The theoretical framework for designing desktop virtual reality-based learning environments.

This article describes the instructional design theoretical foundation of a desktop virtual reality-based learning environment aimed at complementing the current novice driver education system in Malaysia. It provides an elaboration of how various components of the learning environment are designed to support this theoretical underpinning that fits to the new paradigm of instruction. This is followed by the suggestion of a theoretical framework that can be used to guide the design of other virtual reality-based learning environments. This framework can also act as an initial structure that is to be further refined and/or revised, as a robust model model to guide the design and development of a learning environment using this technology is still unavailable at the present time.

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The benefits of using three-dimensional virtual environment technology, commonly known as virtual reality, in education have increasingly gained recognition from many researchers and educational practitioners. Virtual reality is described as a cutting-edge technology that allows learners to step through the computer screen into a three-dimensional interactive environment. Although virtual reality has been recognised as an impressive learning tool, the need for expensive head-mounted displays, gloves, and high-end computer systems has somehow restricted its uses. However, today virtual reality systems can run by affordable personal computers. Human interaction with the generated virtual worlds can be performed using conventional input devices, such as the mouse and keyboard without introducing any additional peripherals. In short, the availability of relatively low cost desktop virtual reality system has made this technology feasible to be widely used. Indeed, according to Youngblut (1998), this nonimmersive technology is much more mature and ubiquitously used in many different application areas rather than the immersive technology. This article focuses on this particular type of virtual reality technology.

Virtual reality is predicted to be the most significant technological transformation in educational media. Numerous researchers such as Roussos, Moher, Vasilakis, and Barnes (1999), Whitelock, Brna, and Holland (1996), Winn (1993), and Grove (1996) have found that virtual reality technology offers unique capabilities that are able to provide significant and positive support for education. Some of these capabilities include the ability to allow learners to visualise the three-dimensional representation of a problem, to visualise abstract concepts, to articulate their understanding of a phenomenon through their development of virtual environments, to visualise the dynamic relationships in a system, to obtain an infinite number of viewpoints of a virtual environment, and to visit and interact with events that are unavailable or unfeasible due to distance, time, or safety factors. The power of virtual reality as a tool for experiencing prebuilt worlds as well as for world building by learners, suggests that the technology will be widely applicable for education. Moreover, with the current development of virtual reality on the World Wide Web (WWW or Web), other relevant information from the Web could also be linked to the virtual representation of the problem. Indeed, the integration of the Internet and virtual reality has enabled us to manipulate the benefits offered by both technologies.

MOTIVATION OF PROJECT

Malaysia is one of the developing countries that is experiencing a gradual increase in road accidents. Statistics released by the Road Transport Department (RTD) of Malaysia shows that the number of road accidents has been increasing for the last 10 years. This is not limited as a local phenomenon. The World Health Organization (2002) has reported that road traffic crashes will account for the third highest cause of the global burden of disease, jumping from its current ranking of ninth, and developing countries will be largely responsible for this predicted sharp rise.

In the year 2001, a total of 265,175 road accidents were reported in Malaysia where 6,942 persons were killed and 42,856 persons injured (Jabatan Pengangkutan Jalan Malaysia, 2002). These deaths and injuries result in substantial economic and social costs as well as serious grief and physical sufferings. These figures are indeed worrying and prompt the need for effective and sustainable prevention since road traffic injuries are to a great extent, preventable. The Transport Ministry of Malaysia has stated the vision to reduce the fatal accident rate from the present 5.17 deaths to 2 deaths per 10,000 registered vehicles (Sim, 2002). Among the measures taken to reduce road accidents include improving the current driving curriculum and introducing more stringent driving evaluation procedures.

Virtual Reality and the Current Practice in the Novice Car Driver Education

The main goal of RTD is to produce competent car drivers. The current law allows a person who is 17 or older to undertake tests to obtain a driving license. A candidate, who will be called "learner" throughout this text, has to undergo a driver education programme. This programme requires him or her to successfully complete four evaluation components to be eligible for a driving license. These include a compulsory attendance of a five hour basic practical lesson known as the Courteous Driving Course, a compulsory attendance of a six hour practical training course, a theory test (oral or written), and an on road test.

The RTD of Malaysia has published a textbook known as the Driver Education Curriculum in 1997 while a revised version known as the Driver Education Curriculum Learning Manual was introduced in March, 2003. Generally, the aim of these books is to provide each learner with the essential knowledge required of a competent driver. Besides a large portion of text, this textbook also comprises various static images.

