USING AI AND METAVERSE TECHNOLOGIES TO RETHINK PALEONTOLOGY VIRTUAL FIELDTRIPS

Over the past decade, online education opportunities through formal and informal education organizations have exploded in popularity. We saw such offerings truly take off during the COVID19 pandemic. While we are no longer in lockdowns, accessibility to robust, dynamic learning experiences via online pathways is still a hot topic and in high demand. Virtual learning resources broaden accessibility to content, and offer new opportunities for students and educators to connect. Despite this, earth and life science education has remained fraught with physical and financial accessibility challenges. With this project, we have developed a multifaceted approach to addressing these ongoing issues in earth and life science education through a scaffolded immersive interactive virtual-world course, bolstered by an in-world custom-trained AI chat-bot learning assistant.

In this course, students moved through six interactive virtual-world modules built in the metaverse platform GatherTown, with course content focused on climate change in the Arctic from the Cretaceous to modern day. By moving through modern, Late Cretaceous, K-Pg boundary, Eocene, and then back to modern time periods, students take a comprehensive look at the evidence for and study of climate change. Assessment of student response to the course was three-fold: 1) Observations from student conversations about the course content and interface during course assignments; 2) Formal assessment of the course via standard course evaluations and IRB-approved student survey; 3) Student course-content activity tracking via background software. Our findings indicate that students have predominantly positive opinions of the interactive virtual world, and more universally positive opinions on the utility of the AI chat-bot learning assistant. Data-capture from AI chat-bot use indicates it saved over eight hours of instructor time with well over 1,000 student queries submitted, leaving more time for higher-quality engagement by the instructor. The authors observed excellent student conversational understanding of course academic content at the close of the course via discussion assignments conducted on Blackboard. Our results emphasize the potential of using game-like digital spaces and content-trained AI chatbots to facilitate student learning in a way comparable to a traditional, face-to-face fieldtrip.