Virtual Environments and Mobile Learning

2011 ◽  
pp. 262-277
Author(s):  
Rosa Reis ◽  
Paula Escudeiro
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Analysis ◽  
Open Source ◽  
Virtual Environments ◽  
Mobile Learning ◽  
Virtual Worlds ◽  
Virtual World ◽  
Learning Methods ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Virtual World Environments ◽  
World Concept

As an answer to these questions, this chapter will define the virtual world concept, distinguish the different types of virtual worlds, and make a comparative analysis between them in order to bring out the features aimed at helping teachers to adopt them in their classes. In particular, we will focus our choice of virtual world environments on open source platforms. As the prevalence of mobile learning increases, this chapter also describes the m-learning scope, its contextualisation and advantages, as well as the learning methods. Finally, the relation of those methods with social virtual worlds is also discussed.

Using Virtual World Technology as a Faculty Development Tool in Higher Education

2012 ◽  
pp. 149-160
Author(s):  
Linda W. Wood
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Faculty Development ◽  
Virtual Worlds ◽  
Second Life ◽  
Virtual World ◽  
Faculty Perceptions ◽  
College Faculty ◽  
Teaching Tool ◽  
Development Tool ◽  
Virtual World Environments

Higher education institutions are constantly challenged with the task of educating a technology savvy generation of students. Colleges must be able and ready to meet the needs of these digital-age students. What are the perceptions of college faculty of using virtual world technology as a teaching tool in the classroom? The purpose of this chapter is to explore how virtual world environments can be used as a faculty development tool in order to encourage the use of virtual worlds as a teaching tool in the classroom. This chapter references research from a mixed methods study exploring college faculty perceptions of the adoption of virtual world technology into the classroom, which in turn, provides insight to the willingness of higher education faculty to adopt this type of technology. In addition, the final section of the chapter includes a suggested guide on how to create a virtual world faculty development workshop based in Linden Lab’s Second Life.

Virtual Worlds

2017 ◽  
pp. 549-568
Author(s):  
Michelangelo Tricarico
Keyword(s):  
Virtual Environments ◽  
Virtual Environment ◽  
Virtual Worlds ◽  
Virtual World ◽  
Learning Activities ◽  
Specific Field ◽  
Early School ◽  
Virtual Reconstruction ◽  
3D Virtual Environment ◽  
Master Builder

This chapter discusses the author's experience in virtual environments, with particular reference to virtual reconstruction. The events are narrated from the perspective of a student who at first developed his skills in this specific field at school, and then became competent and passionate enough to teach what he had learned in the course of time. He describes his experience from early school projects to the personal ones; from his award as a “Master Builder” to his early teaching lessons. Other learning activities that can be carried out in a virtual world are also illustrated, with particular reference to “coding”, which appears to be of great interest to the author. The main objective of this paper is to highlight the potential of a 3D virtual environment for the reconstruction of monuments, i.e., the author's area of expertise. It also provides a description of other activities that can be performed in a virtual environment, while illustrating the most common issues that can be experienced and suggesting how to solve them.

A 360-Degree Perspective of Education in 3-D Virtual Worlds

2010 ◽  
pp. 291-309
Author(s):  
Brenda Eschenbrenner ◽  
Fiona Fui-Hoon Nah ◽  
Keng Siau
Keyword(s):  
Collaborative Learning ◽  
Literature Review ◽  
Virtual Worlds ◽  
Real World ◽  
Virtual World ◽  
Educational Experiences ◽  
Three Dimensional ◽  
Educational Opportunities ◽  
Virtual World Environments ◽  
The Impact

Three-dimensional virtual world environments are providing new opportunities to develop engaging, immersive experiences in education. These virtual worlds are unique in that they allow individuals to interact with others through their avatars and with objects in the environment, and can create experiences that are not necessarily possible in the real world. Hence, virtual worlds are presenting opportunities for students to engage in both constructivist and collaborative learning. To assess the impact of the use of virtual worlds on education, a literature review is conducted to identify current applications, benefits being realized, as well as issues faced. Based on the review, educational opportunities in virtual worlds and gaps in meeting pedagogical objectives are discussed. Practical and research implications are also addressed. Virtual worlds are proving to provide unique educational experiences, with its potential only at the cusp of being explored.

