibilities offered by new technologies

through the illustration of some possible scenarios. We will then enumerate the main points that need to be clarified by a collaborative, interdisciplinary research that ideally involves researchers in technology, pedagogy and the cognitive sciences.

2. A study case: education through Second Life (SL) We will take the digital, on-line artificial world of Second Life (SL) as an exemplary study case for presenting different critical issues raised by TEL. SL is a virtual world where users can create an avatar and engage in a number of make-believe activities and in simulations of various kinds. One of the best-known applications of the early days of SL is the simulation of psychiatric patients’ perceptions and reactions to external stimuli. This application was created by a psychiatrist in order to put his students in the condition of experiencing the perceptual world of psychiatric patients, rather than just reading its description. In the meantime, SL has also been used as an instrument for at-distance collaboration and communication, including at-distance learning and teaching. Virtual reality (simulation) tools can thus be integrated with at-distance communication and collaboration in creating virtual classrooms - or other informal learning spaces – that exploit the possibility of learning through experimentation or “learning by doing”. As an educational principle, the notion of “learning by doing” was first described by Jerome Bruner, who called it “enactive learning” [2]. This notion is at the very heart of Enactive Interfaces (EI): those human-computer interfaces which are based on

action-perception loops, and more generally on the possibility for the user of modifying the aspect of the digital, artificial world and of perceiving the effects of her own actions on this world. We can thus imagine a future in which teachers use tools like SL for making contact with at-distant learners, and for proposing the learning of astrophysics through virtual simulations that will allow students to “walk” into the Solar system or to experience the results of changes of gravity. Students will then be able to interact with virtual representations of the Solar system and to extract abstract knowledge about physical laws from their own experimentation. Some educational issues arise from this scenario that concern the position of the teacher, and more generally the relation between teacher and learner as well as the relationships which are established within the community of learners and teachers in the condition of the at-distance, mediated learning. What is the role of the teacher? What kind of intimacy and privacy (real presence, realism in representation, multimodal stimuli, immersion) is required for the students and teacher to feel like they are part of the same context and learning community ? This social and educational issue is raised by different types of presence and tele-presence media in more traditional educational environments. Students and teachers in fact use blogs, e-mails, the internet and other forms of distant communication and information retrieval when at home. Is this bringing about a qualitative change in the way in which classmates or students and teachers communicate? Other questions concern the use of perceptual simulations and fictional representations in experiential learning. Is the visual and interactive representation of the object interfering with processes of abstraction and with attention towards the teacher’s explanations? What are the effects of the association of make-believe environments and situations (pretend that we are together in a classroom with a well-known professor) with non-make-believe tasks (learning)? The association of make-believe and non-make-believe activities is not necessarily illegitimate. Nonetheless, users of frameworks such as SL are implicitly required to shift from one type of cognitive activity (i.e. playing) to another (i.e. learning) and are not necessarily supported in this transition. What happens if the continuity between real and fictional applications which characterizes SL is taken for homogeneity? Is there a need for a specific learning process: the learning of epistemic distinctions, as part of the

deployment of virtual tools in everyday formal and informal learning? Answering these issues is quite urgent. In fact, the depicted future is not that distant: digital representations of real universities have just been established in SL, and virtual reality simulations, some which include haptic touch, are currently developed for experiencing nano-worlds or for training medical students.

3. Research issues. The rationale for interdisciplinary investigation These questions can be addressed by a research project dedicated to understanding the effects and sideeffects of the use of virtual reality settings in new forms of learning. The encounter of new technologies and education is in fact especially interesting when it produces new possibilities for learning, possibilities that could not be envisaged without new technologies. This is the case for the creation of simulation tools that allow users to do experiments which are not permitted in the real world (because they are too dangerous, because of a difference of scale). When the newsmagazine The Economist [1] asked its readers to express their agreement or disagreement with the following statement: The continuing introduction of new technologies and new media adds little to the quality of most education, the readers were convinced by the advocates of the opposed position. What did these advocates say? In short, that technology can make a difference when it is fully integrated in (and not simply added to) pedagogical processes, and when it is used for creating new forms of pedagogy which are not feasible without technology, such as forms of simulation for learning science but also forms of sharing and coming construction of knowledge. This optimism seems to be supported by statistical data. However, this optimistic outlook must be complemented by a clear understanding of the mental and social processes that are recruited by the introduction of new technologies, as shown by the scenarios we have illustrated. Only this understanding will make it possible to indicate where and how new technologies can make the difference, on which forms of learning they are effective and for which reasons. We believe that an innovative approach has to be adopted in order to answer the questions raised by the exemplary scenarios, an approach capable of giving

