Intelligent Tools for Building Virtual Worlds
The NDSU Worldwide Web Instructional Committee (WWWIC)
Brian M. Slator, Paul Juell, Computer Science; Phil McClean, Plant Science;
Bernhardt Saini-Eidukat, Donald Schwert, Geoscience; Alan White, Botany/Biology
North Dakota State University

Introduction

Applying virtual worlds to education requires sophisticated, interactive environments. The development of such environments can in turn require significant computing skills often not held by educators. One remedy to this problem is to develop software and interface development tools that enable interested individuals to create their own virtual environments. The development of such tools requires intense basic research in the areas of tool development, usage and functionality. This grant seeks funds to perform such basic research in the field of tool development. With the experience such a grant would provide, our group would be highly competitive when applying for extramural funds in the area of software design and implementation for general users. In turn, general users themselves would benefit by the availabailty of tools to produce virtual worlds that would allow them to create new prototypes necessary for research to test emerging educational theories regarding learning.

Our program for designing and developing educational media implements a coherent strategy for all of its efforts: to deploy teaching systems that share critical assumptions and technologies in order to leverage from each others efforts. In particular, systems are designed to employ consistent elements across disciplines and, as a consequence, foster the potential for intersecting development plans and common tools for that development. Having gained experience in the hand-crafting of these systems, WWWIC is now in the process of designing and developing an integrated library of software tools to substantially streamline the development of future worlds.

The challenge cuts across research and development, in that the design of intelligent tools requires innovation in software, experimental methods, and cognitive theory. In order to be effective, the tools must be intelligent enough to assist the user in visualization and construction. The tools must facilitate building new structure, and must recognize analogies with previously manufactured concepts. To design such tools, we must develop strategies for inferencing about such structure, and case-based machanisms for detecting similarities that will aid a user in their work.

Tools such as we propose are less like hammers and tongs, and more like robots, with knowledgebases at their disposal, and protocols at their command. Intelligent software of this sort is part data mining, part correctness and consistency checking, and part virtual guide. Our aim is to create and integrate such tools, building on our experience with developing protocols for constructing virtual worlds.

At the end of two years we will have a suite of development tools for creating virtual worlds that will be unparalleled anywhere else. The creation of new worlds will be reduced to the least possible effort, and advanced development will begin on a sound foundation of regular, modularized sub-systems.

Proposed Activities

The thrust of this proposal focuses on efforts to create a suite of software tools for prototyping and development of Virtual Worlds for Education (Slator et al, 1999).

The Virtual Tools Project is a core undertaking that binds the pedagogical efforts together. This project develops special-purpose tools as client-side Java applets for creating server-side artifacts. The aim is to implement an integrated set of special-purpose and graphical software tools so that content experts will someday proactively create virtual learning environments with a minimum of assistance from computer programming professionals.

It is important to stress, however, that these are special-purpose tools designed to support specific development tasks. History has shown that general tools in this arena are extremely hard to develop and nearly impossible to support. Our tools are an integrated set of individual tools focused on building components of virtual worlds. Each is intended to be narrow but powerful with an easy-to-understand graphical user interface.

We have succeeded in creating a few of these but, until now, these have strictly been M.S. projects in the department of Computer Science. What is needed is funding for professional development of 1) a large range of tool projects, 2) experimental efforts to test these, and 3) an integration and development project to draw these together into a coherent whole.

