Immersion and Interaction via Avatars within Google Street View

The optimal approach to learning a target culture is to experience it in its real-life context through interaction. The new 3D virtual world platform under consideration, Blue Mars Lite, enables users to be immersed in existing Google Maps Street View panorama, globally. Google Maps with Street View contains a massive collection of 360-degree street-level images of the most popular places worldwide. The authors explore the possibility of integrating these global panoramas, in which multiple users can explore, discuss, and role-play, into the classroom. The goal of this chapter is to shed new light on merging Google Street View with the 3D virtual world for cultural learning purposes. This approach shows itself to be a promising teaching method that can help EFL learners to develop positive attitudes toward the target culture and cultural learning in this new cultural setting.

Beyond Surface Relations

On the surface spaces of the WWW and Internet, organizations and individuals have long created a public face to emphasize their respective brands, showcase their credibility, and interact with others in often very public ways. These surface spaces include Websites, social media platforms, virtual worlds, interactive game spaces, content sharing sites, social networking sites, microblogging sites, wikis, blogs (Web logs), collaborative work sites, and email systems. Beneath the glittering surfaces are electronic understructures, which enable the mapping of networks (based on physical location or organization or URL), the tracking of inter-personal relationships between various accounts, the geolocation of various electronic data to the analog physical world, the de-anonymizing of aliases (to disallow pseudonymity), and the tracking of people to their contact information (digital and physical). Maltego Radium is a penetration testing tool that enables such crawls of publicly available information or Open-Source Intelligence (OSINT) to identify and describe electronic network structures for a range of applications. Further, this information is represented in a number of interactive node-link diagrams in both 2D and 3D for further insights. There is also an export capability for full reportage of the extracted information. This chapter introduces the tool and identifies some practical ways this has been used to “package” fresh understandings for enhanced awareness and decision-making in a higher education context.

Multimodal Mapping of a University’s Formal and Informal Online Brand

With the popularization of the Social Web (or Read-Write Web) and millions of participants in these interactive spaces, institutions of higher education have found it necessary to create online presences to promote their university brands, presence, and reputation. An important aspect of that engagement involves being aware of how their brand is represented informally (and formally) on social media platforms. Universities have traditionally maintained thin channels of formalized communications through official media channels, but in this participatory new media age, the user-generated contents and communications are created independent of the formal public relations offices. The university brand is evolving independently of official controls. Ex-post interventions to protect university reputation and brand may be too little, too late, and much of the contents are beyond the purview of the formal university. Various offices and clubs have institutional accounts on Facebook as well as wide representation of their faculty, staff, administrators, and students online. There are various microblogging accounts on Twitter. Various photo and video contents related to the institution may be found on photo- and video-sharing sites, like Flickr, and there are video channels on YouTube. All this digital content is widely available and may serve as points-of-contact for the close-in to more distal stakeholders and publics related to the institution. A recently available open-source tool enhances the capability for crawling (extracting data) these various social media platforms (through their Application Programming Interfaces or “APIs”) and enables the capture, analysis, and social network visualization of broadly available public information. Further, this tool enables the analysis of previously hidden information. This chapter introduces the application of Network Overview, Discovery and Exploration for Excel (NodeXL) to the empirical and multimodal analysis of a university’s electronic presence on various social media platforms and offers some initial ideas for the analytical value of such an approach.

Utilizing Augmented Reality in Library Information Search

A cross-disciplinary academic team at Emporia State University is currently in the process of developing and utilizing a mobile-based augmented reality application in the context of library information search. Specifically, the team is researching the use of mobile applications that can generate multi-sensory information retrieval relative to archives and special collections. Using this application, student and faculty researchers can physically point their mobile devices at an archival object that has been specifically marked with a photo-generated “tag” and, using specially designed software, access videos, photos, music, text, and other data that is germane to the object. This allows the archivist to preserve the object behind protective glass or other physical barriers, while allowing the information seeker to learn more about the object using embedded multimedia. This minimizes the potential for damage while providing extra dimensions of information. Of the many virtualizations currently under development are videos related to a rare novel and music compositions relative to rare sheet music – both currently housed within Special Collections at Emporia State University.

Evaluating a Technique for Improving Letter Memory in At-Risk Kindergarten Students

This chapter focuses on a process for improving letter naming. Numerous studies have established the correlation between fluent letter naming and reading in young children (Badian, 2000; Catts, 2001; Faust, Dimitrovsky, & Shacht, 2003; Terepocki, Kruk, & Willows, 2002; Mann & Foy, 2003). Two schools using the same reading program were selected for the study. The 125 kindergarten children attending these schools were screened for letter naming fluency. The low scoring individuals in each school were randomly assigned either to a treatment or control group for the study. Pretesting addressed rapid letter recall, color naming, object naming, and receptive vocabulary. The children in the treatment groups received twelve twenty-minute instructional sessions teaching the children to attend to the distinctive features (unique parts) of each letter. The students in the treatment groups made significant gains in letter naming speed and accuracy compared to the control groups. Receptive language scores improved. Other measures had no significant correlation with letter naming proficiency in posttests.

