The Virtual Trillium Trail Project, Version 2.0.4, release date: 6/29/2011.

The Virtual Trillium Trail Project investigated the digital media design factors that resulted in impacts on emotions and learning outcomes. It was a Ph.D. dissertation in information science (research 2003-2008) that lead to significant findings on the immersive virtual environment (XR) design factors of information fidelity and navigational freedom on informal learning outcomes and emotions.

Real Virtual Comparison on Learning: A pilot study showed that the real field trip outperformed the virtual in total learning, but when virtual content was identical to the real content the learning outcomes were the same. Priming, transfer, and reinforcement were learning outcomes, which indicated that the best educational practices are to use the virtual and real experiences together to prime, transfer, and reinforce the real, not as a replacement for the real.

Visual Fidelity and Navigational Freedom and as Design Factors with Measured Impacts on Learning and Emotions: There is significant interaction between Visual Fidelity and Navigational Freedom, as design factors on changes in test scores, as measured in Knowledge Gained. Visual Fidelity is strong and significant as a factor, and Navigational Freedom shows a strong trend. The combined conditions of both High Visual Fidelity and High Navigational Freedom resulted in superior Knowledge Gained on tests, (Mean = 37.44% increase in test scores, SD = 13.88) when compared to the Low Visual Fidelity and Low Navigational Freedom conditions (Mean = 20.93 % increase in test scores, SD = 13.36).

The project collaborated with Gabi Hughes, Environmental Educator,Audubon Society of Western Pennsylvania, who coordinated the Fox Chapel Area School District environmental science education program. Teachers, especially Beth Durbin, from the Fox Chapel Area School District, were instrumental and supportive. Volunteer third, fourth, and fifth grade students from the greater Pittsburgh area participated in the IRB approved research. In addition, Professor Susan Kalisz, Department of Biological Sciences, at the University of Pittsburgh, and senior research associate Jessica Dunn, collaborated and provided the plant population data sets of the real field trip location required to build the visualization of the park.

The Virtual Trillium Trail is a unique data simulation and visualization of Dr. Kalisz’s long-term NSF biological plot study data, unlike any other virtual world for education and a model of Virtual Nature. Furthermore, the location of the Trillium Trail Wildflower Reserve is the site for many science school field trips, created and lead by the Audubon Society of Western Pennsylvania. The combination of the biological data and the proven educational approaches (from 1968, Beulah Frey, Ruth Scott and Ruth Boyles) offered an ideal and successful real world learning experience to model, on which to base a computer simulation for research into the usability of virtual worlds, and to better understand patterns of intrinsic learning found in informal settings.

Publications and Creative Works as Principal Investigator

Harrington, Maria C. R.. (2012, June). The Virtual Trillium Trail and the Empirical Effects of Freedom and Fidelity on Discovery-based Learning. Virtual Reality, 16(2), 105-120. Originally published in OnlineFirst™ Springer London, 1-15 (March 3, 2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10055-011-0189-7

Harrington, Maria C. R., (2011, April-June). Empirical Evidence of Priming, Transfer, Reinforcement, and Learning in the Real and Virtual Trillium Trails. IEEE Transactions on Learning Technologies, 4(2), 175-186. https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/5539765

Harrington, Maria, C. R. (2009). An Ethnographic Comparison of Real and Virtual Reality Field Trips to Trillium Trail: The Salamander Find as a Salient Event. In Freier, N.G. & Kahn, P.H. (Eds.), Children, Youth and Environments: Special Issue on Children in Technological Environments, 19(1). https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7721/chilyoutenvi.19.1.0074?seq=1

Harrington, Maria, C. R. (2008). Simulated Ecological Environments for Education (SEEE): A Tripartite Model Framework of HCI Design Parameters for Situational Learning in Virtual Environments. Dissertation Abstracts International. July 17, 2008. University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA. http://d-scholarship.pitt.edu/8971/

Publications and Creative Works for the AR Perpetual Garden Apps:

