3D virtual environments are interactive places for organizing knowledge acquisition journeys of complex subject matter. With the VAL, the student can take control of the camera instead of relying solely upon those who create pre-rendered illustrations. Or, the student can hang an expert's rendered illustration on the wall and annotate it with his or her own words. Although no formal use studies have been made of the VAL, four UW anatomists suggest that the approach is very promising and in line with their views on appropriate web-based instructional methods. Negative comments typically refer to the lack of fidelity in the rendered 3D space, overcome in the near future by more powerful computers and better graphics subsystems.
Users can build rooms that attempt to externalize their own unique cognitive maps.
Informal discussions with anatomy students have found that most students prefer to have their own personalized space, but perhaps that reflects on the past history of traditional study methods. Like the many successful Web pages that index other sites and organize cyberspace around a topic for learning, VALs could be built over time that get updated with the best resources on Earth for common anatomical learning objectives. Curricula could be organized by knowledgeable instructors to provide VAL spaces that come with pre-defined learning exercises. Acknowledgements This work was funded by NIH grants LM06316 and LM06822. The rapid prototyping of the VAL would not be possible without the availability of the Java 3D API developed at Sun Microsystems and the enthusiastic vision of Dr. Tom Furness of the UW HIT Lab.