Limitations of the current methods. The cognitive domain, according to Reigeluth and Moore (1999) is defined as the domain that deals with the recall or recognition of knowledge, the development of understandings, intellectual abilities, and skills. Focusing solely on the cognitive skills that need to be imparted to a learner, the textbook, theory test, and the basic practical lesson are observed to pose a few limitations. The following will summarise these limitations while a more comprehensive elaboration of these observations is reported in Chen, Toh, and Wan (2003).

The use of a two-dimensional plan, view of road scenarios, and heavy reliance on the linguistics ability of the learner to understand narrative information (spoken and printed text), for example, has introduced unnecessary levels of abstraction. Learning is decontextualised as the use of knowledge or skills is separated as to how they would be used in real life. For instance, theoretical learning materials are contained in textbook and lectures but the outcomes of learning are tested on paper. Thus, a learner may have difficulty in triggering their memories when facing a real life driving situation.

The existing methods of instruction are found to support limited learning styles. These methods are often more suited for learners who learn best through reflective observation and/or abstract conceptualisation. In addition, the existing methods create a teacher-directed environment where the instructional decisions lie mainly in the hands of the instructor, and the quality of instructions could vary greatly among the instructors. The current design of instruction appears to fit the objectivist paradigm where learners learn domain content to solve a problem, rather than solving a problem to apply the learning. Although the educational benefits offered by the current instructional design are not deniable, the possibility to incorporate appropriate constructivist methods should also be considered to take advantage of both approaches.

These observations have indeed raised doubts on the effectiveness of the current methods of instruction in assisting learners with recalling or recognizing relevant knowledge while developing their understandings, intellectual abilities, and skills. These include supporting learners with different cognitive abilities, providing authentic and meaningful tasks, providing concrete experience, and active experimentation to support this kind of learning style, and providing learner-directed learning.

Potential of virtual reality to overcome the observed problems. The various capabilities of the virtual environment technology are foreseen to be able to overcome the problems stated. Desktop virtual reality is able to present a three-dimensional representation of a road scenario or problem in a visual and auditory form. Besides being more appealing, interesting and engaging when compared with other representation methods, it also acts as an excellent visualisation tool.

The ability of a virtual environment to simulate a real road scenario also means that it is able to be used to present authentic problems. For example, incorporating appropriate traffic signs in a simulated road scenario presents a similar cognitive challenge that will be faced in real life driving conditions. Through the process of visiting or exploring the simulated environment, the learner can further comprehend the real context of these signs in contrast to learning them in isolation through text.

A unique feature of a virtual environment, which is unavailable in any other traditional educational media, is its ability to provide infinite or unlimited number of viewpoints of a three-dimensional environment to the learner. The viewpoint of the learner who is maneuvering a vehicle can be tailored to the respective driver's viewpoint. He or she can also take the viewpoints of other drivers and even other meaningful physically-impossible viewpoint, such as bird-eyes view to gain an overall understanding of the whole road scenario. Indeed, having multiple perspectives of the world can thus encourage diverse ways of thinking. As pointed out by Duffy and Jonassen (1991), there are many ways to structure the world, and there are many meanings or perspectives for any event or concept.

The designer of a virtual environment is free to exclude any secondary elements that may divert the learner's attention from the elements of primary importance (Pantelidis, 1996). This helps in the attempt to represent the concepts that are the first steps toward the construction of an abstracted idea. In other words, a virtual environment functions as a cognitive tool that is capable of making imperceptible things perceptible. This attribute enables the design of various road scenarios with controlled level of complexities and incorporates elements that may not in existence in a real situation, such as the use of text, and artificial feedback to scaffold the learning process.

Virtual environments can be used to present a road scenario that serves as a problem manipulation space that allows free exploration of the environment and manipulation of virtual vehicles by the learners. Learners can actively learn from the process of visiting or exploring the virtual environment. Moreover, many studies (Bricken, 1990; Chen & Teh, 2000a; Johnson et al., 1998; and Pantelidis, 1997) have proven the motivating factor of this technology.

