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Wayfinding Affordances Are Essential for Effective Use of Virtual Environments for Instructional Applications

Virtual environments (VEs) are becoming increasingly popular as a delivery medium for instruction. However, to leverage the unique affordances of such environments for learning, VE designers need to incorporate wayfinding mechanisms that aid users in navigating the environment into their designs. This paper discusses six wayfinding affordances to assist VE users in constructing mental models in virtual environments, information that useful to both VE designers and to educators who use VEs to teach.

Keywords:: cues, avatar perspectives, Affordances, dynamic route descriptors, decision making, anchored instruction, situated cognition, landmarks, virtual environments, problem solving, wayfinding

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Academic Support Services / Hybrid and Online Course Development

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Material Type:: Open (Access) Journal-Article
Date Added to MERLOT:: July 7, 2014
Date Modified in MERLOT:: February 10, 2020
Authors:: Mary Jo Dondlinger, Richland College
Leslie Matthew Lunce, Indiana State University
Submitter:: Barbra Bied Sperling

Primary Audience:: College Lower Division, College Upper Division, Graduate School, Professional
Mobile Compatibility:: Not specified at this time
Technical Requirements:: Adobe reader or web browser
Language:: English
Cost Involved:: No
Source Code Available:: No
Creative Commons:: This work is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 United States