This paper discusses the design of the interface
and the conceptualisation of the educational process behind the
development of a CD-ROM, with the working title of ëMungoí.
The CD-ROM has been produced by the Science Multimedia Teaching
Unit and the School of Earth Sciences at the University of Melbourne
and is based on nearly 30 years of research data. In describing
the project we reiterate the conference theme of ëmaking
new connectionsí.
1 Lake Mungo
Over nearly 3 decades, Professor Bowler from the School of Earth Sciences at the University of Melbourne and his colleagues have accumulated data on the archaeology, climate, and environment of the Murray Darling Basin region of South Australia, New South Wales and Victoria. In 1969 Professor Bowler discovered the remains of Mungo Lady, and later Mungo Manófinds which allowed accurate estimates of some of the earliest human occupation of Australia (the remains are believed to be around 26,000 years old). The discoveries were made in the Willandra Lakes Region, an area with exceptional natural and cultural values that was given World Heritage listing in 1981.
1.1 Themes
From the numerous expeditions into this area, an
invaluable database on the region has been developed, containing
data in many different forms, such as climatological, salinity,
stratigraphic, lake- and sea-level data, geophysical maps
and photographs, floral and faunal remains, and archaeological
artefacts.
Data from these excursions give rise to many themes,
or stories, of great significance to our understanding
of the Australian landscape and culture. Among the broad
themes are: caring for the land, human impacts on environment,
mysteries of the ice age, climate change, human antiquity,
and faunal extinctions. The challenge for the design
team has been to do justice to the great depth of the information,
while allowing broad themes to be borne out.
1.2 Audience influence on interface
The primary audience for the CD-ROM is secondary school students, particularly Years 10 to 12 Biology, Environmental Science and Geography students; additional audiences include tertiary students, secondary school and public libraries, museums and national park services. Thus, the educational design, as well as the interface design, needs to be flexible but simple, and to appeal to a youthful audience. In the secondary school setting, while we anticipate that the CD-ROM can be used as part of whole-class activities, we recognise that many schools do not have large computer laboratories. Clearly, the interface has to be one which encourages students to explore the content freely, but allows teachers to set directed study assignments that meet specific curriculum requirementsóif necessary, for students working alone or in small groups outside the classroom.
2 Interface metaphors
The interface we have designed makes use of a geographic
metaphor combined with an oral history one, allowing for
a range of learning to occur during virtual field trips.
To pursue an interest in the ice age story, for example,
the traveller can move around a map that links sites from place
to place and through time, and also follow a loose narrative,
to build up a sense of how the ice age affected sea- and
lake-levels, and transformed the now dry and windy landscape.
2.1 Head Up Display
In linking the interface and the conceptualisation
of the educational process we borrowed ideas from highly
immersive interactive games to provide the feeling of detailed
investigation of the place. The
main navigational aid takes the form of a Head Up Display (HUD,
Figure 1) much like those used in modern aircraft, which doubles
as the means of displaying all interpreted data on each
site, such as sea-level maps, and aerial or cross-section
diagrams. The HUD can also display text and pre-recorded
video and audio clips or animations which aid in the explanation
of certain topics.
2.2 Multiple modes of interpretation
The Mungo virtual field trip has a unique
advantage for the user: at any point the form of explanation
on the screen can easily be changed (from topographic map
to Aboriginal storyteller, for example), or even turned off
completely to allow photographic images of a site to fill
the screen. The use of controllable multiple modes of
interpretation is intended to let the learner explore various
ways of understanding the land and its occupants. It is
possible that this type of virtual field trip, through the intensive
and recursive opportunities for reflection that it provides,
enables the visitor to approach the deep sense of place
experienced in an actual field visit.
3 Connecting students with environment
Mungo makes new connections between students of the
Australian environment, taking a very broad view of this group,
and a part of this environment which has great significance but
is little known. This section explains how Mungo has been
influenced by current ideas about the so-called ëvirtual
field tripí, and describes the approach to designing Mungo
as such.