Unlike many other educational tools, a virtual environment is designed without a specified sequence. Its focus shifts from the design of prescribed interactions with the learning environment to the design of environments that permit the learner with various types of interaction that the system is capable of. This complies with the learner-centred approach where a learner has control over what he or she wants to explore or manipulate. The learner can choose to navigate through the simulated environment or interact with the objects of his or her interest for further observations. By doing so, the learner may make mistakes and wrong predictions. These experiences will provide conditions for modifying existing knowledge and thus, construct new knowledge (Dijkstra, 1990). This is also known as discovery or experiential learning where it is based on the assumption that a learner discovers principles through experimentation and practice (Alessi & Trollip, 2001).

THEORETICAL FOUNDATION FOR SYSTEM DESIGN

For this project, the concept of integrative goals suggested by Gagne and Merrill (1990), and the model for designing constructivist learning environments proposed by Jonassen (1999) serves as the macro-strategy to guide the design of the virtual environment-based learning environment. These two strategies are interrelated and in accord with the new paradigm of instructional design theory. The learning environment will then employ the cognitive theory of multimedia learning, which was put forward by Mayer (2002). This cognitive theory explains a number of principles for multimedia design that serve as the micro-strategy to guide the design of its instructional messages.

Macro-Strategy--Integrative Goals (Robert M. Gagne and M. David Merrill)

According to Gagne and Merrill (1990), goals which are projected to result from learning are presumed to be the starting point of the instructional design process. When the comprehensiveness of topics reaches a level similar to the context of real world problems, instructional design is forced to deal with multiple objectives and the relationships among these objectives. Integrative goals proposed by Gagne and Merrill deal with the design requirements for such a condition.

According to Orey and Nelson (1997), and Nelson (2000), integrative goals proposed by Gagne and Merrill (1990) are an example of traditional instructional design that has evolved to better reflect the conceptions of learning proposed by current theories. Gagne and Merrill have suggested that an instructional goal must be a combination of several individual objectives that are to be integrated into a comprehensive purposeful activity. This approach requires the initial identification of a category of instructional objectives, such as verbal information, intellectual skills, and cognitive strategies (Gagne, 1985). The multiple objectives which make up a module or course goal will then be integrated to assist a learner in the acquisition of interrelationships among the various component objectives.

They have used the term "enterprise" to refer to a purposive activity that may depend for its execution on some combination of verbal information, intellectual skills, and cognitive strategies, all related by their involvement within the common goal. The instructional designer is expected to identify the goal of a targeted enterprise along with its component skills and knowledge, and then design instruction that enables a learner to acquire the capability of achieving this integrated outcome.

According to Gagne and Merrill (1990), an enterprise is represented in memory by a schema. (Figure 1), which contains various knowledge and skill constituents (such as verbal label, verbal information, intellectual skills, cognitive strategies, motor skills, and/or attitudes) that become associated in the service of the integrated goal. It also includes a scenario that provides a basis for the application of the constituent knowledge and skill in the enterprise performance.

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Macro-Strategy--Model for Designing Constructivist Learning Environments (David H. Jonassen)

Jonassen, Hernandez-Serrano, and Choi (2000) had provided a list of technologies that are capable of affording constructive learning, and virtual environment is one of them. The various attributes of this technology are observed to be able to support constructivist learning as elaborated in Winn (1993), Bricken (1990), and Chen and Teh (2000b).

Figure 2 depicts a model for designing constructivist learning environments (CLEs) as proposed by Jonassen (1999). This model suggests the importance of posing an appropriate problem with the support of various interpretative and intellectual systems for the learning to focus on. These include related cases and information resources, cognitive tools, conversation and collaboration tools, and social or contextual support systems.

Reigeluth and Squire (1998) supported Jonassen's model as providing good and useful guidance in designing constructivist learning environment. This model was chosen as another macro-strategy for this project.

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Supporting learning in CLEs. Jonassen (1999) has also provided a thorough recommendation of learning activities that learners perform in CLEs and instructional activities the CLEs provide to support them. Learning activities include exploration, articulation of what the learners know and have learned, speculation, manipulation of the environment, and reflection, while instructional activities to support such learning activities include modelling, coaching, and scaffolding.

There are two types of modelling in CLEs: behavioural modelling and cognitive modelling. Behavioural modelling demonstrates how to perform the activities while cognitive modelling articulates the reasoning that learners should use. Modelling strategies focus on the expert's performance where it provides an example of the desired performance for an activity.

It is assumed that learners will attempt to perform like the model and their performances are likely to improve with coaching. Coaching strategies include motivating learners, analysing their performances, providing feed-back and advice on the performances. The learners then learn how to perform, reflect, and articulate what they have learned.

