They’ll be knuckle-walking and twirling, swinging from trees and foraging for food. It’s a jungle out there – at least, it was be for the kids attending a special Zoo Atlanta program earlier this month.

 Twenty-four youngsters attending a Zoo Atlanta summer day camp July 22-26 got a rare opportunity to experience first-hand what it is like to “be a gorilla” through a virtual reality program run by University of Georgia education researchers.

 The Virtual Gorilla program allowed the 5th-7th grade campers to assume the role of an adolescent ape in the world of a gorilla family, said Ken Hay, director of the project and a research scientist in the Learning and Performance Support Lab of UGA’s College of Education.

The Virtual Gorilla Modeling project (VGM) allows the learners to observe gorillas, develop biomechanical models of gorilla movement and develop an interactional model. This inquiry-based approach helps learners develop a deeper understanding of animal behavior that goes beyond a traditional descriptive or observational level and into the individual interactions with the world,  intra-group interactions and inter-group interactions.

 Learners enter the virtual 3D habitat and test their models by interacting with the gorillas.  The project combines the use of modeling tools and video-streaming experiences with on-site observations and immersive experiences to transform the descriptive nature of animal behavior education into new education where learners are developing 3D animal behavior models of gorillas.
 

“The program is focused on gorilla motion – form and function, and on gorilla troop interactions. The students will learn how scientists study real gorilla and how scientists create models,” said Hay. “By creating models, students must focus in a very detailed way how gorilla move and interact. The models are runnable, so they can see if their ideas really work and if they don’t – what their limitations might be.”

 Three UGA education faculty members and five graduate students were involved in running the technology component in the weeklong project while six Zoo Atlanta specialists handled the non-technology part.

 The current Virtual Gorilla Exhibit at Zoo Atlanta is an immersive virtual reality rendition of the Gorilla Exhibit originally developed by the Virtual Environment Group at Georgia Tech. The current project is developing tools that facilitate learners developing their own gorilla models.

 “Instead of going into the virtual space to learn from someone else’s model, learners will go into the virtual space to test their own models. The construction and testing of their models is where we believe the greatest learning is possible,” said Hay.

While the Virtual Gorilla program is part of Zoo Atlanta’s Summer Safari Day Camp this year, the researchers hope to open it to school groups year-round.

 The program is part of  research funded by a $1.07 million National Science Foundation grant. Hay, an assistant professor in instructional technology is directing the project , along with Lynn Bryan and Norm Thomson, both assistant professors in science education.

 Hay’s career has included research and development in a diverse range of advanced applications of technology to learning. Earlier work included  robotics for severely physically disabled students to enable them to conduct science experiments, real-time weather map and movie Internet service BlueSkies, and student composition of multimedia documents.

Tuesday, July 16, 2002
Writer: Michael Childs, 706/542-5889, mchilds@coe.uga.edu
Contact: Kenneth Hay, 706/542-4371, khay@coe.uga.edu