Worldlets: 3-D Thumbnails for Wayfinding in Large Virtual Worlds

2001 ◽  
Vol 10 (6) ◽  
pp. 565-582 ◽  
Author(s):  
T. Todd Elvins ◽  
David R. Nadeau ◽  
Rina Schul ◽  
David Kirsh
Keyword(s):  
Virtual Environments ◽  
Virtual Worlds ◽  
Web Sites ◽  
Virtual World ◽  
Modeling Language ◽  
Psychological Experiment ◽  
Web Content ◽  
Image Representations ◽  
Time Required ◽  
Clear Support

Finding one's way to sites of interest on the Web can be problematic, and this difficulty has been recently exacerbated by widespread development of 3-D Web content and virtual-world browser technology using the Virtual Reality Modeling Language (VRML). Whereas travelers can often navigate 2-D Web sites based on textual and 2-D thumbnail image representations of the sites' content, finding one's way to destinations in 3-D environments is notoriously troublesome. Wayfinding literature provides clear support for the importance of landmarks in building a cognitive map and then using that map to navigate in a 3-D environment, be it real or virtual. Textual and 2-D image landmark representations, however, lack the depth and context needed for travelers to reliably recognize 3-D landmarks. This paper describes a novel 3-D thumbnail landmark affordance called a worldlet. Containing a 3-D fragment of a virtual world, worldlets offer travelers first-person, multi-viewpoint experience with faithful representations of potential destinations. To facilitate an investigation into the comparative advantages of landmark affordances for wayfinding, worldlet capture algorithms were designed, implemented, and incorporated into two VRML-based virtual environment browsers. Findings from a psychological experiment using one of these browsers revealed that, compared to textual and image guidebook usage, worldlet guidebook usage: nearly doubled the time subjects spent studying the landmarks in the guidebook, significantly reduced the time required for subjects to reach landmarks, and reduced backtracking to almost zero. These results support the hypothesis that worldlets facilitate traveler landmark knowledge, expedite wayfinding in large virtual environments, and enable skilled wayfinding.

scholarly journals Virtual World as a Complement to Hybrid and Mobile Learning

2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (22) ◽  
pp. 267
Author(s):  
Jairo Eduardo Márquez Díaz
Keyword(s):  
Mobile Learning ◽  
Systems Engineering ◽  
Virtual Worlds ◽  
Virtual World ◽  
Access To Information ◽  
Digital Tool ◽  
Teaching Support ◽  
Teaching Learning ◽  
The University ◽  
Academic Resource

Virtual worlds in higher education have opened new possibilities for innovation in the teaching-learning process. In this sense, the description of the integration of this emerging technology with hybrid and mobile learning models is presented, which seeks to streamline and make flexible the access to information to the student and teacher inside and outside the classroom, intending that pedagogical didactics were more inclusive and participatory. With this in mind, a virtual world was developed as a digital tool for teaching support to students and teachers of the Faculty of Systems Engineering of the University of Cundinamarca, with a view to establishing its viability to be implemented and to demonstrate its potential as an academic resource that motivates students in their training and the teacher to develop new digital skills and competences.

scholarly journals A Postphenomenological Framework for Studying User Experience of Immersive Virtual Reality

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joakim Vindenes ◽  
Barbara Wasson
Keyword(s):  
Virtual Reality ◽  
Virtual Environments ◽  
Virtual Worlds ◽  
Virtual World ◽  
Philosophy Of Technology ◽  
Immersive Virtual Reality ◽  
Or Education ◽  
Cognitive Changes ◽  
Flexible Technology ◽  
Human World

Virtual Reality (VR) is a remarkably flexible technology for interventions as it allows the construction of virtual worlds with ontologies radically different from the real world. By embodying users in avatars situated in these virtual environments, researchers can effectively intervene and instill positive change in the form of therapy or education, as well as affect a variety of cognitive changes. Due to the capabilities of VR to mediate both the environments in which we are immersed, as well as our embodied, situated relation toward those environments, VR has become a powerful technology for “changing the self.” As the virtually mediated experience is what renders these interventions effective, frameworks are needed for describing and analyzing the mediations brought by various virtual world designs. As a step toward a broader understanding of how VR mediates experience, we propose a post-phenomenological framework for describing VR mediation. Postphenomenology is a philosophy of technology concerned with empirical data that understand technologies as mediators of human-world relationships. By addressing how mediations occur within VR as a user-environment relation and outside VR as a human-world relation, the framework addresses the various constituents of the virtually mediated experience. We demonstrate the framework's capability for describing VR mediations by presenting the results of an analysis of a selected variety of studies that use various user-environment relations to mediate various human-world relations.