So far we have developed
- an abstraction and hierarchy building tool (Jia 1998), that enables the creation, deletion, renaming, and recategorizing of objects. Tools of this sort enable content experts to visualize the structure of their knowledgebase and assist with creating the taxonomic structures for representing conceptual knowledge.
- a software agent dialog tool (Zelenak, 1999), which provides for the construction and visualization of multilevel conversation networks for the agents in educational simulation environments. The conversation network of an agent is important because it gives depth to the character of the agent. However building multilevel conversation networks directly is tedious and error prone. In addition, the direct coding approach does not allow the user, who is building the virtual world, to visualize the conversation network and test the traversal.
- an environmental effects construction tool, for image association and hot spots, for associating background graphics and environmental effects with spaces and objects in Virtual Worlds. This tool provides a form-filling interface for specifying what graphical elements should be visible when a player, say, walks into an area of a planet representing an Exfoliation Dome or a Cirque
- a Virtual Reality Modeling Language (VRML) project involves creating visualizations. These visualizations can be of entities or processes. Many small scale tools have been built to aid in building VRML files for the visualizations. One program allows rapidly prototyping of VRML worlds. The program is Web based and uses a central data base. This can allow multiple people to quickly build a complex world. The visual program project has developed a number of visualizations presented in VRML. For each of these, small tools have been developed to allow a user to convert his/her own data into this visualization world.
We propose developing
- an entity tool will employ an entity template system with a form-filling interface to enable creation of multiple instances of a category. For example, the user will define a template for minerals that specifies the properties indigenous to minerals, and ranges of values associated with each property. Then, a content specialist will create new minerals, quartz, tourmaline, talc, etc., with a graphical form-filling interface where values such as color, texture, and hardness can be quickly and easily selected from menus. This tool is general in that any category of entity (animal, mineral, or vegetable) can be constructed with it.
- a spatial environment, map-making and structure building tool, allows environment designers to graphically create and manipulate spaces in a virtual world. By using a map-like interface, content specialists decide on the specification of locations, such as geological formations and placement of these in relation to each other. The tool will give a virtual look at the objects created by the user, which provides visualizations that are difficult otherwise.
- a tutoring agent tool will
  1. provide a menu of virtual testing equipment and the range of values each produces; from this a subject matter expert can choose the appropriate instrument-value pairs;
  2. provide a menu of substances in the same category, to serve as a template; and
  3. check other substances to insure a unique set of plausibly sufficient criteria for each.
  These three functions will insure that tutoring is supported on all diagnostic tasks and will have the further benefit of checking for consistency of artifacts in the synthetic world
- most importantly, an integrated software system to draw these tools and others into a single development framework.

Background

The NDSU World Wide Web Instructional Committee (WWWIC) is currently engaged in several virtual/visual development projects: three are NSF-supported, the Geology Explorer (Saini-Eidukat, Schwert, and Slator, 1998; Slator et al., 1998), the Virtual Cell (McClean, 1999), the Visual Computer Program and the ProgrammingLand MOO (Hill and Slator, 1998). These have shared and individual goals. Shared goals include the mission to teach Science structure and process: the Scientific Method, scientific problem solving, deduction, hypothesis formation and testing, and experimental design. The individual goals are to teach the content of individual scientific disciplines: Geology, Cell Biology, Computer Science.

In addition, WWWIC is applying what has been learned in Science education to new domains: History, Microeconomics, and Anthropology. Further, WWWIC has active research projects in two highly related areas: subjective student assessment and tools for building virtual educational environments.

WWWIC has a three year history of obtaining grants to support research on virtual environments for education. These grants, ranging from a few thousand dollars to over $150,000, have been from NSF, NSF EPSCoR, and local NDSU sources. Our goal is to continue this work and to compete for funding at more significant levels in the range of $500,000 and above. Over the past two years we have been submitting grant proposals from $100,000 to $2 million to agencies such as NSF, NASA, DEd, and NEH. So far, none of these grants have been funded. Reviews and letters from program officers indicate a variety of reasons for rejection including the perception that our work is too innovative or too ambitious. Every set of reviews has included comments from at least one reviewer that reveals the reviewer did not understand what we are doing and thus totally disagrees with our approach. In many ways we are ahead of the reviewers. We have had difficulty finding programs at any of the federal agencies that fit our work well and our proposals usually are stretched in some direction to make them fit the program guidelines and priorities. We need to produce more mature prototypes that will allow us to address the basic questions associated with learning via technology, and we propose to do this by building advanced development tools. We believe that EPSCoR Standard Grant funding will allow us to build our program to the next level where we are nationally competitive for major grants in the range of $500,000 to $1,000,000. We also believe our WWWIC projects will contribute significantly to NDSU's goal of building to Research II status.

Other Related WWWIC Activities

The efforts of the WWWIC group move forward on three other related fronts (funding is not sought for these in this proposal, this context-setting information is for the benefit of the reviewer).

