Virtual Conference Room for ICAST 2020

This year vEGU21 has flexible networking tools available to conveners and attendees, allowing people to engage and socialise with, and learn from one another in almost any way they wish. Networking is facilitated by three key tools: the Networker community-building platform, the conference Handshake tool, and the Pop-Up Scheduler. This year the Networker will help attendees find, meet, and talk with one another and forge lasting connections. Build your profile by adding in your expertise, social media, contact information and other details; you can even add stickers to quickly showcase your Division, whether you are an Early Career Scientist, and your pronouns amongst other choices! During the Assembly you can find other members with similar interests on the Networker, share your profiles with people you meet at the conference, or start group text chats with other members in your network. The Networker isn&#8217;t just for the Assembly either: after building your network at the Assembly members will be able to keep connected and meet others all year-round! One of the quickest ways to build your network during the Assembly is by using the conference networking tool: Handshake. Handshake lets you quickly initiate contact with other attendees in your virtual conference room and share your networker profile or start a text chat. If you want to run your own event then the Assembly&#8217;s Pop-Up Scheduler allows you to set up networking opportunities of any kind, from small events focusing on a particular scientific topic to spaces for you to build a community. Perhaps you&#8217;ve been inspired by member-led events like the Games Night or Rhyme Your Research and want to explore more ways to get involved in geoscience communication! The Pop-Up Scheduler allows you to do all this and more: simply choose a date, time, and provide a link to a platform of your choice. Once submitted it will be added to the conference programme. You can link to any platform you like: the scheduler is designed to be flexible and meet the needs of the membership, so members should feel free to organise events using platforms from Animal Crossing to Zoom! Unsure which one to choose? Check out our uploaded display materials for inspiration and suggestions.

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Virtual Collaboration in Immersive and Non-Immersive Virtual Environments

Handbook of Research on Computer Mediated Communication ◽

10.4018/978-1-59904-863-5.ch030 ◽

2011 ◽

pp. 401-410

Author(s):

Rosanna M. Guadagno ◽

Katrin E. Allmendinger

Keyword(s):

Social Interaction ◽

Communication Technologies ◽

Synchronous Communication ◽

Future Trends ◽

Virtual Collaboration ◽

Conference Room ◽

Immersive Virtual Environments ◽

New Findings ◽

Virtual Conference ◽

The Impact

This chapter reviews contemporary research on virtual collaboration. In particular, we focus on synchronous communication and collaboration processes in virtual conferencing environments. In a virtual conference, interactants are geographically distant but their avatars (virtual representations) appear in the same virtual conference room. Two types of virtual collaboration are examined. First, we review new findings on research in immersive virtual conferencing. Next, we review recent findings on social interaction in non-immersive virtual conferencing. Specifically, we examine the impact of social interaction on these communication technologies. Finally, we conclude with speculation about the future trends in virtual collaboration.

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Online Psychological Testing using Executables: A Case Study on Visual Memory Resolution

10.31234/osf.io/8a5hk ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Aedan Yue Li ◽

James Yaguang Yuan ◽

Carson Pun ◽

Morgan Barense

Keyword(s):

Data Quality ◽

Visual Memory ◽

Psychological Research ◽

Behavioral Experiment ◽

Conference Room ◽

Online Experimentation ◽

Concurrent Testing ◽

Online Format ◽

Virtual Conference

In psychological research, online experimentation is a valuable alternative to lab-based experimentation. However, converting existing psychological experiments to an online format can be difficult because this usually requires a translation from Python to JavaScript code. Here, we propose and validate a novel pipeline of online experimentation using executable files, which are downloadable programs that can be run by participants on their own computers. Critically, executables facilitate the transition from a lab-based behavioral experiment to online experimentation by allowing for flexible programming using well-established libraries (i.e., PsychoPy) without the need for translation across languages (i.e., from Python to JavaScript). As a case study, we paired the executable pipeline with a shape-color “conjunction” task to assess memory resolution (Li, Fukuda, and Barense, 2021), testing participants during a synchronous virtual conference room in order to maximize data quality. In a first experiment, we tested participants one-by-one (i.e., individual testing) and found that the reliability of timing and data quality was comparable to traditional lab-based experimentation, replicating a previously reported memory effect. In a second experiment, we assessed the test-retest reliability and the scalability of executables paired with virtual conferencing of multiple participants at once. We tested up to 18 participants in the same synchronous virtual conference room (i.e., concurrent testing), replicating the first experiment within 2% of original values. These results reveal that online experimentation using executables paired with concurrent testing via virtual conferencing is an efficient, reliable, and scalable alternative to browser-based online experimentation.

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