Theory Center explores learning in virtual reality with online science museum

By Bill Steele

Welcome to SciCentr, the science museum of the Cornell Theory Center (CTC): See protein folding in action, conduct your own experiments in plant breeding or visit a crystal fountain that plays sounds when you touch it. And there's more to come. You'll find the exhibits spread out on a series of floating platforms, some cascading in a downward spiral or off in a stream of bubbles eventually disappearing into the distance. Take a guided group tour, or explore on your own. You can fly or, if you prefer, teleport to each exhibit ...

In 530 Rhodes Hall, Chris Maher '02 looks at the virtual world "Gene House," a greenhouse facility for virtual plant breeding that he is coordinating with a team of area middle school students. Charles Harrington/University Photography

Let's start again.

Welcome to SciCentr, CTC's virtual science museum, located in cyberspace. In virtual reality, flying and teleporting are as easy as walking, and exhibits can do things that would be too difficult or expensive in the real world. And you can visit this museum from anywhere in the world, via the Internet. Bring your friends, or meet new ones, and chat with them as you roam the exhibits, whether your fellow visitors are sitting next to you or at some other computer half a world away.

CTC, Cornell's high-performance computing facility, has been developing this online science center for more than a year with the help of Cornell undergraduates and a few local high school students. Margaret Corbit, outreach and public relations manager at CTC, oversees the operation, which is part of CTC's ongoing exploration of desktop virtual reality for science outreach and informal science education. Corbit received a $100,000 grant in August from the National Science Foundation to fund design and evaluation of a new exhibit, "Jumping Genes." This exhibit will feature the research of Cornell rice genomicist Susan R. McCouch, associate professor of plant breeding, and her colleagues.

The goal of the project is to find out whether virtual spaces can engage and inform their visitors in the same ways as conventional museum exhibits and to identify qualities of the virtual space that are uniquely suited to informal science education. The NSF grant provides for ongoing evaluation, which will be conducted by William Winn, professor of curriculum and instruction in the College of Education at the University of Washington. Winn has studied the way people perceive graphic materials, and he will use interviews and youth focus groups to explore the "avatar experience" in virtual reality.

The NSF grant also will support a group led by Andrew Phelps, an interactivity design specialist at Rochester Institute of Technology's Information Technology Laboratory, in developing a gaming scenario for one part of the genomics exhibit.

The project also received a big boost last winter with a gift of new computers valued at over $26,000 from Intel Corp. to replace some antiquated servers and development machines. Additional support comes from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and funding for extracurricular programs for teens.

SciCentr is one world in the educational universe called AWEDU, provided by Activeworlds.com. Activeworlds also hosts an entertainment universe that includes virtual versions of New York City, tours of countries from Brazil to Russia, even a virtual Mars, and fantasy worlds for fans of such pop culture phenomena as "Star Wars" and the "X-Files." There is a fee to become a "citizen" of the entertainment universe, but educational sites are free.

This is "desktop" virtual reality: no helmets or gloves needed. Your computer display is a window through which you see the virtual world using a free, downloadable browser much like a web browser. Visitors appear as "avatars," symbolic figures that may look like people or robots or almost any object the person represented chooses to be. Type in a message and the words will appear above your avatar for everyone to read, or you can "whisper" a message to just one person. The system has the potential to allow for the same kinds of interaction that you find in an online, multiuser game and more. Cornell undergrads and talented teens are adding to the system by programming interactive exhibits and creating unique 3D objects for the space.

When you enter SciCentr, the first thing you see is the Trylon and Perisphere -- a tall, pointed spire next to a large hollow sphere -- based on the signature buildings of the 1939 World's Fair in New York City. These will serve as the visitor information center for the museum. "We chose those symbols," Corbit said, "because in 1939, technology offered a brave new world. We want students to make the link between the vision the world offered in 1939 and the promise that the science and technology we're displaying offers today." According to Corbit, the overall model for SciCentr's design is "George Jetson Meets the 1939 World's Fair."

The undergraduate team building SciCentr gathers several afternoons a week in a crowded, semi-darkened office in Rhodes Hall. On Tuesdays and Thursdays during the school year, a small team of students at Spencer-Van Etten High School joins them online after 3 p.m., logging on from their school computers to meet with their undergraduate mentors. The high school students serve as beta testers for exhibits and, in a separate world called SciFair, they are building an exhibit of their own that eventually will be integrated with SciCentr. Their exhibit explains the genetics of tomatoes.

Sometimes, the Cornell students are joined in their workroom by volunteer teenagers from the Learning Web of Tompkins County. Over the summer two teens worked daily on the payroll of the Ithaca Youth Bureau's Youth Employment Service. Cornell students come to the project from all areas of study: computer science, electrical engineering, operations research, psychology, English, comparative literature, fine arts, bioengineering and communications. Their contributions range from systems management and programming to mentoring, content development and 3D modeling.

CTC is supporting several other virtual worlds for Cornell programs including one called dea, a virtual world for Kathleen Gibson, associate professor of design and environmental analysis, and SciScape, a world being designed by undergraduates in Assistant Professor Marcia Lyons' digital arts courses in the College of Architecture, Art and Planning.

CTC is a high-performance computing and interdisciplinary computational research center. Researchers associated with the center work in some of the most computationally challenging fields -- from genomics to digital materials, drug design and financial risk analysis. CTC receives funding from Cornell, New York state, federal agencies and Corporate Program members.

Information about SciCentr and all of CTC's informal science outreach programs is available at http://www.scicentr.org.

Papers and presentations related to SciCentr can be accessed at http://www.tc.cornell.edu/~corbitm. To arrange a tour of SciCentr, contact Corbit directly at corbitm@tc.cornell.edu.