The Tactus Immersive Learning Environment (TILE) for Enhancing Learning in High School Science Classrooms

The project team is developing the Tactus Immersive Learning Environment (TILE), which is intended to be a cost-effective virtual reality simulation platform designed to facilitate student learning of core National Science Education Standards. TILE is intended for use as a supplement to middle and high school science curricula, for primary instruction of concepts, for review of concepts, or for individual or small-group practice. Because TILE will provide real time graphical representations and summaries of students' manipulations and the resulting changes due to their manipulations, the virtual reality environment will "bring to life" students' learning of key science concepts. For example, when learning about topics such as force and motion, students using TILE might watch race cars driving and stopping in order to learn about inertia and resistance, or they might watch items of various masses drop on Earth and on the moon to observe the varying effects of gravity.