WorldWideScience

Sample records for social virtual worlds

  1. Undertaking qualitative health research in social virtual worlds.

    Science.gov (United States)

    McElhinney, Evelyn; Cheater, Francine M; Kidd, Lisa

    2014-06-01

    This paper discusses the methodological challenges of using the 3D social virtual world Second Life for research and offers some solutions on a range of research issues including research ethics committee approval, gaining consent, recruitment of sample, data collection and engagement with 'in - world culture'. The attraction of social virtual worlds to researchers is their ability to mimic the physical world, as they, are seen as 'places' where people have a feeling of presence (being there) and social presence (being there with others) through the use of a 'customisable' avatar (digital self-representation). Emerging research demonstrating the persuasive nature of avatars on health behaviours through virtual worlds, online games and the 3D web has increased the use of and interest in these areas for delivering health information, advice and support. However, conducting research can be challenging in a 3D world where people are represented as anonymous avatars in an environment unlike any other online media. 25 semi-structured interviews were conducted in Second Life from September 2011-June 2012. Nurses wishing to undertake research in social virtual worlds should spend time in-world to acquire technical skills and gain an understanding of the culture of the world. Our experience of an interview-based study in virtual worlds indicates that researchers require several virtual world technical skills to create innovative tools to recruit, gain consent and collect data and an understanding of in-world culture, language and social norms to increase the chances of successful research. © 2013 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

  2. This is Not a Game - Social Virtual Worlds, Fun, and Learning

    Science.gov (United States)

    Bell, Mark W.; Smith-Robbins, Sarah; Withnail, Greg

    This chapter asks a simple question: what is required to make learning fun in social virtual worlds? Several scholars have connected fun with learning but most of these have centered on the function of games in learning. Studies of learning in massive multiplayer online role playing games connect the game mechanics to how learning occurs. However, few have asked whether learning in a virtual world can be fun if there is no game. In a social virtual world, like Second Life (SL) there are no game mechanics (unlike game worlds like World of Warcraft [WoW]). There are no quests, challenges, rewards or other game elements in SL. So can a virtual world that has no game-content provided be a place where fun learning can take place? We define fun and explore how fun has been related to learning. We explore theories of fun from Koster, Crawford, Csíkszentmihályi and others as well as views of the ways fun is explored as related to the learning experience. With these models in mind, we explore how fun is different in a social virtual world. Drawing on definitions of fun from Castronova and others, we see game structures in virtual worlds may not be needed to have fun. These fun activities include game creation, business interactions, and most importantly, identity play and socialization in a social virtual world. Finally, we propose that if learning is to be successful and fun in a social virtual world it should pay close attention to these two activities.

  3. Having belief(s) in social virtual worlds: A decomposed approach

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Merikivi, J.; Verhagen, T.; Feldberg, J.F.M.

    2013-01-01

    The interest in social virtual worlds with multiple functions has mushroomed during the past few years. The key challenge social virtual worlds face while attempting to anchor and serve the masses is to reflect the core beliefs of their users. As existing research lacks insight into these core

  4. Designing Virtual Worlds

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Gürsimsek, Remzi Ates

    2014-01-01

    The online social platforms known as virtual worlds present their users various affordances for avatar based co-presence, social interaction and provide tools for collaborative content creation, including objects, textures and animations. The users of these worlds navigate their avatars as personal...... the audio-visual characteristics of designing in multi-user virtual environments generate experiential, interpersonal and textual meaning potentials....... mediators in 3D virtual space to collaborate and co-design the digital content. These co-designers are also the residents of these worlds, as they socialize by building inworld friendships. This article presents a social semiotic analysis of the three-dimensional virtual places and artifacts in the virtual...

  5. Virtual goods recommendations in virtual worlds.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Chen, Kuan-Yu; Liao, Hsiu-Yu; Chen, Jyun-Hung; Liu, Duen-Ren

    2015-01-01

    Virtual worlds (VWs) are computer-simulated environments which allow users to create their own virtual character as an avatar. With the rapidly growing user volume in VWs, platform providers launch virtual goods in haste and stampede users to increase sales revenue. However, the rapidity of development incurs virtual unrelated items which will be difficult to remarket. It not only wastes virtual global companies' intelligence resources, but also makes it difficult for users to find suitable virtual goods fit for their virtual home in daily virtual life. In the VWs, users decorate their houses, visit others' homes, create families, host parties, and so forth. Users establish their social life circles through these activities. This research proposes a novel virtual goods recommendation method based on these social interactions. The contact strength and contact influence result from interactions with social neighbors and influence users' buying intention. Our research highlights the importance of social interactions in virtual goods recommendation. The experiment's data were retrieved from an online VW platform, and the results show that the proposed method, considering social interactions and social life circle, has better performance than existing recommendation methods.

  6. Teachers' perceptions of virtual worlds as a medium for social inclusion for adults with intellectual disability.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Balandin, Susan; Molka-Danielsen, Judith

    2015-01-01

    The aim of this research was to explore educators' perceptions of a virtual world Second Life TM as an environment for social interaction and social inclusion for the Norwegian adult students with intellectual disability that they supported. Five educators who supported a total of 10 adult students with intellectual disability in computer classes in community Adult Education Centres participated in individual in-depth interviews. The interviews were transcribed verbatim and analysed using a content analysis. Participants were positive about Second Life although they did not perceive that it offered a successful context for social interaction or inclusion. They identified a number of benefits to using a virtual world and for students participating in virtual world research. Barriers identified included language, literacy, and technology issues along with the complexity of participating independently in a virtual world. Some people with intellectual disability can use virtual worlds but the skills required need additional research. Virtual worlds may provide a stimulating, safe, and exciting context for a range of activities but the level of support required by many people is high and consequently expensive.

