Quest Atlantis Continued
So, in Quest Atlantis, students navigate a virtual environment interacting with the avatars of other students and with the virtual characters who can respond with context specific, scripted dialog when prompted with a mouse click. Abby is one of these scripted avatars. Students can wander about and observe. Note how much more flexible this experience is in comparison to simulations we described. As the quests become more complex, the issues to consider become more complicated and responses to do not always generate successful consequences. Part of the message is that the world of the scientist is sometimes messy and not every experiment or strategy works out exactly as anticipated. Again, you can visit the Quest Atlantis site, request a guest pass, and replicate the quest we have just described or try one of the other demonstration quests.
Effectiveness of Exploratory Environments
The evaluation of learning within immersive environments is not easy partly because some of the goals involve more than conceptual understanding (Greeno, 1998). The cost and complexity in creating these environments also limits the quantity of research that is available. Nevertheless, the exploratory work conducted with the Jasper Woodbury adventures ((Cognition and Technology Group, 1990, 1996; Goldman et al., 1996)) and with Quest Atlantis (Barab, Gresalfi & Ingram-Goble, 2010) is encouraging. Learning in the Jasper Woodbury environment is described as being anchored in realistic problems and experiences provided through interactive video, and it does appear that the video experiences encourage students to develop mental models to account for the phenomena they have observed. Attempts to compare groups of students learning about water quality concepts through traditional instruction with students completing the Taiga National Park quests demonstrated both immediate and delayed differences in understanding associated with experience in the exploratory environment (Barab, Gresalfi & Ingram-Goble, 2010).
Work with exploratory environments suggests that the presence of structuring tasks or problems is important. It should not be assumed that students will engage in the most desirable types of active exploration or generative thinking when exposed to exploratory environments (Gordon, 1996; Hsu et al., 1993). One proven method for increasing the involvement of learners in active exploration and generative thinking is to have them work within the exploratory environment in small groups. A collaborative arrangement can prevent some students from becoming completely lost. Research comparisons of individual and small-group use of the Jasper Woodbury tasks have demonstrated the advantage of cooperative grouping for knowledge acquisition and the transfer of problem-solving skills (Barron, 2000). Issues of this nature are related to the topic of efficiency we first raised in Chapter 2. The developers of Quest Atlantis (Barab, Gresalfi & Ingram-Goble, 2010) describe this as the dilemma of “noisy contexts” for learning and explain that noisy contexts may be less efficient but can foster the “mystery, realness, discovery, and an appreciation for why the content matters” (p. 534). The concept of a “noisy context” seems similar to what we described as “high fidelity” in the Primer. We see no reason that learning experiences must focus exclusively on a narrow range of experiences and encourage your exploration if you have not experienced such learning experiences elsewhere.