“Visual or Verbal: Two Approaches to Creating an Immersive Virtual Environment”

Eunice Johnston North Dakota State University eunice.johnston@ndsu.nodak.edu Jeffrey T. Clark Brian M. Slator Gary K. Clambey Aaron Bergstrom Shawn Fisher Justin Hawley James E. LandrumIII David Martinson J. Liessman Vantine

One benefit of the development of Immersive Virtual Environments (IVEs) for education is that students in the humanities may now encounter and learn about places and cultures that which are difficult to visit or may no longer exist. As increasingly sophisticated graphical interfaces have become possible, many IVEs have decided to use this technology. Yet some might question whether the highest fidelity interface is always necessary or even desirable for the study of the humanities. This project seeks to answer that question by developing two parallel versions of an IVE that represents the Like-a-Fishhook Village and Fort Berthold area in western North Dakota as they existed in 1858, when people lived there, and in 1954, when it was being excavated. Both versions will permit users to explore the environment freely, but one version creates a complete, three-dimensional visual representation while the other is constructed mostly of text with a few carefully chosen images and sounds. To understand the story Like-a-Fishhook Village, the last great earth-lodge village in the Great Plains, and Fort Berthold, the nearby fur trading post, is to understand the history of west. The Mandans, who had befriended Lewis and Clark and the Corps of Discovery in 1804–04, and their close neighbors, the Hidatsas and Arikaras, had lived in sedentary earth-lodge communities along the Missouri River for centuries, hunting, raising corn and other crops, and trading extensively with neighboring tribes. Despite a basic similarity of economic and social life, these peoples differed remarkably in language and customs. The unification of these three tribes at Like-a-Fishhook village tells of the significant impact that the coming of European American people had upon Native American cultures. Although they had suffered several epidemics previously, a smallpox epidemic in 1837 reduced the Mandan population to fewer than 200 individuals. The Hidatsa and Arikara populations, although not as severely struck, shrank as well. Ethnohistorical evidence suggests that the first permanent residents of Like-a-Fishhook Village were Hidatsa who arrived in 1845, and that they were joined shortly thereafter by a smaller group of Mandans; the two tribes felt it was beneficial to combine their numbers in order to resist the attacks by Sioux tribes in the area. Although living together, each tribe maintained its own language and culture. P. Chouteau, Jr. and Company, an offshoot of the American Fur Company, quickly established a trading post north of the village, and European Americans were part of the community from then on. Many changes occurred in the next forty years. The fur traders were followed by missionaries, United States government representatives, and soldiers, all people who wanted the natives to change their ways. Fur trading resulted in increased competition for natural resources, which caused more friction than usual among the tribes, and the Arikara, hoping for support in the battles against the Sioux, joined the other two tribes at the village in early 1860s. In the mid 1880s, the United States government forced the residents to abandon their village life and to take up individual allotments scattered throughout the reservation. Archeological salvage excavations were carried out at the site in 1950–52 and in 1954 by the State Historical Society of North Dakota, under contracts with the National Park Service and by the River Basin Surveys of the Smithsonian. However, the rising waters from the Garrison Dam and Reservoir project ultimately inundated the site, which now rests about a mile offshore under the waters of Lake Sakakawea (Garrison Reservoir). Although many individuals were involved in that work, the final report was written by G. Hubert Smith and published by the U.S. Department of the Interior (Smith, 1972). A multidisciplinary team is creating two parallel IVEs based on the same content: both recreate the village site as it appeared in 1954, when it was being excavated, and also in 1858, when it was occupied, and visitors will be able to “time travel” from one period to the other. The 3-D, graphically rich version is modeled on other IVEs that have been created at NDSU for students to learn to do science by conducting simulated experiments and solving authentic (albeit virtual) problems. Science-based systems of this sort have demonstrated statistically significant impact on student learning in controlled studies (McClean et al., 2001). The great strength of this version is the visual stimuli including an environment that visually depicts all space and creates the sense of moving through that space. In addition, novice users will probably find it easier to learn how to interact with this IVE. The largely text-based version uses the enCore Xpress MOO interface, and while it does allow the inclusion of some visual and audio components, it requires students to use written language to interact with the virtual environment. The MOO be better able to create multiple perspectives of the multiple cultures represented in the site. In addition, students will, after a process that involves review by scholars and others, be able to enrich the MOO with their own writing, to become producers as well as consumers of content. The MOO version is platform independent and requires less bandwidth than the 3-D graphically rich version. Both types of interfaces have the ability to engage users in the environment, but the question is whether one or the other is more effective for certain types of learning. The 3-D graphically rich version of the Like-a-Fishhook IVE will be used by archeology students to learn to think like archeologists. However, both versions will be used by a multidisciplinary, writing-intensive humanities class, which will include students from Fort Berthold Community College, descendents of the village inhabitants. Students will experience the site via the IVEs: they will observe, analyze, reflect-and write-about the area, the cultural changes, the history, and the virtual environments themselves. Students from all disciplines will meet together (at least in virtual space) and discuss the conventions of their disciplines. Then they will explore the IVEs together with a set of questions that require exploration and investigation in order to find the answers. They will also write parallel assignments that are appropriate for their disciplines. For example, all students will keep journals to record their visits to the IVEs, journals that stress purposeful observation and inquiry, but each will concentrate on recording the type of information suitable for his or her discipline as they travel through the IVEs. The journals will be used as the basis for other writing assignments. For example, all students might write about an artifact found during the excavation, but the anthropology student might write an analysis of its cultural significance, the creative writing student a poem or a piece of creative non-fiction about it, and the public history student a museum script for it. Longer papers will require additional research using conventional sources as well as more innovative ones like the Digital Archive Network for Anthropology (DANA) being developed at NDSU and which includes 3-D scans of actual objects found at the Like-a-Fishhook site. The creative writer might write a piece of historical fiction, the anthropology student a scholarly article on some aspect of the cultures depicted in the IVEs, and the public history student a brochure for the site such as the ones that are produced for visitors to actual historic sites. Students from all disciplines might collaborate on the making of a short documentary on some aspect of the area or a multi-vocal web essay that combines the expertise and perspective of several disciplines. After a process of review, student writing can be incorporated into the MOO version to enrich it for future visitors. The value of each IVE as it relates to the learning in the humanities will be assessed in several ways. The journals kept by the students during their visits to the IVEs will be assessed to determine (1) the level of engagement in each version of the IVE, (2) any differences they note about the different experiences in the IVEs, (3) the type of information they notice in each IVE, and (4) how well they understand the time periods, the cultures, and the places they are observing. In addition, students will complete surveys that ask them to respond to questions that solicit similar information. These results will provide useful information about the strengths and weaknesses of both types of interfaces.