The AR Perpetual Garden (2015-2018), is an Augmented Reality App for use inside and outside museums to extend the learning impact of real dioramas and gardens. Knowledge and complex causal chain interactions previously locked in traditional artifacts become accessible with immersive data visualizations and bio acoustics reflecting scientific data sets to show two contrasting scenarios - Woodland in Balance and Woodland out of Balance. This Augmented Reality implementation is unique as it is uses the vision tracking features of the most recently released ARCore and ARKit SDKs producing a perceptual experience on parity with reality. The concepts and knowledge are easily accessible at a click of a button to hear the curator’s interpretive narrative and access a complementary website of facts, The Virtual Garden Timeline. The AR Perpetual Garden App was developed in part, as an international collaboration between The Harrington Lab at the University of Central Florida, The Powdermill Nature Reserve at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, and the MultiMediaTechnology program of the Salzburg University of Applied Sciences, Austria. Undergraduate and graduate students were involved in the production of the app. The multidisciplinary effort was developed with my partners, Dr. John W. Wenzel, Director, Powdermill Nature Reserve, CMNH and Dr. Markus Tatzgern, FH-Professor, Head of Game Development and Mixed Reality, MultiMediaTechnology program of the Salzburg University of Applied Sciences, Austria.

Apple iTunes:

Harrington, Maria C. R., Wenzel, J. W., Tatzgern, M., Langer T., Oliver, M., Isaac, B., Guffey, A., Bledsoe, Z., Jones, C., Dinic, R., and Tiefengrabner, M. (2017-2018). The AR Perpetual Garden Apps. Published on Apple iTunes App Store (Version 1.2) Launched October 25, 2018. Available from https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/ar-perpetual-garden/id1438086490?mt=8

Google Play:

Harrington, Maria C. R., Wenzel, J. W., Tatzgern, M., Langer T., Oliver, M., Isaac, B., Guffey, A., Bledsoe, Z., Jones, C. and Dinic, R. (2017-2018). The AR Perpetual Garden Apps. Published on Google Play Android Store (Version 6.6.6) Launched November 30, 2018. Available from https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.carnegie.garden

Harrington, Maria C. R., Wenzel, J. W., Oliver, M., Isaac, B., Guffey, A., Bledsoe, Z. and Jones, C. (2015-2017). The Virtual Garden Timeline Website. (Launch 2017. https://virtualgarden.powdermill.org/

Publications and Creative Works as Principal Investigator

Harrington, Maria C. R., Tatzgern, M. Langer T., Wenzel, J. W. (2019). Augmented Reality Brings the Real World into Natural History Dioramas with Data Visualizations and Bioacoustics at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, Curator: The Museum Journal, 62(2), 177-193. First published in Wiley Online Library (April 19, 2019). https://doi.org/10.1111/cura.12308

Harrington, Maria, C. R. (Accepted 2020). Observations of Presence in an Ecologically Valid Ethnographic Study using an Augmented Reality Virtual Diorama. In Proceedings of the 2020 IEEE Conference on Virtual Reality and 3D User Interfaces 27th IEEE Conference on Virtual Reality and 3D User Interfaces. Atlanta, Georgia. March 22-26, 2020. Video:

Harrington, Maria, C. R. (Accepted 2020). Augmented and Virtual Reality Dioramas and Arboretums for Museum XR Exhibition Engagement and Learning Design as a Lightning Talk. In Proceedings of the 24th Annual MuseWeb conference MW20: MW 2020. Los Angeles, CA. March 31 - April 4, 2020.

Harrington, Maria, C. R. (2019). Virtual Dioramas Inside and Outside Museums with the AR Perpetual Garden App. In Proceedings of the Annual MuseWeb conference MW19: MW 2019. Boston, MA. Published online February 14, 2019. Consulted March 13, 2019, April 2- 6. https://mw19.mwconf.org/paper/virtual-dioramas-inside-and-outside-of-museums-with-the-ar-perpetual-garden-app/

Harrington, Maria C. R. (November 3-4, 2017). Ripples in a Pond: How Virtual Reality may be a Tool of Impact for the Humanities. In Proceedings of the HASTAC 2017, UCF, Orlando, FL.

The Virtual Trillium Trail v. 2.0.4 screenshots