Learning to be Scientists via a Virtual Field Trip (Demonstration) Deborah Richards 1 , Michael J Jacobson 2 , Meredith Taylor 1 , Anne Newstead 2 , Charlotte Taylor 2 , John Porte 1 , Iwan Kelaiah 1 , Nader Hanna 1 1 Department of Computing Macquarie University North Ryde, NSW, 2109, Australia +61 2 9850 9567 deborah.richards@mq.edu.au Centre for Computer Supported Learning and Cognition, Faculty of Education and Social Work, The University of Sydney, NSW, 2106, Australia +61 2 9036 7671 michael.jacobson@sydney.edu.au ABSTRACT We have developed the virtual world of Omosa in which school students can learn what scientists do by doing it themselves. In Omosa students are able to observe, collect data and interact with a number of intelligent virtual human and animal agents. Categories and Subject Descriptors I.2 ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE; I.6 SIMULATION AND MODELING, I.6.3 [Applications] I.6.7 [Simulation Support Systems] Environments General Terms Design, Experimentation. Keywords Agents, artificial life, boids, educational virtual worlds, biology education, science inquiry. 1. INTRODUCTION Genuine scientific inquiry is rare in the classroom. Reasons for this include the reluctance of teachers to engage in genuinely open-ended inquiry arising out of pressures to create efficient learning trajectories and cover all topics in a mandated curriculum. This difficulty is exacerbated by a science curriculum that has become theory and textbook heavy due to resource limitations and occupational health and safety (OH&S) issues. In particular, Zappala [6] notes that teaching behavioural ecology and ethology (the scientific study of animal behavior) is limited by physical, practical and ethical constraints such as: confounds and control of extraneous variables; observer bias leading to data tainting; difficulty of capturing rare events and behaviours; and infeasibility of large scale or long term study. Furthermore, while laboratory conditions can provide consistency and repeatability, for many species this approach may be undesirable or inappropriate” i . The ability to conduct a virtual field trip can address many of these issues and provide an opportunity for students to gain knowledge and skills needed for scientific inquiry such as hypothesis formation and testing, designing experiments, conducting investigations, using secondary resources and data, using equipment and ICT, managing risk, collecting data, performing analysis and drawing and communicating conclusions. In addition to providing a hands-on and experiential approach to honing students’ scientific inquiry skills, we are also interested in teaching students about complex systems such as ecosystems. Multiagent systems are particularly suitable for this purpose because while each individual agent may follow a small set of rules complex behaviours at the group level tend to emerge. To this end, we have developed the virtual world of Omosa in which school students are able to observe and interact with intelligent virtual human and animal agents. 2. PROBLEM SCENARIO In Omosa World the students, as junior scientists, are invited by the Chief Scientist at the IEIA (Interplanetary Environmental Investigation Agency) to assist in discovering why planet Omosa has been showing signs of ecosystem change. The indigenous people who live there have reported that the populations of certain species of animals, including those that are an important food source in their society, are declining. The Omosans have agreed to allow scientists to come and study the situation. Students utilise workbooks to explore different issues and record their findings. Some activities occur in the world (e.g. speaking to the climatologist, hunter or ecologist agents and observing the animal agents); some in the classroom (e.g. proposing a hypothesis and describing the experiment to be conducted to the whole class). There is a progression in concept development as students move from one problem to another. 3. THE VIRTUAL WORLD TECHNOLOGY Omosa has been developed using the multi-platform game development environment called Unity3D (unity3d.com/ ) that has inbuilt graphics and physics engines and features such as lightmapping and occlusion culling. To create the Omosan landscape itself and its base texture we used L3DT, a terrain generating tool (www.bundysoft.com/L3DT/ ). We then imported the heightmap into Unity3D and used its terrain editing tool to add the grass and trees. This tool makes it easy to place details onto a terrain and remove them if the size of the game becomes too large. The island of Omosa contains four main locations (village, hunting ground, weather laboratory, research station) where students can collect information and complete activities. We used Blender (www.blender.org/ ) to model structures and Mixamo (www.mixamo.com/ ) to create low polygon human models. We purchased our animals from TurboSquid (turbosquid.com/ ), where 3D artists can sell models. The models on TurboSquid usually have a high polygon count, which is especially undesirable when creating large herds of animals. We purchased four animals from the same artist, 3Drivers (www.turbosquid.com/Search/Artists/3DRivers ). Three of the models are of extinct animals (Andrewsarchus, Bluebuck, and Indricotherium) and one is of an Iberian Lynx. Each had more than 6000 polygons. Using Blender we reduced the number of polygons to no more than 1800 each. Appears in: Proc of the 11th International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems (AAMAS 2012), Conitzer, Winikoff, Padgham, and van der Hoek (eds.), June, 4–8, 2012, Valencia, Spain. Copyright © 2012, International Foundation for Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems (www.ifaamas.org). All rights reserved.