The LITE lab collaborated with Missouri S&T's Virtual and Rapid Prototyping (VRPL) and Virtual Environments and Object Modeling (VENOM) laboratories in the First Responder Simulation and Training (FiRSTE) project, which was funded by a one-million dollar grant from the U.S. Army Tank-Automotive and Armaments Command (TACOM). The purpose of this project is to develop virtual environments for the training of first responders to weapons of mass destruction. The LITE lab carried out the evaluation for this project (Hilgers et al., 2004). (Links to example video panels created by LITE, for the evaluation can be viewed at http://firste.mst.edu//clips).

In addition to aiding in the evaluation of the environments, the LITE lab carried out an exploration of an underlying fundamental issue, which we refer to as "affectively intense learning". Affectively intense learning refers to learning of tasks that have to be performed in highly emotional situations, such as those performed by first responders. As an experimental environment for this research the VENOM lab created a model of Missouri S&T's computer science building, as it might appear after and during a terrorist attack. A series of experiments were carried out using this environment, including systematic variation of factors in the VR environment, and a number of behavioral and physiological measures (Tichon, Hall, Hilgers, Leu, & Agarwal, 2003; Hall et al., 2004; Wilfred, 2004; Wilfred et. al. 2004 ). One of these papers (Wilfred et al., 2004) was one of only thirteen out of eight hundred papers selected for a best-paper award at the Association for Advancement for Computers in Education's ELearn Conference.

The graphical depiction of the research model that guided our research follows (numbers represent research questions addressed):

References

• Hall, R.H., Wilfred, L.M., Hilgers, M.G., Leu, M.C., Walker, C.P., Hortenstine, J.M. (2004). Virtual Terrorist Attack on the Computer Science Building: A Research Methodology.Presence-Connect,4(4), http://www.presence-connect.com.
• Hilgers, M.G., Hall, R.H., Leu, M., Reddy, M., Lambert, T., Agarwal, S., Warmbrodt, J., & Nebel, K. (2004). The First Responder Simulation and Training Environment (FiRSTE) Project: Development and Evaluation. Laboratory for Information Technology Evaluation Technical Report, LITE-2004-03. (Accepted, pending Revision,Presence.)
• Tichon, J., Hall, R.H., Hilgers, M.G., Leu, M., & Agarwal S. (2003). Education and Training in Virtual Environments for Disaster Management. Proceedings of the World Conference on Educational Multimedia, Hypermedia, and Telecommunications, Honolulu, Hawaii, 1191 -1194, http://dl.aace.org/12972
• Wilfred, L.M. (2004). Training in Affectively Intense Learning Environments. Masters Thesis, Information Science and Technology, Missouri University of Science and Technology.
• Wilfred, L.M., Hall, R.H., Hilgers, M.G., Leu, M.C., Hortenstine, J.M., Walker , C.P., & Reddy, M. (2004). Training in Affectively Intense Learning Environments,Proceedings of the AACE E-Learn Conference, 2233 -" 2240,http://dl.aace.org/16761.