Developing Virtual Worlds: these include the Geology Explorer, the Virtual Cell, Dollar Bay, Blackwood, and the Visual Program and ProgrammingLand Museum (in collaboration with Valley State University).
Future Directions: there are MANY more domains to explore beyond the few listed here. We have only scratched the surface in Science education and Microeconomics, and have designs towards education in the Humanities: Anthropology and English, to begin with.
System Evaluation and Assessment of Student Learning: we have conducted pilot studies with the Geology Explorer, and with Dollar Bay; one large study with the Geology Explorer (> 400 participants), and are currently conducting two large studies with the Geology Explorer and the Virtual Cell.
Future Directions: we have already accumulated a mountain of data which we do not have resources to adequately analyze. These data could be very revealing in terms of student learning and the student use of technology in virtual worlds, which will lead to studies of learning styles and other directions.
Intelligent Software Tutors: we have developed a robust scheme for managing diagnostic tutors, and a general mechanism for tutoring diagnostic tasks. The Geology Explorer currently has tutors for exploration, instrumentation, and diagnosis.
Future Directions: the ability to port tutors across domains is very important. We have very carefully designed our tutors to a level of generality that will cut across disciplines.

Context

Information Technology Research (ITR) is a national priority. NSF-ITR "is a multi-agency program to push the envelope for research and development in information technology; a description is available at http://www.ccic.gov/it2. It is an outgrowth of the President's Information Technology Advisory Committee and is supported by both the Administration and Congress (see bill HR 2086). NSF will be implementing ITR through efforts supporting fundamental research and education in information technology for the benefit of the United States" (adapted from http://www.it2.nsf.gov/).

Budget

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR/ PROJECT DIRECTOR: Dr. Brian M. Slator	Rate	Months	Year 1	Year 2	Total
1. Academic Salary	-	2	$12,800	$12,800	$25,600
2. ( 2 ) OTHER PROFESSIONALS (TECHNICIAN, PROGRAMMER, ETC.)	$3500- $4000/mo	12	$90,000	$90,000	$180,000
4. ( 1 ) UNDERGRAD STUDENTS	$756/mo	9	$6,804	$6,804	$13,608
5. ( 0.20 ) SECRETARIAL - CLERICAL (IF CHARGED DIRECTLY)	$2000/mo	2.5	$5,000	$5,000	$10,000
TOTAL SALARIES AND WAGES (A+B)	-	-	$114,604	$114,604	$229,208
C. FRINGE BENEFITS (IF CHARGED AS DIRECT COSTS)	-	-	$32,408	$32,408	$64,816
TOTAL SALARIES, WAGES AND FRINGE BENEFITS (A+B+C)	-	-	$147,012	$147,012	$294,024

D. EQUIPMENT (examples) work stations @ $2500 each server computer @ $4000 TOTAL EQUIPMENT	-	-	$7,500	$7,500	$15,000

E. TRAVEL 1. DOMESTIC	-	-	$1,200	$1,200	$2,400
E. TRAVEL 2. FOREIGN	-	-	$1,500	$1,500	$3,000
1. MATERIALS AND SUPPLIES	-	-	$1,000	$1,000	$2,000
3. CONSULTANT SERVICES	-	-	$20,000	$20,000	$40,000
TOTAL OTHER DIRECT COSTS	-	-	$21,000	$21,000	$42,000

H. TOTAL DIRECT COSTS (A THROUGH G)	-	-	$178,212	$178,212	$356,424
I. INDIRECT COSTS (41% of total direct costs minus equipment)	-	-	$69,992	$69,992	$139,984
J. TOTAL DIRECT AND INDIRECT COSTS (H+I)	-	-	$248,204	$248,204	$496,408

Budget Justification

The PI will manage development during the academic year and salary is requested for summer.
Development of tools will be undertaken by two full-time programmers assisted by undergraduates as the budget allows. It is imperative that the professional developers be HIGHLY qualified, and the salary request ($42,000-$48,000 per year) is commensurate with that.
An allocation for 1/5th time secretarial support is requested to manage all the business of the project.
Equipment for developing tools and prototyping environments include a small set of workstations and a server machine. Funding for procuring specialized software will be secured elsewhere.
So that the PI and one other participant may present results at a national or international meeting every year, travel funds are requested.
Over the course of the grant, consultants will be required to validate design and assess project directions. These will be a combination of local experts for system design and nationally recognized experts for strategic planning and advice.