Scaffolding is the process through which learning efforts are supported (Linn, 1995; Jonassen, 1999). Scaffolding strategies include adjusting the task difficulty, the system performing part of the task for the learner, supplanting the learner's ability to perform some part of the task by changing the nature of the task, or imposing the use of cognitive tools that help the learner perform. Hannafin, Land, and Oliver (1999) have classified the scaffolding strategies into four types as in Table 1.

Micro-Strategy--Principles of Multimedia Design (Richard E. Mayer)

Mayer (2002) did a large series of experimental studies and the results offer a set of basic principles for the design of multimedia messages. Table 2 describes five of the principles that are referred to in designing the instructional messages for this learning environment. These principles are consistent with the cognitive theory of multimedia learning. This theory assumes that the human information processing system includes two channels; (a) visual or pictorial, and (b) auditory or verbal processing. Each channel has limited capacity for processing, and that active learning entails carrying out a coordinated set of cognitive processes during learning.

THE DESIGN OF THE LEARNING ENVIRONMENT

Eclectic Approach

As mentioned earlier, this project will take an eclectic approach by combining the concept of integrative goals with the model for designing constructivist learning environment. Constructivists, however, believe that the learning goals cannot be fully prespecified apart from the actual learning context. Goal analyses often cannot identify the content, instead rich learning experiences and interaction in which learners can pick up on their own the content missing between the gaps of analysis should be designed (Wilson, 1997). Thus, for this project, integrative goals proposed by Gagne and Merrill (1990) helped determine the specific integrative goals and its associated enterprise schemas. Based on these identified integrative goals and enterprise schemas, a rich and interactive virtual environment-based learning environment will then be designed as guided by Jonassen's constructivist learning environments design model to enable the learners to have a more complete grasp of the contents.

How the Design Supports the Theoretical Foundation

The RTD has identified six accident-prone situations (Jabatan Pengangkutan Jalan Malaysia, 2003). These situations are found to occur mostly on ordinary roads and junctions. Hence, this learning environment focuses on assisting the learners to better comprehend the basic rules, particularly on ordinary roads and junctions.

Macro-Strategy

* Objectives. By applying integrative goals to the instructional design, the identification of the types of learning and the respective learning objectives (Table 3) represents the starting point of the design process.

* Integrative Goal. According to Gagne and Merrill (1990), an instructional goal must be a combination of several different objectives that are to be integrated into a comprehensive purposeful activity, which is called an enterprise. In other words, an instructional designer needs to identify the component skills and knowledge that relate to the goal and design the scenario which relates each piece of knowledge or skill to the goal. The integrative goal is incorporated within the enterprise schema as verbal knowledge. In this learning environment, we identify the integrative goal as the learners' abilities to interpret the basic rules of a road scenario that comprises ordinary roads, road junctions, and various traffic signs.

* Enterprise Scenario or Problem. The designer then needs to identify the enterprise scenario that must be played out in conducting the enterprise. This enterprise scenario is somehow similar to the problem posed in a constructivist learning environment. According to Jonassen (1999), a problem in a constructivist learning environment consists of three integrated components: the problem context, the problem representation, and the problem manipulation space.

Problem context. Constructivist learning environments must describe in the problem statement all of the contextual factors that surround a problem to enable the learners to understand the problem. In this learning environment, we present its importance and the learning goal when a learner begins exploring the environment. As pointed out by Jonassen (2002), one critical attribute of a problem is that it must have some social, cultural, or intellectual value to the problem solver. Thus, by explicitly revealing the value and focus of the learning environment, it assists in engaging the learner with the learning activities.

Problem representation. Constructivist learning environment must also provide an interesting, appealing, and engaging problem representation that is able to perturb the learner. In this learning environment, we use a narrative, which is presented in text, and virtual environments to help the learner build a mental representation of the problem. The narrative is in the form of stories while the virtual environments present various virtual road scenarios that correspond to the stories. Both the problem context and problem representation describe a set of events that leads up to the problem that needs to be resolved. They relate particular singular objectives that consist of the expected behaviour to the purposive activity which is the enterprise.

Problem manipulation space. It is also critical to provide some active manipulation space for the problem. Learners must manipulate something and obtain the feedback as how their manipulations affect the environment. In this learning environment, the virtual road scenarios serve as the problem manipulation space that allow the learner to navigate his or her virtual car through the virtual road scenarios using input devices such as a mouse or the keyboard. Navigation is however restricted to movements which are possible in the real world, such as moving forward or backward, and turning left or right. The effect of this navigation on the virtual environment will be viewed in real-time and thus, closely resembles the car navigation in real life.

