Study On Experienced Virtual Lab

Scientific experiment is a kind of inquiry activity through which people study the essential rules of natural things by utilizing scientific instruments and equipments. Virtual experiment is a kind of inquiry activity which takes place in a virtual environment based on virtual realty technology and the virtual environment is also called virtual lab. In the virtual lab, students may experiment as if in a real lab, and laboratorial learning would be more effective than learning in a real lab. The application of virtual lab is a reformation of traditional education concept. Its obvious advantages are as follows: visualization of experimental context, visualization of experimental data, controllability of experiment process, and economical efficiency and security of experimental learning. Its functions are manifested in concept mastery, operative skill learning, knowledge transfer, and emotion formation. The study on virtual experiment has distinct significances in theory and practice.Virtual lab is formed by integrating virtual reality technology into scientific experiment curriculum. The integration must be under some proper theoretical guidance. In the theory of experiential learning learning is regarded as experience, which means not only the goal and the result of learning are experience, but also the learning process is an process of experience. The theory also points out that learning via experience is the most essential and most natural method of learning. The application of virtual reality may help construct a three-dimension environment and learners in such a three-dimension environment will feel that they are learning in a real environment. The process of learning in virtual environment is also a process of experience. So the study on virtual lab needs the guidance of experiential learning theory. The destination of my research is to construct an experienced virtual lab system and prove its effectiveness in practice.Inquiry learning is sometimes called problem-based learning. Learning in virtual experiment is a kind of inquiry activity. The immersible quality of virtual reality and the practical quality of inquiry activity are the foundation of experience and they both illuminate the direction in which we design the experienced environment, mode and strategies of learning in virtual lab. In order to design an immersible environment, we should abide by the principles such as the authenticity of virtual context, the objectivity of experiment content, the actuality of experiment process and validity of learning transfer. In order to design an inquiry environment, we should abide by the principles such as the essentiality, immersion, interactivity and variety of problem context. At the same time, the design of experiential learning mode includes two aspects. They are virtual context and experimental inquisition. When we design virtual-context experiential learning mode, we should abide by the principles such as comprehensibility, sequence, expansibility and acceptability of the functions in virtual context When we design inquisition experiential learning mode, we should abide by the principle of accelerating knowledge construction. Moreover, we should design the experiential learning strategies of virtual lab learning by deepening experience via emotion and deepening experience via cognition.Distributed cooperative virtual lab is based on CSCW theories and it provides students a network-based cooperative virtual environment. Cooperative virtual lab makes the learning experiences derived from not only practice but also intercommunion with other collaborateurs. In the development of such a system we utilize GLScene as one of the components of Delphi. The key technologies are modeling of objects and active visual prospects, construction of intelligent virtual instruments, systematic interactivity, and rendering of virtual worlds, and so on.The effect of experiential learning in virtual lab needs to be tested in practice. Experiential learning stresses emotional learning which includes psychological reception and moods state. This study offers an experiential learning goals system derived from B.S.Bloom's system. Then we study the strategies and methods of experiential learning evaluation. According to the results of the above studies, I put the system which I have developed into use and choose 102 students of the 9^th grade as my test objects. The test data prove that the system may take effect in some aspects of experiential learning, but function deficiency still exists. So the virtual lab system is not perfect and needs improvement.This study has probed into the integration of virtual reality technology with scientific experiment learning, system design, system application, and system evaluation, but the inevitable deficiencies require the study to go on.