  7. Ethnography in a Virtual World

    Science.gov (United States)

    Shumar, Wesley; Madison, Nora

    2013-01-01

    This article situates the discussion of virtual ethnography within the larger political/economic changes of twenty-first century consumer capitalism and suggests that increasingly our entire social world is a virtual world and that there were very particular utopian and dystopian framings of virtual community growing out of that history. The…

  8. Researchers making sense of virtual worlds

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Reinhard, CarrieLynn D.; Williams, Dmitri; Ho, Caroline

    Virtual worlds, from gaming worlds to social worlds, have gained increasing attention by academics, public organizations and private entrepreneurs.  Much has been said about what virtual worlds are and what they mean to people and society.  However, this panel is interested in how we come to know...

  9. Game-Based Virtual Worlds as Decentralized Virtual Activity Systems

    Science.gov (United States)

    Scacchi, Walt

    There is widespread interest in the development and use of decentralized systems and virtual world environments as possible new places for engaging in collaborative work activities. Similarly, there is widespread interest in stimulating new technological innovations that enable people to come together through social networking, file/media sharing, and networked multi-player computer game play. A decentralized virtual activity system (DVAS) is a networked computer supported work/play system whose elements and social activities can be both virtual and decentralized (Scacchi et al. 2008b). Massively multi-player online games (MMOGs) such as World of Warcraft and online virtual worlds such as Second Life are each popular examples of a DVAS. Furthermore, these systems are beginning to be used for research, deve-lopment, and education activities in different science, technology, and engineering domains (Bainbridge 2007, Bohannon et al. 2009; Rieber 2005; Scacchi and Adams 2007; Shaffer 2006), which are also of interest here. This chapter explores two case studies of DVASs developed at the University of California at Irvine that employ game-based virtual worlds to support collaborative work/play activities in different settings. The settings include those that model and simulate practical or imaginative physical worlds in different domains of science, technology, or engineering through alternative virtual worlds where players/workers engage in different kinds of quests or quest-like workflows (Jakobsson 2006).

  10. Constructing Social Networks from Unstructured Group Dialog in Virtual Worlds

    Science.gov (United States)

    Shah, Fahad; Sukthankar, Gita

    Virtual worlds and massively multi-player online games are rich sources of information about large-scale teams and groups, offering the tantalizing possibility of harvesting data about group formation, social networks, and network evolution. However these environments lack many of the cues that facilitate natural language processing in other conversational settings and different types of social media. Public chat data often features players who speak simultaneously, use jargon and emoticons, and only erratically adhere to conversational norms. In this paper, we present techniques for inferring the existence of social links from unstructured conversational data collected from groups of participants in the Second Life virtual world. We present an algorithm for addressing this problem, Shallow Semantic Temporal Overlap (SSTO), that combines temporal and language information to create directional links between participants, and a second approach that relies on temporal overlap alone to create undirected links between participants. Relying on temporal overlap is noisy, resulting in a low precision and networks with many extraneous links. In this paper, we demonstrate that we can ameliorate this problem by using network modularity optimization to perform community detection in the noisy networks and severing cross-community links. Although using the content of the communications still results in the best performance, community detection is effective as a noise reduction technique for eliminating the extra links created by temporal overlap alone.

  11. Theft of Virtual Property — Towards Security Requirements for Virtual Worlds

    Science.gov (United States)

    Beyer, Anja

    The article is focused to introduce the topic of information technology security for Virtual Worlds to a security experts’ audience. Virtual Worlds are Web 2.0 applications where the users cruise through the world with their individually shaped avatars to find either amusement, challenges or the next best business deal. People do invest a lot of time but beyond they invest in buying virtual assets like fantasy witcheries, wepaons, armour, houses, clothes,...etc with the power of real world money. Although it is called “virtual” (which is often put on the same level as “not existent”) there is a real value behind it. In November 2007 dutch police arrested a seventeen years old teenager who was suspicted to have stolen virtual items in a Virtual World called Habbo Hotel [Reuters07]. In order to successfully provide security mechanisms into Virtual Worlds it is necessarry to fully understand the domain for which the security mechansims are defined. As Virtual Worlds must be clasified into the domain of Social Software the article starts with an overview of how to understand Web 2.0 and gives a short introduction to Virtual Worlds. The article then provides a consideration of assets of Virtual Worlds participants, describes how these assets can be threatened and gives an overview of appopriate security requirements and completes with an outlook of possible countermeasures.

  12. Virtual Worlds for Virtual Organizing

    Science.gov (United States)

    Rhoten, Diana; Lutters, Wayne

    The members and resources of a virtual organization are dispersed across time and space, yet they function as a coherent entity through the use of technologies, networks, and alliances. As virtual organizations proliferate and become increasingly important in society, many may exploit the technical architecture s of virtual worlds, which are the confluence of computer-mediated communication, telepresence, and virtual reality originally created for gaming. A brief socio-technical history describes their early origins and the waves of progress followed by stasis that brought us to the current period of renewed enthusiasm. Examination of contemporary examples demonstrates how three genres of virtual worlds have enabled new arenas for virtual organizing: developer-defined closed worlds, user-modifiable quasi-open worlds, and user-generated open worlds. Among expected future trends are an increase in collaboration born virtually rather than imported from existing organizations, a tension between high-fidelity recreations of the physical world and hyper-stylized imaginations of fantasy worlds, and the growth of specialized worlds optimized for particular sectors, companies, or cultures.