* Related Cases. It is important that the constructivist learning environment provides access to a set of related experiences or knowledge that learners can refer to. One of the core benefits of a virtual environment is its ability to provide three-dimensional graphical representation that mimics the real world. As pointed out by Alessi and Trollip (2001), knowledge and skills learned in a particular context are easily repeated by learners as long as they are in a similar context. Thus, embedding relevant, meaningful and a real-world context within the instructional strategies would enhance the transfer of learning to the real setting.

In this learning environment, the virtual road scenarios have implicitly provided authentic representations that the learner could easily relate to those found in the real world. For example, incorporating appropriate traffic signs in a simulated road scenario presents a similar cognitive challenge that is faced in real driving conditions. Through the process of visiting or exploring the simulated environment, learners can further comprehend the real uses of these signs in contrast to learning them in isolation through printed text alone.

* Information Resources. Rich sources of information are also essential in the constructivist learning environment. This enables learners to construct their mental models and formulate hypotheses that drive the manipulation of the problem space. In this learning environment, we provide hyperlink to various resources, which include the description of relevant basic rules for ordinary roads and junctions, traffic signs, and line markings. The learner is free to access these resources while trying to solve the problem.

* Cognitive Tools. The learning environment incorporates a few cognitive tools. The virtual road scenarios act as a visualisation tool where learners can visualise a dynamic three-dimensional representation of the problem. This is then much more authentic when compared to static two-dimensional representations in a picture form. This representation, which mimics the real world, helps reduce the learner's cognitive load in constructing mental images and performing visualising activities.

The virtual environment functions as cognitive tool that is capable of making imperceptible things perceptible. It can be designed to make the abstract more concrete and visible by providing symbols not available in the real world. The learning environment, for instance, provides guiding arrows at appropriate places in the virtual road scenarios to avoid the learner from getting lost in the virtual environment. Overall, the virtual road scenarios are designed to be less complex than those in real world so that learner can focus on the salient aspects of the representation. As pointed out by Alessi and Trollip (2001), reduced fidelity is known to benefit learning for a novice learner.

Virtual environments also allow a learner to visualise and understand complex structures that would otherwise remain hidden. The learner's viewpoint may also be manipulated through which arbitrary levels of scale can be applied to facilitate observations (Winn, 1993). Indeed, the uniqueness of virtual environments is the ability to provide an infinite number of viewpoints. In this learning environment, we provide the screenshots of appropriate physically impossible viewpoints of the virtual road scenarios. These include a plan view map to provide understanding of the overall road scenario and 2.5 dimensional (or bird's eyes) view of various parts of the road scenario, and a tracer that shows the position of the learner's vehicle on a 2 two-dimensional plan view map in real-time. The learning environment also presents a summary of the overall journey plan and a structure map that guides the sequence of the problem-solving process. These components all act as cognitive tools that help to reinforce the learner's mental representation of the problem and help him or her in performing the learning activities in the learning environment.

Instructional Activities

Modelling. The learning environment incorporates both behavioural modelling and cognitive modelling. Behavioural modelling in the learning environment demonstrates how virtual vehicles abide by the rules at various road scenarios in the virtual environment and the subsequent cognitive modelling articulates the reasoning for such behaviour in a narrative (text and audio format). Such modelling is often provided right before the learner's virtual car encounter similar situations in the virtual environment.

Coaching. Jonassen (1999) suggested four types of coaching in CLEs. In this learning environment, we provide coaching to the learner's performance through feedback messages (both verbal and text) that pop up while navigating through the virtual road scenarios. This type of feedback is termed as artificial feedback by Alessi and Trollip (2001). According to them, although the use of such artificial feedback is lower in fidelity, novice learners often prefer such feedback as it is more obvious, understandable, and more positive in tone. Artificial feedback can be given immediately, as in the case of this learning environment, thus can prevent errors and increase learning efficiency. Table 4 shows the types of coaching and examples of feedback messages that support each of type of coaching.

Scaffolding. In this learning environment, we divide the learning problem into five sub-problems to provide scaffold for a learner's performance. This is accordance with providing strategic scaffolding as elaborated in Hannafin, Land, and Oliver (1999). The five subproblems together with a structure map guide the learners in approaching the learning problem.

