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Editorial
Abstract
Pratical Experience
Problems
Simulations
VR in teaching
Multi-User VR
Multi-User VR in teaching
Assessment
Observation Study
Benefits
Data Capture
Ethical Issues
Conclusion
Acknowledgements
References
Case Studies Index
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Multi-User Virtual Reality Technology as a Laboratory for Learning
about Social Research: Issues and Prospects
4. Using Virtual Reality in Research Methods Teaching
Pantelidis (1996) suggests that virtual reality is a potential candidate for
use wherever one might use a teaching simulation. Networked virtual reality
(VR) provides what Dede (1996) calls an "emerging representational container"
capable of enhancing "sophisticated types of instructional applications", by
virtue of their immersive, fluid and distributed character. The term `Immersive
VR' is used here to refer to a computer-generated display which gives users a
sense of being present in an environment other than that they are actually in
and to interact with that environment (see Schroeder, 1996, 25). `Desktop VR'
systems only display the virtual environment on a 2-D desktop computer screen.
Such systems do not therefore permit the kind of immersion experienced with
head-mounted displays and other input/output devices like gloves or hand-held
3D joysticks. However, like immersive VR, they provide a first-person
perspective on a 3-D computer-generated world. Finally, `second-person VR'
systems represent the user as an avatar (or figure) on the screen without a
first person perspective.
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