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Designers often address the continuity of user experiences across various media platforms. Features are the focus of media development. But the media-dependency of features means that truly preserving the essence of one feature across media platforms, in a process of cross-media translation, can result in superficially dissimilar features. We describe function mapping as an aid in this translation, in which design features are derived from theoretical assertions, and in turn an understanding of underlying functions permits the translation of features to other media platforms. We demonstrate this in a case study of translation from a VR installation, to portable VR, and then to a website. We also compare similar environments on the same media platform (i.e., two websites), one which was developed through function mapping, and the other which was not. This crystallizes the impact of function mapping, which achieves a theoretical form of equivalency across media platforms. 

Awe is a transformative emotion associated with positive educational and psychological outcomes, and is caused by experiences of vastness that induce accommodation. Vast VR scenes have been found to elicit awe. We examined self-reported causes of awe among grade 3–8 students — a previously unstudied age group regarding awe — in a virtual environment portraying entities over 20 orders of magnitude from atom to Sun. Most students reported feeling awe, around half specifically enough to be coded based on a priori categories drawn from the literature. Vastness of scale (including both large and small entities, and large differences in scale) was the most common cause of awe. Surprisingly, no student responses were related to accommodation. Vastness of evolution and degree of immersion were identified as novel causes of awe. Thus, even young children can experience awe in VR, opening possibilities for productive VR in education at the elementary school level. 

Virtual reality (VR) has been widely used for education and affords embodied learning experiences. Here we describe: Scale Worlds (SW), an immersive virtual environment to allow users to shrink or grow by powers of ten (10X) and experience entities from molecular to astronomical levels; and students’ impressions and outcomes from experiencing SW in a CAVE (Figure 1) during experiential summer outreach sessions. Data collected from post-visit surveys of 69 students, and field observations, revealed that VR technologies: enabled interactive learning experiences; encouraged active engagement and discussions among participating students; enhanced the understanding of size and scale; and increased interest in STEM careers. 

While scale cognition and learning is a crosscutting concept that pervades science and can aid students in making connections across disciplines, students struggle to conceptualize and consider scales that go far beyond their everyday world experience. Virtual reality technology affords embodied learning experiences, which enable students to physically engage in learning activities in an environment with rich information. Scale Worlds is a virtual learning environment implemented in an immersive CAVE, which portrays scientific entities of a wide range of sizes. A user can scale themself up or down by powers of ten, in order to experience entities from an atom to the Sun. This paper reports on an expert-based usability evaluation of Scale Worlds, including three sets of A/B testing, by five usability experts. Outcomes of the usability evaluation will inform the refinement of Scale Worlds. The evaluation provides insights for usability evaluation and design in immersive virtual environments. 

This work-in-progress poster reports on the development process of a virtual environment to support embodied cognition about the scale of scientific entities from subatomic particles to galaxies. Research shows that learners struggle to comprehend the sizes of entities beyond human scale. In order to determine specific entities to use in the virtual environment, a document analysis of US K-undergraduate science education standards was undertaken. Entities, categories of entities, and ranges of sizes were identified.