Stanney, Mourant, and Kennedy (1998) indicated that navigational complexity of a virtual environment is one of the main factors that could affect human performance in such an environment. If the user cannot effectively navigate in a virtual environment, then his or her ability to perform required tasks would be severely limited. This will definitely affect the amount of learning acquired. In this regard, studies had found that subjects faced difficulty in mapping two-dimensional input to a three-dimensional navigation (Chen, Lim, Ng, & Norsyarina, 2000; Chen & Teh, 2000a). Thus, this learning environment provides a "help" link that scaffolds the learners' abilities to perform the navigational task in the virtual environment. Hannafin et al. (1999) has classified this type of scaffolding as procedural scaffolding. This "help" link is provided on the same screen as the virtual environment, which is in line with suggestion by Alessi and Trollip (2001) that stated it is usually better to provide directions and aid when they are relevant.

This learning environment also guides learners regarding what should be considered. This is known as conceptual scaffolding. Hints that guide the learner to available resources are given to assist in the problem solving although an explicit direction as to which resources are considered best is not provided. Figures 3 and 4 show screenshots of the learning environment that depicts several of the components that are incorporated to support the macro-strategy.

Micro-Strategy. Mayer's (2000) first principle of multimedia design stated that learning can be enhanced when pictures are added to words rather than words alone. In this learning environment, we provide appropriate words or labels in both the images of the plan view for the overall road scenario and the road scenario for each sub-learning problem. This is an example of adding text to illustrations to help learners understand the presented material.

The images of the plan view and the corresponding description of each sublearning problem are presented near to each other on the screen. Similarly, the virtual environment for each sublearning problem is presented near to the corresponding summary of the sublearning problem description. These are all in line with the spatial contiguity principle where presenting words and pictures near to each other encourage learners to build mental connections between them.

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The coherence principle is against the inclusion of interesting but irrelevant material into the design of instructional messages. Thus, this learning environment avoids seemingly interesting words, pictures, and sounds that are not relevant to the main message, and the presentation is kept as concise as possible.

Based on the modality principle, learners are found to learn better when words in a message are presented as spoken text rather than printed text. Hence, this learning environment provides feedback in the form of narration during a learner's exploration of the virtual road scenario. Feedback in the form of onscreen text is still retained. This is however, opposing the redundancy principle. As stressed in Mayer (2002), the redundancy principle should not be applied as unbending commandments as his studies had only focused on situations in which the animation and narration run at a fast rate without learner control of the presentation. This learning environment is different from the situations studied by Mayer that led to the redundancy principle. The exploration of the virtual environment is fully learner-controlled, and is temporarily halted when any feedback (narration and onscreen text) is provided. It is assumed the learner will only use his or her verbal channel for the narration component and the visual channel for the on-screen text. Thus, there is no additional visual load as the scene of the virtual environment is temporarily halted until the learner decides to proceed with the exploration.

PROPOSAL OF A FEASIBLE THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

Generally, the framework that guides the design of this learning environment is illustrated in Figure 5. It is hoped that this framework, which integrates both the employed macro and micro-strategy, could serve as a feasible and useful framework to guide the design of other desktop virtual reality-based learning environment.

The circular shape framework of the macro-strategy depicts the various steps to be taken in the designing process. It starts from the centre of the circular shape diagram (innermost ring) and gradually moves outward to the outmost ring. As with most instructional design processes, this framework suggests that the design process begins by identifying individual objectives (also referred to as component skills and knowledge) and then the relationships among these objectives to derive the integrative goal. These objectives may fall in the category of verbal information, label, intellectual skill, or cognitive strategies.

The next step in the framework involves designing instruction that enables the learner to acquire the capability of achieving this integrated outcome, which is called the enterprise scenario. Basically, this step involves selecting the problem context, problem representation, and problem manipulation space that will help in achieving the integrated goal. The virtual environment will represent the problem, and provide a space for learner's to perform learning activities.

