Konzepte für den Einsatz von Virtueller und Erweiterter Realität zur interaktiven Wissensvermittlung

In today's information society, it is becoming increasingly necessary to acquire knowledge and to illustrate complex information. Already at school, an increasing amount of more and more complex facts has to be taught. This procedure continues at the universities as well as in working life. Modern didactic principles try to a greater extent to teach the learner knowledge by acting independently and by gaining own experiences. Such principles can easily be illustrated with the help of the Virtual and Augmented Reality technology. The aim of this thesis is to develop concepts for the use of Virtual and Augmented Reality for interactive knowledge transfer. For this purpose, the demands that are made on a virtual learning environment are initially analyzed. Technological as well as didactic demands are considered during this process. On the basis of these demands, a framework for Virtual Learning Environments is designed. This framework contains the creation process for Virtual Learning Environments as well as the necessary presentation components. The design process is structured into the parts Modeling, Authoring, and Adaptation, whereby also persons without expert knowledge on Virtual Environments have to be able to carry out the Adaptation step. The components developed for the presentation are Learner and Learning Object Data, a Learning Environment Manager, and Interaction. Interaction with this environment is an important opportunity to transfer knowledge in Virtual Environments. Within the scope of this thesis, the possible interaction scenarios - from single user to group scenarios - are examined und projected on to the four different social teaching methods. Since learning always contains a social aspect, scenarios for group interaction in Virtual Learning Environments have great significance. This form of interaction is therefore especially considered. A suitable choice of interaction devices is important for the interaction in Virtual Learning Environments. Special VR devices are often too complicated, too prone to errors, and too expensive to be used for knowledge transfer. In this thesis, a universal interaction device for Virtual Learning Environments is developed to solve these problems. This interaction device uses virtual devices for the interaction with the Virtual Environment. Because of the use of virtual devices for the interaction with the Learning Environment, the amount of necessary devices is reduced to one device, and, at the same time, an interaction device is created which can be flexibly used. The output device, which is used for the display of the virtual devices, can also be used for the representation of further learning contents. The concepts outlined in this thesis have been used to create several Virtual Learning Environments. These Learning Environments were presented to the public, for example, on the EXPO 2000 in Hannover, and the Cybernarium Days in Darmstadt and Munich