Comment [DA1]: “clear fame”? doit être de l’italien, je ne comprends pas

attention to three dimensions: (i) the cognitive aspects, as they are revealed by philosophy of mind analysis and by evidence from cognitive science; (ii) the experimental study of learners of different ages and in different learning situations; (iii) the in-vivo, pedagogical experiences in formal and informal environments. Cognitive science, in association with appropriate theoretical analysis and epistemology, provides an understanding of the fundamental mental processes which are at work during the interaction with virtual rather than real worlds, of the role of emotions and pleasure in learning, and of the mechanisms through which the transfer of knowledge from one domain (gaming) to one other (reality) is made possible. Research in neurophysiology and psychology show, for instance, that motivation and training with digital applications can modify the span of attention of young learners, and enhance their capacities in traditional learning domain, or that musical training transfers to geometrical capacities [3]. But this kind of basic knowledge needs to be integrated with an experimental activity directed at measuring the effects of using digital representations which stand for teachers and for objects of the real world on emotions, behaviours and beliefs of the learners. We consider this knowledge as a necessary condition for producing evidence-based principles that aim at orienting the design and application of technological devices to education in directions that go beyond present possibilities. The interaction of these components should allow us to understand: (i)

(ii)

(iii)

(iv)

the processes that an absent (distant, video-canned, or fully virtual) teacher activates as a facilitator of learning, compared to the live traditional teacher; the level and the kind of realism which is necessary in order to activate the same processes that are activated by a real teacher social interaction [4] and fidelity to the action one can perform in the real world could be more effective on believability than realism [5]); the cognitive functions and processes that underwrite experiences in virtual reality and the transfer of acquisitions from one domain to another (imagination, simulation, reactions to simulation); the effect of the awareness of interacting with a representation rather than with real people and objects on the capacity of getting involved, on the capacity of

acquiring beliefs and on the capacity of activating learning processes. We consider that the user of new technologies must always be able to maintain a clear awareness that she is in front of an interface; this is necessary from both an instrumental and an ethical point of view. From the instrumental point of view, being aware of interacting with a representation (graphic representation of a teacher, haptic and graphic representation of the solar system or of nano-worlds) helps reducing the user’s expectations and makes the experience more easily believable. This fact facilitates engagement. However, enhancing the believability of mediated experiences can lead to manipulating the subject and exploiting her vulnerability to gullibility. Creating and disseminating learning tools involving the new media thus engages the moral obligation to investigate their ethical consequences on the learner, in the short and the long term. Is there a need for a specific learning of epistemic distinctions, as part of the deployment of virtual tools in everyday formal and informal learning? It is of fundamental importance to relate these issues to the question of how the pedagogy of formal and informal educational environments affects the introduction of presence and tele-presence technologies; and to the reciprocal issue of how new technologies for virtual and tele-presence affect pedagogical instruments and practices. A classroom which involves attending courses given by distant teachers, interacting at distance with peers, and employing virtual trainers and guides is in fact bound to give rise to a profoundly transformed pedagogy.

4. References [1] The Economist, Monday August 11th 2008. A.B. Smith, C.D. Jones, and E.F. Roberts. Article title, Journal, Publisher, Location, pages. 1-10, Sept. 1998 [2] J. Bruner. Toward a theory of instruction. Belknap, 1966 [3] M. S. Gazzaniga (Editor). Learning, Arts, and the Brain The Dana Consortium Report. 2008 [4] G. Papagiannakis, H. Kim, N. Magnenat-Thalmann. Believability and presence in mobile mixed reality environments. IEEE VR 2005. 2005 [5] T. A Stoffregen, B. G. Bardy, L. J. Smart, R. J. Pagulayan. On the nature and evaluation of fidelity in virtual environments. In L. J. Hettinger & M. W. Haas (Eds.), Virtual & Adaptive Environments: Applications, Implications, and Human Performance Issues (pp. 111-

128). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. 2003

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