The design process continues by providing various necessary supports that may assist the learners to actively construct their knowledge in the learning environment. These supports include related cases, information resources, cognitive tools, collaboration and conversation tools, and social or contextual support. Having completed the design at the macro level, Mayer's (2002) principles of multimedia design which serves as the microstrategy are incorporated into the macro structure. These principles guide the design of instructional messages in the learning environment in the effort to produce better learning. (Figure 5)

CONCLUSION

This article has elaborated the theoretical foundation, both macro and micro strategies, that guides the design of a desktop virtual reality-based learning environment for novice car drivers in Malaysia. This has then led to a framework that can guide the design of other virtual reality-based learning environments that fit with the new paradigm of instruction. Nevertheless, this framework focuses solely on the design of a learner-centred learning environment. Our current study concentrates on expanding the framework by incorporating the development process into it, which will then produce a more comprehensive template to help educators design, develop, and evaluate a desktop virtual reality-based learning environment. The fact that a robust model for guiding the design and development of learning environment using this technology is still unavailable at present, this framework functions as an initial structure which can be further refined and/or revised in the endeavour to generate a robust design and development model for such learning environment.

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Table 1 Scaffolding Classifications

Scaffold Types  Functions

Conceptual      Guides learner in what to consider
Metacognitive   Guides how to think during learning
Procedural      Guides how to utilise the available features in the
                learning environment
Strategic       Guides in analysing and approaching learning tasks or
                problem

Table 2 Principles of Multimedia Design (Mayer, 2002)

Principle   Description                  Theoretical Rationale

Multimedia  Learners learn better from   When words and pictures are
Principle   words and pictures than      both presented, learners have
            from words alone.            an opportunity to construct
                                         verbal and visual mental models
                                         and build connections between
                                         them.
Spatial     Learners learn better when   When corresponding words and
Contiguity  corresponding words and      pictures are near to each other
Principle   pictures are presented near  on the screen, learners do not
            rather than far from each    have to use cognitive resources
            other on the page or         to visually search the page or
            screen.                      screen and learners are more
                                         likely to be able to hold them
                                         both in working memory at the
                                         same time.
Coherence   Learners learn better when   Extraneous material competes
Principle   extraneous words, pictures,  fpr cognitive resources in
            and sounds are excluded      working memory and can divert
            rather than included.        attention from the important
                                         material, can disrupt the
                                         process of organising the
                                         material, and can prime the
                                         learner to organise the
                                         material around an
                                         inappropriate theme.
Modality    Learners learn better from   When pictures and words are
Principle   animation and narration      both presented visually, the
            than from animation, and     visual channel can be
            on-screen text.              overloaded but the verbal
                                         channel is unused. When words
                                         are presented auditorily, they
                                         can be processed in the verbal
                                         channel, thereby leaving the
                                         visual channel to process only
                                         the pictures.
Redundancy  Learners learn better from   When pictures and words are
Principle   animation and narration      both presented visually, the
            than from animation,         visual channel can become
            narration, and on-screen     overloaded.
            text.

Table 3 Types of Learning with the Corresponding Learning Objectives

Types of learning     Learning objectives

Labels                Name the various types of road (one-way, two-way,
                      single lane, double lane)
                      Name the various types of junctions (T-junction,
                      Side road left junction, Side road right junction,
                      Y-junction, Cross junction)
                      Name the various traffic signs
                      Name the various common line markings
Verbal information    Describe the meaning of various traffic signs
                      Describe the meaning of common line markings
Intellectual skills   Identify the basic rules of ordinary road (one-
                      way, two-way, single lane, double lane)
                      Distinguish the various types of junctions (T-
                      junction. Side road left junction, Side road right
                      junction, Y-junction, Cross junction)
                      Identify the basic rules when entering or exiting
                      the various types of junctions
                      Identify the basic rules of a cross junction,
                      which is regulated by traffic lights
                      Distinguish the use of various traffic signs
                      Distinguish the use of various line markings
Cognitive strategies  Reflect on the actions taken when navigating
                      through the virtual scenario

Table 4 Types of Coaching with Examples of Feedback Messages

Types of coaching         Examples of feedback messages

Provide motivational      Good! You have been keeping to the left of
prompts                   this one-way road. Congratulations! You have
                          reached your  destination.
Monitor and regulate the  Danger! You have entered the lane for vehicles
learner's performance     from opposite direction. Keep to the left lane
                          when not overtaking. Please refer to Scenario
                          1.
Provoke reflection        Are you sure you are on the correct lane? Are
                          you sure you have entered the correct
                          junction?
Perturb learners' models  When turning out a T-junction, should you give
                          way to the vehicles on the main road or
                          otherwise?

Note: Right-hand side driving system is adopted in Malaysia

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CHWEN JEN CHEN

University Science Malaysia, Malaysia

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SEONG CHONG TOH AND WAN MOHD FAUZY

University Science Malaysia, Malaysia

[e-mail]

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