A "Bounded Adoption" Strategy and its Performance Evaluation of Virtual Reality Technologies Applied in Online Architectural Education
Chengyu Sun, Diqiong Xu, Kryvko Daria, Peihong Tao · Proceedings of the International Conference on Computer-Aided Architectural Design Research in Asia · 2017
Thousands of online virtual experiments are being developed by hundreds of National Virtual Experimental Teaching Demonstration Centers run by top universities in China. According to an analysis on the existing VR technologies accessible in market and the conditions of domestic universities, a "bounded adoption" strategy was raised by Tongji University, when it dealing with a daily teaching context. It puts the manpower and financial resources into the design of virtual experiments, so-called 'contents building', rather than equipment purchasing as before. After three new experiments built, an evaluation on their contributions to learning performance is conducted immediately, which tries to understand whether the strategy works and how to move on. As one of these experiments, learning a historic Chinese temple in an online way is compared with other four learning methods from traditional ways to hybrid ways. The result indicates that the VR technologies applied with the "bounded adoption" strategy have a positive coherence to high learning performance, especially in form oriented recognition task, which plays a key role in architectural education. Meanwhile, the current design of virtual task involving building process has to be improved.