  13. Making (sense of) places in virtual worlds

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Gürsimsek, Remzi Ates

    means. The findings have shown that co- design and co-creation practices do not only depend on various actors and their mediated interactions, but also on a variety of tools, practices and resources that digital media platforms provide. Moreover, these tools and resources have transmedia characteristics...... in 3D virtual space to collaborate and co- design the digital content. These co-designers are also the residents of these worlds, as they socialize by building inworld friendships. This article presents a social semiotic analysis of the three-dimensional virtual places and artifacts in the virtual...... world known as Second Life by the collaborative efforts of its so-called residents. The social semiotic perspective is used to develop a multimodal analytical framework and to analyze the co-creation of meaning potentials by various social actors who use the available semiotic resources as mediational...

  14. Virtual worlds: a new frontier for nurse education?

    Science.gov (United States)

    Green, Janet; Wyllie, Aileen; Jackson, Debra

    2014-01-01

    Virtual worlds have the potential to offer nursing students social networking and, learning, opportunities through the use of collaborative and immersive learning. If nursing educators, are to stay, abreast of contemporary learning opportunities an exploration of the potential benefits of, virtual, worlds and their possibilities is needed. Literature was sourced that explored virtual worlds, and their, use in education, but nursing education specifically. It is clear that immersive learning has, positive, benefits for nursing, however the best way to approach virtual reality in nursing education, has yet to, be ascertained.

  15. VIRTUAL WORLD MARKETING: THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING ON SOCIAL NETWORKS

    OpenAIRE

    EVERTON DAMIÃO TAVANO SANTOS; JOÃO PAULO DA SILVA GOMES; CARLOS EDUARDO CICCONE

    2012-01-01

    Increasingly present at peolpe´s daily life and seeking to satisfy their wishes, marketing is searching to adapt itself to consumer´s real necessities as well as to the environments currently used by them. With the growing use of technology and internet access, marketing ceases to act only on physical media such as magazines, newspapers and pamphlets to go further, searching for a new environment where customers go like social networking in virtual world where the dissemination of informa...

  16. Virtual worlds for people with autism spectrum disorder: a case study in Second Life.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Stendal, Karen; Balandin, Susan

    2015-01-01

    The purpose of this study is to explore the use of virtual worlds by people with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), with a particular focus on the virtual world Second Life™. Case study methodology was selected to explore the experiences of Wolf, a participant with ASD, in Second Life. Wolf participated in three in-depth interviews. The interviews were analyzed using a content analysis to identify themes and sub-themes. Analysis identified four main themes: social factors and communication, empowerment, virtual world versus physical world, and social cues and body language. Anecdotally Wolf's experiences suggest that people with ASD enjoy using a virtual world and may feel more comfortable communicating in the virtual world context than the physical world. Virtual worlds offer a venue for people with ASD to be a part of a virtual society, lowers communication barriers experienced in the physical world, and gives the participant a unique opportunity to create and maintain friendships. Virtual worlds offer an arena for people with ASD to meet their peers on equal terms, not being dependent on social cues, which in the physical world can be a barrier for communication for this group. Further research in this area is required.

  17. Validating agent based models through virtual worlds.

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Lakkaraju, Kiran; Whetzel, Jonathan H.; Lee, Jina; Bier, Asmeret Brooke; Cardona-Rivera, Rogelio E.; Bernstein, Jeremy Ray Rhythm

    2014-01-01

    As the US continues its vigilance against distributed, embedded threats, understanding the political and social structure of these groups becomes paramount for predicting and dis- rupting their attacks. Agent-based models (ABMs) serve as a powerful tool to study these groups. While the popularity of social network tools (e.g., Facebook, Twitter) has provided extensive communication data, there is a lack of ne-grained behavioral data with which to inform and validate existing ABMs. Virtual worlds, in particular massively multiplayer online games (MMOG), where large numbers of people interact within a complex environ- ment for long periods of time provide an alternative source of data. These environments provide a rich social environment where players engage in a variety of activities observed between real-world groups: collaborating and/or competing with other groups, conducting battles for scarce resources, and trading in a market economy. Strategies employed by player groups surprisingly re ect those seen in present-day con icts, where players use diplomacy or espionage as their means for accomplishing their goals. In this project, we propose to address the need for ne-grained behavioral data by acquiring and analyzing game data a commercial MMOG, referred to within this report as Game X. The goals of this research were: (1) devising toolsets for analyzing virtual world data to better inform the rules that govern a social ABM and (2) exploring how virtual worlds could serve as a source of data to validate ABMs established for analogous real-world phenomena. During this research, we studied certain patterns of group behavior to compliment social modeling e orts where a signi cant lack of detailed examples of observed phenomena exists. This report outlines our work examining group behaviors that underly what we have termed the Expression-To-Action (E2A) problem: determining the changes in social contact that lead individuals/groups to engage in a particular behavior

  18. Real-geographic-scenario-based virtual social environments: integrating geography with social research

    OpenAIRE

    Min Chen; Li He; Hui Lin; Chunxiao Zhang; Mingyuan Hu

    2013-01-01

    Existing online virtual worlds, or electronic environments, are of great significance to social science research, but are somewhat lacking in rigour. One reason is that users might not participate in those virtual worlds in the way they act in real daily life, communicating with each other in familiar environments and interacting with natural phenomena under the constraints of the human–land relationship. To help solve this problem we propose the real-geographic-scenario-based virtual social ...

  19. Who regulates ethics in the virtual world?

    Science.gov (United States)

    Sharma, Seemu; Lomash, Hitashi; Bawa, Seema

    2015-02-01

    This paper attempts to give an insight into emerging ethical issues due to the increased usage of the Internet in our lives. We discuss three main theoretical approaches relating to the ethics involved in the information technology (IT) era: first, the use of IT as a tool; second, the use of social constructivist methods; and third, the approach of phenomenologists. Certain aspects of ethics and IT have been discussed based on a phenomenological approach and moral development. Further, ethical issues related to social networking sites are discussed. A plausible way to make the virtual world ethically responsive is collective responsibility which proposes that society has the power to influence but not control behavior in the virtual world.

