The NICE project: Narrative, Immersive, Constructionist/Collaborative Environments for Learning in Virtual Reality

Roussos, M., Johnson, A., Leigh, J., Barnes, C., Vasilakis, C., & Moher, T. (1997). The NICE project: Narrative, immersive, constructionist/collaborative environments for learning in virtual reality. Proceedings of ED-MEDIA/ED-TELECOM '97, 917-922.

NICE project is built to create a narrative, constructionist, collaborative environment for kids. It is based on two earlier projects, CALVIN (collaborative architectural layout via immersive navigation), and the Graphical Story Writer, a shared workspace where kids complete stories.

NICE has a virtual reality system, a multi person room size environment, CAVE. The kids can interact in this system by wands and joysticks. Kids have their own avatars once they enter the CAVE with stereoglasses.

The example in the paper is an ecosystem, where the kids are selecting and dropping seeds, and then the corresponding tree, plant or flower grows depending on the conditions the kid provide, i.e. enough water, sunlight, etc.

The authors claim that the NICE supports:

-Piaget’s constructivism, which states that learner’s mental construction is the cause of learning

-Papert’s constructionism, which is constructing of a meaningful product, discovery learning. The kids also construct the stories the ecological microworlds revolve around. Any action the student takes is written with pictures and published on a web page.

-Collaboration: participating in a group activity both virtual and physically, the kids get a shared experience. Kids can communicate by waving at each other, etc. Vygotsky suggests social interaction for development of cognition, and according to the authors, the virtual reality setting achieves this.

Evaluation: The authors claim that for complex systems like ecological system, with many variables and behaviors, are difficult to watch in a real outdoor activity. These systems need careful attention to visualize the behaviors. In a virtual environment, one can see the behavior, since the variables can be arranged. Further evaluation, also, is necessary which requires a comparison between a real garden and the virtual one.

Overall, this paper was written in 1997 so technology used was very expensive and large in size. The project is much easier to build and more realistic to have in classrooms with today’s technology.