Bibliography

Hill, Curt and Brian M. Slator (1998) Virtual Lecture, Virtual Laboratory, or Virtual Lesson. In the Proceedings of the Small College Computing Symposium (SCCS98). Fargo-Moorhead, April. pp. 159-173.
Hooker, Robert and Brian M. Slator (1996). A Model of Consumer Decision Making for a Mud Based Game. Proceedings of the Simulation-Based Learning Technology Workshop at the Third International Conference on Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITS'96). Montreal, June 11, pp. 49-58.
Jia, Yongxin "George" (1998). A Virtual Reality Abstraction Tool. MS Thesis. Computer Science Department. North Dakota State University. Fargo, ND
McClean, P.E. , D.P. Schwert, P. Juell, B. Saini-Eidukat, B.M. Slator, A. White. (1999). Cooperative Development of Visually-Oriented, Problem-Solving Science Courseware. International Conference on Mathematics/Science Education &Technology, March 1-4, 1999, San Antonio, TX.
Sainieidukat, Bernhardt, Don Schwert and Brian M. Slator (1999). Designing, Building, and Assessing a Virtual World for Science Education. Proceedings of the 14th International Conference on Computers and Their Applications (CATA-99), April 7-9, Cancun
Schwert, D.P., B.M. Slator, B. Saini-Eidukat, (1999). A Virtual World For Earth Science Education In Secondary And Post-Secondary Environments: The Geology Explorer. International Conference on Mathematics/Science Education &Technology, March 1-4, 1999, San Antonio, TX.
Slator, B.M., P. Juell, P.E. McClean, B. Saini-Eidukat, D.P. Schwert, A. White, C. Hill (1999). Virtual Environments for Education at NDSU. World Conference on Educational Media, Hypermedia and Telecommunications (ED-MEDIA 99), June 19-24, Seattle, WA.
Slator, Brian M. and Curt Hill (1999). Mixing Media For Distance Learning: Using IVN And Moo In Comp372. World Conference on Educational Media, Hypermedia and Telecommunications (ED-MEDIA 99), June 19-24, Seattle, WA.
Slator, Brian M. and Golam Farooque (1998). The Agents in an Agent-based Economic Simulation Model. To appear in the Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Computer Applications in Industry And Engineering (CAINE-98) November 11-13, 1998, Las Vegas, Nevada USA (International Society for Computers and Their Applications (ISCA)).
Slator, Brian M. and Harold "Cliff" Chaput (1996). Learning by Learning Roles: a virtual role-playing environment for tutoring. Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITS'96). Montreal: Springer-Verlag, June 12-14, pp. 668-676. (Lecture Notes in Computer Science, edited by C. Frasson, G. Gauthier, A. Lesgold).
Slator, Brian M. and others (1999). Research and Development of Virtual Worlds for Immersive Instruction. In the Proceedings of the Small College Computing Symposium (SCCS99). La Crosse, WI, April 15-17.
Slator, Brian M., D. Schwert, B. Saini-Eidukat, P. McClean, J. Abel, J. Bauer, B. Gietzen, N. Green, T. Kavli, L. Koehntop, B. Marthi, V. Nagareddy, A. Olson, Y. Jia, K. Peravali, D. Turany, B. Vender, J. Walsh (1998). Planet Oit: a Virtual Environment and Educational Role-playing Game to Teach the Geosciences. In the Proceedings of the Small College Computing Symposium (SCCS98). Fargo-Moorhead, April. pp. 378-392.
Slator, Brian M., Donald Schwert, Bernhardt Saini-Eidukat (1999). Phased Development of a Multi-Modal Virtual Educational World. Proceedings of the International Conference on Computers and Advanced Technology in Education (CATE'99), Cherry Hill, NJ, May 6-8
Slator, Brian M., Paul Juell, Phil McClean, Bernhardt Saini-Eidukat, Donald Schwert, Alan White, Curt Hill (1999). Virtual Environments for Education. The Journal of Network and Computer Applications. 22(4). Academic Press. (online at http://www.cs.ndsu.nodak.edu/~slator/html/abstracts/wwwic-edmedia99.html).
White, Alan R., Phillip E. McClean, and Brian M. Slator (1999). The Virtual Cell: An Interactive, Virtual Environment for Cell Biology. World Conference on Educational Media, Hypermedia and Telecommunications (ED-MEDIA 99), June 19-24, Seattle, WA.
Zelenak, Jozef (1999). Zelecon: the Conditional Conversational Constructor. MS Thesis. Computer Science Department. North Dakota State University. Fargo, ND