  20. On Weighted Regions and Social Crowds : Autonomous-agent Navigation in Virtual Worlds

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Jaklin, N.S.

    2016-01-01

    Virtual environments have gained in importance in many aspects of the world we live in today. Immersive virtual worlds are ubiquitous in modern movies, video games, and online communities. They are also important in non-entertainment applications such as training and education software, simulations

  1. VIRTUAL SOCIAL LIFE AND RELATED MARKETING EFFORTS IN THE WORLD OF ONLINE GAMES

    OpenAIRE

    PANAYIRCI, Cevdet; YILDIRIM, Fazli

    2010-01-01

    As the Internet and the World Wide Web proliferate, a new form of communication and interaction has been made possible. People live increasingly hybrid lives where the physical and the digital, the real and the virtual interact. Massively multiplayer online role - playing games (MMORPGs), i.e. online role playing games, are a special medial and social phenomenon of our time and experienced a massive growth of players. Studies reveal that mmorpg players compose a heterogenic population and spe...

  2. Researching virtual worlds methodologies for studying emergent practices

    CERN Document Server

    Phillips, Louise

    2013-01-01

    This volume presents a wide range of methodological strategies that are designed to take into account the complex, emergent, and continually shifting character of virtual worlds. It interrogates how virtual worlds emerge as objects of study through the development and application of various methodological strategies. Virtual worlds are not considered objects that exist as entities with fixed attributes independent of our continuous engagement with them and interpretation of them. Instead, they are conceived of as complex ensembles of technology, humans, symbols, discourses, and economic structures, ensembles that emerge in ongoing practices and specific situations. A broad spectrum of perspectives and methodologies is presented: Actor-Network-Theory and post-Actor-Network-Theory, performativity theory, ethnography, discourse analysis, Sense-Making Methodology, visual ethnography, multi-sited ethnography, and Social Network Analysis.

  3. Virtual-World Naturalism

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Daniel Reynolds

    2010-07-01

    Full Text Available Sometimes a player will stray from the path described by a game, moving into new spaces, developing new possible modes of interaction, and often discovering the rougher edges of the game world, where physics models break down, textures become incongruous, and the pieces don’t quite fit together. Gameplay that seeks out these spaces and these phenomena, that searches for such clues to the underlying construction of the virtual environment, is a kind of virtual-world naturalism, at once a return to an investigative urge that has been subsumed to the exhaustive mapping and description of the real world and a form of resistance to the very idea of pre-defined paths of action, of externally imposed limits, in virtual worlds as well as in our own.

  4. Changing Instructor's Roles in Virtual Worlds

    Science.gov (United States)

    Berge, Zane L.

    2008-01-01

    Berge's Instructor's Roles Model categorized the instructor's roles as pedagogical, social, managerial, and technical. Developed more than a decade ago, this model described changing roles for instructors as they transitioned from in-person classrooms to teaching online. Today, as virtual worlds emerge and are being used as educational platforms,…

  5. Eventedness and Disjuncture in Virtual Worlds

    Science.gov (United States)

    White, David; Le Cornu, Alison

    2010-01-01

    Background: Many of the potential benefits of using virtual worlds for teaching and learning are difficult to define and often become overly focused on the functionality of the technology or on its ability to support informal or "social" forms of learning. Purpose: The aim of the paper is to highlight the experiential nature of virtual…

  6. Using Virtual Worlds to Identify Multidimensional Student Engagement in High School Foreign Language Learning Classrooms

    Science.gov (United States)

    Jacob, Laura Beth

    2012-01-01

    Virtual world environments have evolved from object-oriented, text-based online games to complex three-dimensional immersive social spaces where the lines between reality and computer-generated begin to blur. Educators use virtual worlds to create engaging three-dimensional learning spaces for students, but the impact of virtual worlds in…

  7. Corporate Training in Virtual Worlds

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Charles Nebolsky

    2004-12-01

    Full Text Available This paper presents virtual training worlds that are relatively low-cost distributed collaborative learning environments suitable for corporate training. A virtual training world allows a facilitator, experts and trainees communicating and acting in the virtual environment for practicing skills during collaborative problem solving. Using these environments is beneficial to both trainees and corporations. Two system prototypes – the sales training and the leadership training virtual worlds – are described. The leadership training course design is discussed in details.

  8. On Weighted Regions and Social Crowds : Autonomous-agent Navigation in Virtual Worlds

    OpenAIRE

    Jaklin, N.S.

    2016-01-01

    Virtual environments have gained in importance in many aspects of the world we live in today. Immersive virtual worlds are ubiquitous in modern movies, video games, and online communities. They are also important in non-entertainment applications such as training and education software, simulations of mass events, evacuation scenarios, human factor analysis, and urban city planning. Training and education software itself comprises various application areas, ranging from teaching children with...

  9. Representing Large Virtual Worlds

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Kol, T.R.

    2018-01-01

    The ubiquity of large virtual worlds and their growing complexity in computer graphics require efficient representations. This means that we need smart solutions for the underlying storage of these complex environments, but also for their visualization. How the virtual world is best stored and how

  10. Security and privacy in massively-multiplayer online games and social and corporate virtual worlds

    OpenAIRE

    Hogben, G.; Barosso, D.; Bartle, R.; Chazeran, C.; de Zwart, M.; Doumen, J.M.; Gorniak, S.; Kaźmierczak, M.; Kaskenmaa, M.; Benavente López, D.; Martin, A.; Naumann, I.; Reynolds, R.; Richardson, J; Rossow, C.

