he Virtual Playground: an Educational Virtual Reality Environment for Evaluating Interactivity and Conceptual Learning

CAVE®-like display) using a 3D joystick device with buttons for interaction.
The learning goal was to understand the differences between columns of
different order (Doric and Ionian) and symmetry. The tasks included
selection, comparison, and resizing of the column parts in order to fit them
onto their correct bases. Since these studies were exploratory, we followed a
qualitative approach based on observation (aided by a think-aloud protocol)
and informal interviews with the children. We observed the children’s activity
in the VE and looked for the following different occurrences of learning for
the purpose of analyzing our data:

• Conceptual change, where participants revise their conceptions or change
their interpretation of something.

• Additive knowledge, where participants have added to what they have
already experienced, as long as this involves some kind of reinterpretation
of previous action rather than just the accumulation of information.

• Changes in behaviour.

Our method of analysis draws on []: we reviewed the video of the sessions
and identified various points where interesting interactions seemed to occur.
We chose to focus on moments in time where participants made a statement
that indicated they had changed their conception or where we could conclude
things from our observation of the participant’s behaviour in the environment.
The organizational framework of Activity Theory [] provided us with the
conceptual vocabulary to help interpret these points qualitatively. Our
findings indicated three kinds of instances where learning seemed to take
place: learning about the system as a result of technical problems, learning
caused by (unintentional) observer intervention and, to a lesser extent,
learning arising from system feedback. The latter is what we were most
interested in, since they involved interaction between the learner and the
digital environment without human mediation. We thus focused on excerpts
where such instances provoking internal contradictions leading to conceptual
change seemed to occur. These caused the participants to change their
behaviour as well as revise their rules and conceptions, triggered by the rules
set out by the system. The participants’ observation of the system’s rules
guided them in evaluating their actions, assessing for themselves the

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