Communication and Education in a Virtual World

2012 ◽  
pp. 121-136
Author(s):  
Lorri Mon
Keyword(s):  
Learning Styles ◽  
Learning Environments ◽  
Social Presence ◽  
Virtual Worlds ◽  
Second Life ◽  
Virtual World ◽  
Personal Learning ◽  
Learning Techniques ◽  
Personal Learning Environments ◽  
Virtual World Environments

Education within Second Life frequently recapitulates the “sage on the stage” as students sit their avatars down in chairs in the virtual world and listen to or read an instructor’s lecture while watching a slideshow. This conceptual article explores alternative active learning techniques supporting independent and collaborative learning within virtual worlds. Within Second Life, educators can utilize a variety of scripted tools and objects as well as techniques of building and terra-forming to create vibrant virtual personal learning environments and learning experiences that are engaging and responsive to individual learners. Issues of embodiment in an avatar are discussed in terms of social presence, and student learning styles are considered as well as approaches to problem-based learning, games, role play, and immersive virtual world environments.

scholarly journals Navigation, Wayfinding, and Place Experience within a Virtual City

2000 ◽  
Vol 9 (5) ◽  
pp. 435-447 ◽  
Author(s):  
Craig D. Murray ◽  
John M. Bowers ◽  
Adrian J. West ◽  
Steve Pettifer ◽  
Simon Gibson
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Study ◽  
Virtual Environments ◽  
Virtual Environment ◽  
Virtual Worlds ◽  
Real World ◽  
Virtual World ◽  
Place Experience ◽  
Virtual City

We report a qualitative study of navigation, wayfinding, and place experience within a virtual city. “Cityscape” is a virtual environment (VE), partially algorithmically generated and intended to be redolent of the aggregate forms of real cities. In the present study, we observed and interviewed participants during and following exploration of a desktop implementation of Cityscape. A number of emergent themes were identified and are presented and discussed. Observing the interaction with the virtual city suggested a continuous relationship between real and virtual worlds. Participants were seen to attribute real-world properties and expectations to the contents of the virtual world. The implications of these themes for the construction of virtual environments modeled on real-world forms are considered.

A changing environment: the virtual world meets the physical world

1999 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 303-306
Author(s):  
William Mitchell
Keyword(s):  
Virtual Environments ◽  
Virtual Worlds ◽  
Virtual World ◽  
Physical World ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Changing Environment ◽  
Challenges And Opportunities ◽  
And Function ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

With the coming of computers and the Internet, the relationship of the physical and virtual worlds has shifted. Virtual environments will not replace physical ones, but the nature, location, and function of the latter will change, creating both challenges and opportunities for architects.

scholarly journals Saving Second Life: Issues in Archiving a Complex, Multi-User Virtual World

2011 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 89-108 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jerome McDonough ◽  
Robert Olendorf
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Virtual Environments ◽  
Virtual Worlds ◽  
Second Life ◽  
Virtual World ◽  
Practical Experience ◽  
Digital Information ◽  
Distributed Models ◽  
Life Issues ◽  
Culture Education

Virtual environments, such as Second Life, have assumed an increasingly important role in popular culture, education and research. Unfortunately, we have almost no practical experience in how to preserve these highly dynamic, interactive information resources. This article reports on research by the National Digital Information Infrastructure for Preservation Program (NDIIPP)-funded Preserving Virtual Worlds project, which examines the issues that arise when attempting to archive regions from Second Life. Intellectual property and contractual issues can raise significant impediments to the creation of an archival information package for these environments, as can the technical design of the worlds themselves. We discuss the implication of these impediments for distributed models of preservation, such as NDIIPP.

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