    2008-01-01

    2007 was the year of online gaming fraud - with malicious programs that specifically target online games and virtual worlds increasing by 145% and the emergence of over 30,000 new programs aimed at stealing online game passwords. Such malware is invariably aimed at the theft of virtual property accumulated in a user’s account and its sale for real money. With 217 million regular users of MMO/VWs (Massively Multiplayer Online Games and Virtual Worlds) and real-money sales of virtual objects es...

  11. Deploying Embodied AI into Virtual Worlds

    Science.gov (United States)

    Burden, David J. H.

    The last two years have seen the start of commercial activity within virtual worlds. Unlike computer games where Non-Player-Character avatars are common, in most virtual worlds they are the exception — and until recently in Second Life they were non-existent. However there is real commercial scope for Als in these worlds — in roles from virtual sales staff and tutors to personal assistants. Deploying an embodied AI into a virtual world offers a unique opportunity to evaluate embodied Als, and to develop them within an environment where human and computer are on almost equal terms. This paper presents an architecture being used for the deployment of chatbot driven avatars within the Second Life virtual world, looks at the challenges of deploying an AI within such a virtual world, the possible implications for the Turing Test, and identifies research directions for the future.

  12. Virtual socialization in adults with spina bifida.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Chan, Wendy M; Dicianno, Brad E

    2011-03-01

    To use spina bifida (SB) as a model of chronic physical disability to study the associations of virtual socialization, friendships, and quality of life (QOL) in adults. Cross-sectional survey. Subjects were recruited from residential living facilities, outpatient clinics, and the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) research registry. Inclusion criteria were age between 18 and 80 years and clinical diagnoses of SB cystica (myelomeningocele) and hydrocephalus. The exclusion criterion was the diagnosis of SB occulta. Sixty-three eligible adults were enrolled, and all completed the study. The survey via questionnaire was performed in person or over the telephone. Data collected included the World Health Organization's Medical Outcomes Study 26-item Short Form, Economic Self-Sufficiency from the Craig Handicap Assessment and Reporting Technique Short Form, virtual socializing habits, and number of friends. Three linear regression models were performed, each with a unique dependent variable: number of friends, psychological QOL, or social QOL. The following independent variables were included in all models: age, gender, ethnicity, economic self-sufficiency, marital status, education level, lesion level, health status, user group, collection method, and time spent virtually socializing. In addition, each regression model included the dependent variables from the other 2 models in its independent variables. Increased degree of virtual socialization (VS) was associated with a greater number of friends (P = .003, r = .684). Mean (standard deviation) numbers of friends by VS groups were the following: users, n = 4.9 ± 2.7; semi-users, n = 3.8 ± 2.7; and nonusers, n = 2.1 ± 2.3, which represent a 2.3 times greater number of friends between the users and nonusers. The effect of virtual socialization on QOL was also positive, however, not statistically significant. People with chronic physical disabilities, such as SB, are at high risk for peer rejection and long

  13. Speaking in Character: Voice Communication in Virtual Worlds

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wadley, Greg; Gibbs, Martin R.

    This chapter summarizes 5 years of research on the implications of introducing voice communication systems to virtual worlds. Voice introduces both benefits and problems for players of fast-paced team games, from better coordination of groups and greater social presence of fellow players on the positive side, to negative features such as channel congestion, transmission of noise, and an unwillingness by some to use voice with strangers online. Similarly, in non-game worlds like Second Life, issues related to identity and impression management play important roles, as voice may build greater trust that is especially important for business users, yet it erodes the anonymity and ability to conceal social attributes like gender that are important for other users. A very different mixture of problems and opportunities exists when users conduct several simultaneous conversations in multiple text and voice channels. Technical difficulties still exist with current systems, including the challenge of debugging and harmonizing all the participants' voice setups. Different groups use virtual worlds for very different purposes, so a single modality may not suit all.

  14. Learning Experience with Virtual Worlds

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wagner, Christian

    2008-01-01

    Virtual worlds create a new opportunity to enrich the educational experience through media-rich immersive learning. Virtual worlds have gained notoriety in games such as World of Warcraft (WoW), which has become the most successful online game ever, and in "general purpose" worlds, such as Second Life (SL), whose participation levels (more than 10…

  15. ENHANCING SPIRITUALISM IN VIRTUAL WORLD

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Kiran Lata DANGWAL

    2012-04-01

    Full Text Available Spiritualism is one word which puts man on the highest plinth of life. Spirituality is the way we find meaning, hope, comfort and inner peace in life. Spirituality in the virtual World is generally known as Virtual Spirituality. A goldmine of wisdom from all kinds of religious and spiritual philosophies, traditions and practices can be found in virtual World now. Technology and Spirituality together forms the material to which man can incline on to and work for the development of a globe in which war will be considered a taboo and violence a rejected dogma. Therefore there is an urgent nee to made the world a safe place to live in and the spiritual reconstruction can help us in achieving this.Spiritualism, Virtual World, Online Technology.

  16. Virtual Worlds: Relationship Between Real Life and Experience in Second Life

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Scott P. Anstadt

    2013-09-01

    Full Text Available Due to the unique applications of virtual reality in many modern contexts, Second Life (SL offers inimitable opportunities for research and exploration and experiential learning as part of a distance learning curriculum assignment. A review of current research regarding SL examined real world social influences in online interactions and what the effects on users may be. This aids students in understanding the social constructionist perceptions and worldview of those persons they may serve in social services. This suggests the importance of developing an understanding of the relationship between users’ real life (RL and their SL. Some research has begun to reveal the effectiveness of telecommunication and computer simulation with certain clients in the fields of mental health and social work, yet there is a lack of sufficient research done within the context of virtual worlds. The current study surveyed users of several educationally and health focused SIMS (simulations as to what motivates their SL and RL interactions. The data explores associations between users’ RL and their SL in several areas,potentially addressing the future role of educating social work students regarding research methodology in online virtual reality interactions. Implications for social work are discussed including engaging clients using incentives for social participation built into the SL milieu.

