Irony in future of learning — since 1992

Changing Mixed reality systems v/s Changing expected learning outcomes

‘The people of the United States need to know that individuals in our society who do not possess the levels of skill, literacy, and training essential to this new era will be effectively disenfranchised, not simply from the material rewards that accompany competent performance, but also from the chance to participate fully in our national life. A high level of shared education is essential to a free, democratic society and to the fostering of a common culture, especially in a country that prides itself on pluralism and individual freedom.’ (quoted by National commission on excellence in education, page 8)

This is an excerpt from a report commissioned by President Reagan administration, seems to indicate a sense of ‘Americanism’ in the learning outcomes that an American citizen ‘SHOULD’ or ‘MUST’ have. This was also the start of an international movement that led up to the identification and implementation of the ‘21st century learning skills’.

Our hypothesis: These evolving learning outcomes must have definitely shaped much of the learning/working spaces and the technologies associated with them. The technologies thus conceptualized might have been devoid of factoring in some human tendencies and might have brought out some unexpected learning outcomes. We imagined various scenarios where the expected learning outcomes from these technological systems might not be achieved and ironically, we found similar design paradox being repeated in all the three mixed reality systems.

Thus, we created a satirical comic strip on the ‘gone berserk’ learning outcomes of various characters as they use the three Mixed reality visual systems considered: Virtual fixtures (Armstrong labs, US Air force), AR `Sandbox (first developed at UC DAVIS), Hololens 2 (Microsoft Corporation, USA). Our study is primarily located in an american context and looks at the 90’s era to present.

Simplified representation of a “virtuality continuum” (Milgram and Kishino 1994, Fig.1)

The discourse of Mixed reality visual displays, that involve the merging of real and virtual worlds somewhere along the “virtuality continuum” which connects completely real environments to completely virtual ones (Milgram, Kishino, 1994, Para 4), intrigued us to question the socio, economic, environmental and technological factors that might have impacted the development of the various Mixed reality systems. During the course of our research, we tried to search right from the very taxonomy of Mixed reality (Milgram, Kishino, 1994) to Conceptual research enabling Mixed reality (Gottmer 2015) to Mixed reality systems. We zeroed down on these 3 systems as these seemed to have some tangible, online accessible information to work on.

Once we froze the artifacts for our study, we started delving into the very genesis of their development, by looking at the respective grant proposals, written abstracts and press releases. We predominantly kept searching for 2 questions,

• What were these Mixed reality systems intended to help learn?
• Why were these learning expectations put forward?
• Who is the learning audience(s)?

The broader lines of understanding that we accrued from the research is, the american researcher(s), scientist(s) and developer(s) have conceptualized the mixed reality systems, referring to human(s) as operators with enhanced performance due to reduced visual processing; to some human(s) as naturally challenged spatial thinkers who could study freshwater lake ecosystems and earth sciences through table top 3D visualization techniques; to human(s) as empowered if they can collaborate, communicate, visualize, create in/with real time 3D data. An analogy for our current understanding could be: You provide a ruler to draw the straightest line every time but ignore the fact that the surface on which the line is to be drawn might be shaky or our hand itself (Armstrong Laboratory, 1992). The systems developed above, mostly took into consideration an increase in the visual transparency link between the real and virtual worlds, as a basis to conclude an increase in learning outcomes (Armstrong Laboratory, 1992, page 1). These mostly failed or consciously did not want, to consider the possible distorted learning that might take place because of the absence of some daily life context(s). The absence of a complete human sensory simulation through these systems might also impact those expected learning outcomes.

This imaginary human, technology assisted, with an expected change in natural capabilities because of a technological system developed from inside a defence lab to a corporate one seemed comical and that it would be best to show some scenarios through pictorial sketches where the reactions of the users are a way to symbolize the very distorted learning. Thus, the caricatures have been conceptualized to present a few daily scenarios that might occur while using these Mixed reality systems.

We do want to acknowledge the creators of these systems for the exceptional technological thought and innovations that went into bringing to life these complex systems. The caricature takes a dig at these systems very specifically from an Indian designer’s perspective, by considering some publicly available online documents and videos from the web portals of UC Davis (AR sandbox, 2015) (Lawrence hall of science, 1968) (Keck caves, 2004) (TERC, 1958), National Science Foundation, Microsoft Corp., Armstrong Labs. A functional understanding was also from the videos uploaded by them on YouTube Inc.(Microsoft Hololens, 2019) (UCLA, 2015) and respective journal papers accessed through Google scholar. We have never physically experienced the above mentioned systems and the next research inquiry would be through physically using these systems. We believe that we would have a broader perspective and depth then, to further comment on these correlation(s).

Virtual Fixtures (Armstrong Labs, US)

AR sandbox (first developed at UC Davis)

Hololens (Microsoft Corporation, US)

References:

1. The National Commission on Excellence in Education. 1983. “A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform”. http://www.mat.uc.pt/~emsa/PMEnsino/ANationatRisk.pdf
2. Milgram Paul and Fumio Kishino. 1994. “A Taxonomy of Mixed reality visual displays.” IEICE Transactions on Information Systems, Vol E77-D, №12 December 1994. http://etclab.mie.utoronto.ca/people/paul_dir/IEICE94/ieice.html
3. Gottmer, M.L. 2015. “Merging Reality and Virtuality with Microsoft Hololens.” Masters Thesis, Utrecht University Repository. https://dspace.library.uu.nl/handle/1874/316700
4. Armstrong Laboratory. 1992. “The use of Virtual fixtures as perceptual overlays to enhance operator performance in remote environments”.
5. Augmented Reality Sandbox. 2015. AR Sandbox at UC DAVIS. https://arsandbox.ucdavis.edu/.
6. Lawrence hall of science. 1968. Berkley’s Lawrence Hall of science. https://www.lawrencehallofscience.org/about.
7. Keck Caves. 2004. W.M. Keck center for active visualization in earth sciences at UC DAVIS. http://keckcaves.org/about/start
8. TERC. 1958. Tahoe Environmental Research Center at UC Davis. https://terc.sf.ucdavis.edu/about
9. Woods Terri L., Reed Sarah,Hsi Sherry, Woods John A. and Woods Michael R. 2015. “Pilot Study Using the Augmented Reality Sandbox to Teach Topographic Maps and Surficial Processes in Introductory Geology Labs” Journal of Geoscience Education, Volume 64, 2016 — Issue 3. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.5408/15-135.1.
10. Microsoft Hololens. 2019. “ Airbus drives innovation and accelerates production with Azure mixed reality and HoloLens 2 ” Uploaded on June 17, 2019. Youtube video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lxjC4Z05qh8
11. UCLA. 2015. “ UCLA’s Augmented Reality Sandbox “ Uploaded on July 22, 2015. Youtube video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CE1B7tdGCw0