3.1 Why a virtual field trip?
As with other computer-based designs in the same
broad classósimulations, scenarios, microworlds, intelligent
environments and the likeóthe virtual field trip claims
to have many logistical advantages over the real thing, for occupational,
educational or recreational purposes: it may allow any number
of people, anytime, anywhere, to interact with themes of a specific
place, without long queues, extended opening hours or public liability
insurance claims; it may provide background informationóabout
long time-spans, very large or minute physical features, non-material
culture or the availability of drinking wateróin a way
that maximises the effectiveness of a real-time visit; it may
assemble a complex representation of a remote or inaccessible
place for people who donít have the technical means or
range of movement to do this for themselves; it may offer people
the chance to appreciate a hazardous or vulnerable place without
adverse impacts on themselves or on the place. All of these kinds
of advantages have been factors in the decision to produce Mungo.
Mungo has been designed
in the context of a proliferation of interest in the concept of
the virtual field trip. It is now possible to ëtravelí
to Antarctica, to the Himalayas, to Hawaii, or into the kelp forests
off the coast of California, by popping a CD-ROM into your PC,
or opening a World Wide Web locationófurther details of
many examples of field trips with an ecological emphasis can be
found at the Ecosim Web site [3], A number of commentators have
raised social and educational concerns about the concept; for
example, one educator takes the view that the migration of human
interaction into cyberspace represents an assault on identity,
place, community and reality:
This, it seems to the authors, is the threat we face:
that soon, lost among electronic representations ëjust as
goodí as the real thing, weíll collectively lose
sight of the fact that approximations and reenactments are a kind
of lie, and that lies, even small ones, tend to create a climate
increasingly hostile or indifferent to the truth (Slouka [6],
p.148).
In developing Mungo, we have been challenged
by the variety of existing approaches to designing virtual field
trips, as well as by such critical perspectives on the concept
itself. In what follows, we describe how we have tried to use
the metaphor of the field trip thoughtfully, to design a multimedia
program that offers sophisticated educational outcomes across
a range of learning about ëplaceí.
4 Connecting academic research with teaching and learning
Mungo, with its databases
of research findings and supports an enquiry-based learning interface,
allows for novel links to be made between academic research and
student learningówhich is entirely appropriate for upper
secondary and tertiary education experience. In practice, while
using Mungo, students will learn syllabus-prescribed material
for earth science and related subjects while engaging in research.
4.1 ëDoing researchí and ëdoing teachingí
For university academic staff, ëdoing researchí
and ëdoing teachingí have often been at odds. Staff
are promoted on the basis of research activity primarily (although
the importance of teaching excellence is rapidly gaining ground
in all institutions). In ëdoing researchí one chooses,
or is encouraged, to focus on a narrow research topic, but is
typically called upon to teach over a wide curriculum base.
Mungo presages ideal learning
situations where an academic provides the basis of a learning
package in the relatively narrow area of their research expertise
which is then made widely available to multiple institutions and
independent students either through CD-ROM or, increasingly, the
Web. An analogy exists in tertiary level science text books which
now are typically multi-authored, each chapter being the contribution
of an expert researcher in the field.
4.2 Learning environments based on actual data
Mungo is built on banks
of real research data and, as such, differs from simulations which
generate output according to embedded mathematical formulae.
Two other Australian products, designed by Harper, Hedberg and
colleagues at the University of Wollongong (see ref 3), also focus
on lake and river systems. The first, Investigating Lake
Iluka, is based on simulations, whereas the second, Exploring
the Nardoo, employs actual data though the river system is
unidentified. One may argue about the relative merits of each
system but a strong case can be made for keeping university students,
as much as possible, in touch with real data; hence in a research
mode. The Head Up Display and the use of QuickTime Guides should
allow the user a satisfactory degree of immersion in the virtual
field trip experience while keeping them aware that they are drawing
upon hard-won actual research findings.
4.3 Design consistent with different ëways of knowingí
In Mungo we have tried to address the many
different ways in which people may ëknowí a place,
even when they are physically present in it. These ëways
of knowingí may be thought about in terms of various kinds
of abilities, such as the ëmultiple intelligencesíólinguistic,
musical, logical-mathematical, spatial, bodily-kinesthetic and
personalóformulated by Gardner, and used by McLellan [4],
to give an overview of the educational potential of virtual reality
to cater for, and also integrate, these kinds of abilities in
learning via new media technologies. In Mungo, we have
tried to apply such ëways of knowingí to the design
of a program through which users may virtually experience a unique
Australian landscape: through textual description, the sounds
of the place, numerical earth science data, maps and images of
scenes and conditions, the impression of ëmovementí
through space and time, and first-person oral histories, respectively.