  17. Trust and virtual worlds

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Ess, Charles; Thorseth, May

    2011-01-01

    We collect diverse philosophical analyses of the issues and problems clustering around trust online with specific attention to establishing trust in virtual environments. The book moves forward important discussions of how virtual worlds and virtuality are to be defined and understood; the role o...... by virtuality, such as virtual child pornography. The introduction further develops a philosophical anthropology, rooted in Kantian ethics, phenomenology, virtue ethics, and feminist perspectives, that grounds a specific approach to ethical issues in virtual environments....

  18. Virtual Technologies and Social Shaping

    OpenAIRE

    Kreps , David

    2010-01-01

    International audience; Virtual Technologies have enabled us all to become publishers and broadcasters. The world of information has become saturated with a multitude of opinions, and opportunities to express them. Track 2 "Virtual Technologies and Social Shaping" of the 9th Conference on Human Choice and Computers (HCC9) explores some of the issues that have arisen in this new information society, how we are shaped by it, and how we shape it, through i) two papers addressing issues of identi...

  19. Collective Action Situated in Virtual Worlds

    Science.gov (United States)

    Blodgett, Bridget M.

    2011-01-01

    For the first time in the history of collective action, the offline world has experienced a virtually organized and enacted union strike. While this was the first publicly noticed political action in a virtual world, others have been going on for several years now. As virtual worlds continue to grow in popularity, this type of protest of action…

  20. The Use of Internet Resources and Browser-Based Virtual Worlds in Teaching Grammar

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kruk, Mariusz

    2014-01-01

    Online virtual worlds are becoming important tools in foreign/second language instruction in view of the fact that they enhance learner motivation, promote autonomy and social presence in a 3D environment. Virtual worlds are a type of reality in which students can meet and communicate with other learners in the target language using text, voice or…

  1. In-World Behaviors and Learning in a Virtual World

    Science.gov (United States)

    Nadolny, Larysa; Childs, Mark

    2014-01-01

    Educational virtual worlds can give students opportunities that would not otherwise be possible in face-to-face settings. The SciEthics Interactive simulations allow learners to conduct scientific research and practice ethical decision-making within a virtual world. This study examined the in-world behaviors that identify students who perceive…

  2. Embodied Involvement in Virtual Worlds

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Ekdahl, David; Ravn, Susanne

    2018-01-01

    eSports practice designates a unique set of activities tethered to competitive, virtual environments or worlds. This correlation between eSports practitioner and virtual world, we argue, is inadequately accounted for solely in terms of something physical or intellectual. Instead, we favor...... a perspective on eSports practice to be analyzed as a perceptual and embodied phenomenon. In this article, we present the phenomenological approach and focus on the embodied sensations of eSports practitioners as they cope with and perceive within their virtual worlds. By approaching eSports phenomenologically...

  3. The metaphors of virtual worlds

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Reinhard, CarrieLynn D.

    The analysis of recollections of experiencing two types of virtual worlds where the recollections were in the form of metaphors.......The analysis of recollections of experiencing two types of virtual worlds where the recollections were in the form of metaphors....

  4. Factors influencing presence in virtual worlds.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Chow, Meyrick C M

    2012-01-01

    Virtual worlds are showing potential as an effective platform for a variety of activities, including learning. The concept of presence (the sensation of "being there" in a mediated environment) has received substantial attention from the virtual reality community, and the effectiveness of virtual worlds has often been linked to the feelings of presence reported by their users. The present study examined the effects of attitude and perceived ease of use on sense of presence in Second Life, which is one of the most known and used virtual worlds. Based on data from a survey of 206 nursing students, hypotheses are empirically tested. Findings suggest that users' attitude toward using Second Life and their perceived ease of use of it have a positive effect on their sense of presence in the virtual environment. This study advances our understanding of factors influencing presence in virtual worlds.

  5. Towards Role Detection in Virtual Worlds

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    C. Eickhoff (Carsten); V.P. Lavrenko

    2012-01-01

    htmlabstractVirtual worlds are a topic of steadily growing relevance. Some of the providers report user numbers that exceed the population of entire nations in the real world. Virtual worlds typically provide a high degree of complexity, which in some areas approaches the real world's richness of

  6. World Wind: NASA's Virtual Globe

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hogan, P.

    2007-12-01

    Virtual globes have set the standard for information exchange. Once you've experienced the visually rich and highly compelling nature of data delivered via virtual globes with their highly engaging context of 3D, it's hard to go back to a flat 2D world. Just as the sawbones of not-too-long-ago have given way to sophisticated surgical operating theater, today's medium for information exchange is just beginning to leap from the staid chalkboards and remote libraries to fingertip navigable 3D worlds. How we harness this technology to serve a world inundated with information will describe the quality of our future. Our instincts for discovery and entertainment urge us on. There's so much we could know if the world's knowledge was presented to us in its natural context. Virtual globes are almost magical in their ability to reveal natural wonders. Anyone flying along a chain of volcanoes, a mid-ocean ridge or deep ocean trench, while simultaneously seeing the different depths to the history of earthquakes in those areas, will be delighted to sense Earth's dynamic nature in a way that would otherwise take several paragraphs of "boring" text. The sophisticated concepts related to global climate change would be far more comprehensible when experienced via a virtual globe. There is a large universe of public and private geospatial data sets that virtual globes can bring to light. The benefit derived from access to this data within virtual globes represents a significant return on investment for government, industry, the general public, and especially in the realm of education. Data access remains a key issue. Just as the highway infrastructure allows unimpeded access from point A to point B, an open standards-based infrastructure for data access allows virtual globes to exchange data in the most efficient manner possible. This data can be either free or proprietary. The Open Geospatial Consortium is providing the leadership necessary for this open standards-based data access

  7. Humiliation in the virtual world: Definitions and conceptualization

    OpenAIRE

    Dilmaç, Julie Alev

    2014-01-01

    The cyberspace represents a platform for social relations which permit to be in touch with the World, to be “seen” by others and to “see” others. As new technologies emerge, ways of viewing are revised, especially through screens: though it has facilitated communication, the main innovation of the virtual world has been seeing, hearing and showing everything with the individual at the center of permanent interactions. But this overexposure can be dangerous: in attempting to be as much a part ...