REFERENCES

Jeffrey T. Clark Brian M. Slator Aaron Bergstrom Francis Larson Richard Frovarp James E.LandrumIII William Perrizo. “Preservation and Access of Cultural Heritage Objects Through a Digital Archive Network for Anthropology.” Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Virtual Systems and Multimedia (VSMM-2001), Berkeley, CA, Oct. 25–27. : , 2001.

High Wired: On the Design, Use, and Theory of Educational MOOs. Ed. Cynthia Haynes Jan Rune Holmevik. : University of Michigan, 1998.

Phillip McClean Bernhardt Saini-Eidukat Donald P. Schwert Brian M. Slator Alan White. “Virtual Worlds in Large Enrollment Biology and Geology Classes Significantly Improve Authentic Learning.” Selected Papers from the 12th International Conference on College Teaching and Learning (ICCTL-01), April 17-21, 2001. Ed. Jack A. Chambers. Jackson, FL: Center for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning, 2001. 111-118.

Brian M. Slator Jeffrey T. Clark James LandrumIII Aaron Bergstrom Justin Hawley Eunice Johnston Shawn Fisher. “Teaching with Immersive Virtual Archaeology.” Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Virtual Systems and Multimedia (VSMM-2001), Berkley, CA, Oct. 25-27, 2001. Berkley, CA: , 2001.

G. Hubert Smith. Like-a-Fishhook Village and Fort Berthold, Garrison Reservoir, North Dakota. Anthropological Papers 2. Washington, D.C.: National Park Service. U.S. Department of the Interior, 1972.