Identification and Analysis of Primary School Children’s Knowledge Acquisition

Measuring a learning effect can be a difficult task and is not made any easier with all the parameters that can be taken into account. This chapter provides an insight into what to consider as interesting parameters when evaluating an interactive learning tool. The authors introduce a visual approach to enlighten children and teachers. This is done by visualizing logging data that has been collected during learning sessions with the Virtual Savannah software. They do not leave out traditional means like observation and usability testing, since they believe a holistic view is important, and a single method of data collection is not enough to base conclusions on. To understand the authors’ approach, a short introduction on various perspectives on visualization is essential. The authors also discuss how multimedia can be used on a cognitive level to satisfy more pupils with different learning styles. Lastly, the authors present their approach and results from an in situ evaluation on primary school children.

Structuring an Emergent and Transdisciplinary Online Curriculum

Subject domains are in constant transition as new research and analysis reveal fresh insights, and occasionally, there may be paradigm shifts or new conceptual models. Transdisciplinary approaches may be understood as such a shift, with new approaches for conceptualization, analysis, and problem solving via recombinations of domain fields. Such transitory paradigm-shifting moments remove the usual touchpoints on which a curriculum is structured. There are often few or none of the accepted sequential developmental phases with identified concepts and learning outcomes in book chapters, thematic structures, and historical or chronological ordering. An emergent curriculum requires a different instructional design approach than those that have assumed curricular pre-structures. Based on a year-and-a-half One Health course build, this chapter offers some insights on the processes of defining and developing an emergent curriculum.

How Digital Media like TED Talks Are Revolutionizing Teaching and Student Learning

Launched in 1984, Technology, Entertainment, and Design (TED) Talks was successfully developed and implemented as a practical way to bring recognized experts together to discuss the latest developments and improve communication and collaboration across these fields. From its embryonic beginning, TED Talks has today expanded exponentially and is now a multi-media vehicle for delivering pioneering work to a global audience. For faculty wishing to bring user-friendly, cutting-edge research and ideas to the classroom, it can be an exciting teaching tool because students can draw from the real life experiences of outstanding professionals who are trailblazers in their fields. This chapter presents assignments that were created using TED Talks and provides a template that can be used to create unique assignments that are compatible with the needs and goals of the course. The template is designed to help faculty craft a learning experience that is embedded in an encouraging environment for innovative approaches and student involvement—where specific student learning objectives exist, along with approaches to assess student learning.

Weaving Web 2.0 and Facial Expression Recognition into the 3D Virtual English Classroom

Of late, considerable attention has been given to the linking or “mashing up” of virtual worlds and Web 2.0 tools. The authors incorporated several Web 2.0 tools, including blogs, audioblogs, wikis, Facebook, Twitter, and Flickr, and a facial expression organizer together into the 3D Virtual English Classroom called VEC3D 5.0, thereby opening up new possibilities for collaborative language learning. In considering the needs of language learners, this study combines synchronous and asynchronous learning environments and methods to propose a blended language learning solution. VEC3D 5.0 offers the possibility of applying situated learning, multimodal communication, and facial expression recognition to language learning and teaching. VEC3D 5.0 has shown itself to possess tremendous potential as an optimal language learning environment. Integrating Web 2.0 applications in the form of open social networking and information sharing tools into VEC3D 5.0 supports collaborative and reflective language learning, and in particular, writing and cultural learning. The purpose of this study is to explore the application of a hybrid prototype solution, which combines the inherent strengths of both virtual environments and Web 2.0 applications, and to provide a framework for developing innovative pedagogies for experiential language learning in this context.

Branching Logic in the Design of Online Learning

Online learning requires a clear structure to enhance learning, particularly for those with little background in the subject. Structurally, the design of online learning may involve branching and merging, forking and joining of multiple branches, and other combinations of branching, for a learner or learners. Instructional branching is a tool that enables the achievement of multiple objectives. These include the following: (1) An Adaptive Curriculum: Adapting a richer curriculum to reflect the complex realities of a field and the real world; (2) Learner Support: Accommodating learners, who often have diverse needs based on their capabilities, ambitions, areas of study, and needs; (3) Learner Collaboration Support: Promoting the building of learning teams for the acquisition of collaboration, co-learning, and co-design skills; (4) Respect for Learner Decision-Making: Respecting the decision-making of learners, particularly in scenarios of simulations, games, problem solving, case studies and analysis, microsite presentations, slideshows and lecture captures, design, and innovation; (5) Maximizing In-World Opportunities: Taking advantage of opportunities in the environment such as the availability of a guest speaker, the co-funding of a shared learning endeavor, a partnership with a business entity, fieldtrip options, and/or other created opportunities. This chapter addresses various known branching designs on two levels: (1) course curriculums and (2) Digital Learning Objects (DLOs). It offers a typology of branching at the course curriculum level. Further, it covers branching in the DLO level based on specific cases. It analyzes the various points at which a curriculum converges and when it diverges (branches). Finally, the chapter includes a section on the mindful design of branching: design of the branching, the transitions, and proper learning assessments.