  8. Understanding Social Learning Behaviors via a Virtual Field Trip

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Xin Bai

    2014-06-01

    Full Text Available This is a multidisciplinary study investigating how a virtual rather than face-to-face field trip can be conducted in a real-world setting and how students respond to such a social learning opportunity. Our participants followed a story of a stroke patient at her virtual home and in a virtual hospital via a teaching vignette. They were then given a new case and got on a virtual trip via a multiuser virtual environment. They played the roles of patients, relatives, doctors, or nurses, experiencing the emotional, physical, or social impacts those stakeholders may go through. Our study finds the overall participation of the Virtual Group is 50% more than the Text Group. Although the Virtual Group generates much more nodes in total, they focused much less on knowledge sharing and comparing than the Text Group (46 vs. 67, but more on other higher-level aspects of social interactions, such as knowledge discovery (57 vs. 42, co-construction (66 vs. 39, testing and modification (58 vs. 24 and application of newly constructed meaning (60 vs. 16. Analysis of students’ virtual field activities and in-depth discussions of important issues implied are included to help understand social learning behaviors during a virtual field trip. Sustainability of such systems is discussed.

  9. Advertising in Virtual Worlds: The Example of Second Life

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Dincer Atli

    2015-07-01

    Full Text Available As consumers become decreasingly responsive towards traditional forms of advertising, advertisers are turning towards more innovative methods.  Virtual worlds provide an extraordinary potential for new and enhanced modes of advertising.  This study examines the opportunities of the virtual world, Second Life, as a new platform for businesses’ advertisement and promotional activities. First, we briefly introduce the concept of virtual worlds and virtual advertising. Then, we go on to explain the development of advertising, with special emphasis on its evolution alongside technological developments. Furthermore, we discuss how virtual worlds developed and how the features of these worlds lent themselves to advertising.  Second Life, the most popular virtual world application, is given a special emphasis, and we shall explore opportunities and practices for virtual advertising in this virtual world application.

  10. "This One's for VIP Users!": Participation and Commercial Strategies in Children's Virtual Worlds

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Carolina Martinez

    2014-06-01

    Full Text Available Through the integrated framework of participation theory and political economy, this article analyzes participatory opportunities in the virtual world Habbo Hotel, and how participation is constrained and framed by the producer's commercial strategies, which are based on advertising and sales of virtual goods. The study also looks into the ways in which the producer Sulake Corporation discursively represents the virtual world, and how the users with various forms of tactics try to bypass the commercial constraints. The methods used include observations of the English and Swedish language versions of Habbo Hotel, document analysis, and an interview with one designer employed by Sulake. The results show how participation in this virtual world takes minimalist forms, and that it is foremost an arena for interaction and consumption. Users' participation in the virtual world is constrained by the commercial strategies in numerous ways, and the producer strategically takes advantage of children's need to gain status in their peer group, in order to get them to purchase on the site. Habbo Hotel is represented by the producer as a safe and creative environment with learning opportunities for the children. Observations of the virtual world instead reveal Habbo as a panopticon-like shopping mall where users, through the practice of begging and other tactics, try to resist the commercial strategies. Virtual worlds could be potential spaces for children's participation and contribute to a democratization of the social; however, this study shows how participation in this virtual world is clearly structured and limited for commercial purposes.

  11. Virtual reality as a social phenomenon

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Markova T. V.

    2018-05-01

    Full Text Available the article is devoted to the study of virtual reality as a social phenomenon. Through an appeal to the past, its genesis is analyzed, as well as its significance in modern realities. The latter is viewed from both a social and a personal point of view. Comparing the number of supporters of virtual communication with the number of people of conservative views, conclusions are drawn about the tendency to depart from the usual communication. It allows to assert that the problem of the termination of live communication is relevant to this day. Inferences allow us to assert that the problem of replacing real communication is different. After looking at the positive consequences, the introduction of the mind into virtual reality, it is affirmed that there are good sides to this action. Through analysis, the causes of entering the World Wide Web are generated. In conclusion, the question is raised about the need for virtual reality in everyday life, its problems, as well as the prospects for development.

  12. Innovation in weight loss programs: a 3-dimensional virtual-world approach.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Johnston, Jeanne D; Massey, Anne P; Devaneaux, Celeste A

    2012-09-20

    The rising trend in obesity calls for innovative weight loss programs. While behavioral-based face-to-face programs have proven to be the most effective, they are expensive and often inaccessible. Internet or Web-based weight loss programs have expanded reach but may lack qualities critical to weight loss and maintenance such as human interaction, social support, and engagement. In contrast to Web technologies, virtual reality technologies offer unique affordances as a behavioral intervention by directly supporting engagement and active learning. To explore the effectiveness of a virtual-world weight loss program relative to weight loss and behavior change. We collected data from overweight people (N = 54) participating in a face-to-face or a virtual-world weight loss program. Weight, body mass index (BMI), percentage weight change, and health behaviors (ie, weight loss self-efficacy, physical activity self-efficacy, self-reported physical activity, and fruit and vegetable consumption) were assessed before and after the 12-week program. Repeated measures analysis was used to detect differences between groups and across time. A total of 54 participants with a BMI of 32 (SD 6.05) kg/m(2)enrolled in the study, with a 13% dropout rate for each group (virtual world group: 5/38; face-to-face group: 3/24). Both groups lost a significant amount of weight (virtual world: 3.9 kg, P virtual-world group lost an average of 4.2%, with 33% (11/33) of the participants losing a clinically significant (≥5%) amount of baseline weight. The face-to-face group lost an average of 3.0% of their baseline weight, with 29% (6/21) losing a clinically significant amount. We detected a significant group × time interaction for moderate (P = .006) and vigorous physical activity (P = .008), physical activity self-efficacy (P = .04), fruit and vegetable consumption (P = .007), and weight loss self-efficacy (P virtual-world group. Overall, these results offer positive early evidence that a