Further, the design of Mungo is consistent
with the view that peopleís different ways of ëknowingí
a landscape may be influenced by prior knowledge and cultural
conditioning. A recent influential book about landscape describes
the idea of landscape itself as a cultural artefactóëIt
entered the English language, along with herring and bleached
linen, as a Dutch import at the end of the sixteenth centuryí(Schama,
[5], p.10)ówhich attempts to carry out ëan excavation
below our conventional sight-level to recover the veins of myth
and memory that lie beneath the surfaceí(Schama, [5], p.14).
In the case of the Australian landscape, through Mungo,
we have tried to create a learning environment which offers insights
into geophysical, biological and archaeological, and Aboriginal
and European ëways of knowingí, because, as a major
new report on the state of environment has put it, ëOur responses
need to embrace a systems approach that reflect the complexity
of the natural world and the cultural values associated with ití
(Australia, [1], p.ES-7).
5 A community of views on landscape
Australians now have unparalleled opportunities to
experience their country virtuallyówhether by reading an
Australian Geographic Society magazine article, by watching an
Ernie Dingo travel program on television, or even by assimilating
the works of Ken Done and John Williams. We are conscious of
the fact that Mungo will be used by many people who are
accustomed to having their knowledge of the landscape mediatedóby
the way someone else ëknowsí the landscape, represents
this knowledge, and uses it to communicate a messageóthrough
armchair exploration that is often uncritical.
In designing the Mungo virtual field trip
we have tried to take account of the various conventions that
have been used to mediate the landscape, in the case of Australia,
for example, from the ringing tones of Robert Flanneryís
early documentary film ëAustralia: Island Continentí,
through the idiosyncratic ABC television presentation of Les Hiddens,
ëThe Bush Tucker Maní, to the syrupy style of the
souvenir videos in airport shopping arcades. To suit the expectations
of program users but, even further, to extend them, Mungo
has been designed as a collage of conventions: it not only offers
optional modes of ëvisitor informationí (such as travelogue,
field guide and expeditionary record), but also encourages self-guided
as well as professionally-guided ëtoursí through the
programís content.
Thus, the design of Mungo has acknowledged
that a virtual field trip to a particular place is not about an
immutable reality: there isnít a single subject of knowledge,
or a single right way to state what you know, or a single reason
for knowing it, in this place. Instead, Mungo aims to
apply the idea of Barlex and Carre [2] of ësharing ideas
through shared imagesí. In other words, it is intended
to enable the creation of a community of people who have synthesised
an understanding of this unique place from a range of mediated
experiences, and, as well, have become aware of the ways in which
their own personal understanding of Australia as a place are continually
being mediated.
References
[1] Australia: State of the Environment 1996 Collingwood, Vic., CSIRO Publishing c500pp.
[2] Barlex, David & Carre, Clive, Visual Communication in Science: Learning through Shared Images, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1985.
[3] Gray, K.M. Ecosim Web site, URL: http://www.science.unimelb.edu.au/ecosim/ 1996.
[4] McLellan, Hilary, 'Virtual reality and multiple intelligences: potentials for higher education', Journal of Computing in Higher Education, Volume 5, no. 2, pages 33-66, 1994.
[5] Schama, Simon, Landscape and Memory London, Harper Collins 652pp, 1995
[6] Slouka, Mark War of the Worlds: Cyberspace and
the High-Tech Assault on Reality New York, BasicBooks 185pp,
1995
Copyright (c) M.D. Riddle, M.W. Nott, K.M. Gray, M. Nelson and P. Hennessey 1996. The authors assign to ASCILITE and educational and non-profit institutions a non-exclusive licence to use this document for personal use and in courses of instruction provided that the article is used in full and this copyright statement is reproduced. The authors also grant a non-exclusive licence to ASCILITE to publish this document in full on the World Wide Web and on CD-ROM and in printed form with the ASCILITE 96 conference papers, and for the documents to be published on mirrors on the World Wide Web. Any other usage is prohibited without the express permission of the authors.