  13. When Virtual Worlds Expand

    Science.gov (United States)

    Bainbridge, William Sims

    The future of a virtual world depends on whether it can grow in subjective size, cultural content, and numbers of human participants. In one form of growth, exemplified by Second Life, the scope of a world increases gradually as new sponsors pay for new territory and inhabitants create content. A very different form of growth is sudden expansion, as when World of Warcraft (WoW) added entire new continents in its Burning Crusade and Lich King expansions (Lummis and Kern 2006, 2008; Corneliussen and Rettberg 2008; Sims et al. 2008). Well-established gamelike worlds have often undergone many expansions. Both the pioneer science fiction game Anarchy Online, which was launched in 2001, and Star Wars Galaxies dating from 2003, have had three, and EVE Online also from 2003 has had nine, although smaller ones. This chapter reports research on WoW's 2008 Lich King expansion, using both quantitative and qualitative methods, in order to develop theoretical ideas of the implications of expansion for virtual worlds.

  14. Presence revisited: imagination, competence, and activity in text-based virtual worlds.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Jacobson, D

    2001-12-01

    Presence is the sense of being caught up in the representations of virtual worlds. Drawing on social and literary theories and on ethnographic fieldwork, this paper examines the ways in which imagination, competence, and activity promote or undermine a sense of presence in online text-based environments known as MOOs. These factors vary for newbies, socials, and techies, categories that reflect differences in length of experience in participating in these worlds, in comfort and/or competence in the use of commands for navigation and communication, and in the interests and/or degree of participation in socializing or programming.

  15. Virtual worlds: taking health promotion to new levels.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Annang, Lucy; Muilenburg, Jessica L; Strasser, Sheryl M

    2010-01-01

    Health promotion strategies continue to evolve, with interventions using e-mail, text messaging, and Web sites becoming commonplace. The use of online virtual worlds is a less familiar venue for health promotion but offers numerous possibilities for wired citizens with health issues. The authors discuss three examples of virtual worlds--the River City Project, Whyville, and Second Life--and how health promotion strategies can be implemented in virtual worlds. They also address several challenges associated with implementing health interventions in virtual worlds, including questions of ethics, diffusion of health knowledge and logistics of intervening outside of the real world.

  16. Libraries' Place in Virtual Social Networks

    Science.gov (United States)

    Mathews, Brian S.

    2007-01-01

    Do libraries belong in the virtual world of social networking? With more than 100 million users, this environment is impossible to ignore. A rising philosophy for libraries, particularly in blog-land, involves the concept of being where the users are. Simply using new media to deliver an old message is not progress. Instead, librarians should…

  17. Collaborative virtual gaming worlds in higher education

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Nicola Whitton

    2008-12-01

    Full Text Available There is growing interest in the use of virtual gaming worlds in education, supported by the increased use of multi-user virtual environments (MUVEs and massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs for collaborative learning. However, this paper argues that collaborative gaming worlds have been in use much longer and are much wider in scope; it considers the range of collaborative gaming worlds that exist and discusses their potential for learning, with particular reference to higher education. The paper discusses virtual gaming worlds from a theoretical pedagogic perspective, exploring the educational benefits of gaming environments. Then practical considerations associated with the use of virtual gaming worlds in formal settings in higher education are considered. Finally, the paper considers development options that are open to educators, and discusses the potential of Alternate Reality Games (ARGs for learning in higher education. In all, this paper hopes to provide a balanced overview of the range of virtual gaming worlds that exist, to examine some of the practical considerations associated with their use, and to consider their benefits and challenges in learning and teaching in the higher education context.

  18. What People Talk About in Virtual Worlds

    Science.gov (United States)

    Maher, Mary Lou

    This chapter examines what people talk about in virtual worlds, employing protocol analysis. Each of two scenario studies was developed to assess the impact of virtual worlds as a collaborative environment for a specific purpose: one for learning and one for designing. The first designed a place in Active Worlds for a course on Web Site Design, having group learning spaces surrounded by individual student galleries. Student text chat was analyzed through a coding scheme with four major categories: control, technology, learning, and place. The second studied expert architects in a Second Life environment called DesignWorld that combined 3D modeling and sketching tools. Video and audio recordings were coded in terms of four categories of communication content (designing, representation of the model, awareness of each other, and software features), and in terms of synthesis comparing alternative designs versus analysis of how well the proposed solution satisfies the given design task. Both studies found that people talk about their avatars, identity, and location in the virtual world. However, the discussion is chiefly about the task and not about the virtual world, implying that virtual worlds provide a viable environment for learning and designing that does not distract people from their task.

  19. Controlling social stress in virtual reality environments.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Dwi Hartanto

    Full Text Available Virtual reality exposure therapy has been proposed as a viable alternative in the treatment of anxiety disorders, including social anxiety disorder. Therapists could benefit from extensive control of anxiety eliciting stimuli during virtual exposure. Two stimuli controls are studied in this study: the social dialogue situation, and the dialogue feedback responses (negative or positive between a human and a virtual character. In the first study, 16 participants were exposed in three virtual reality scenarios: a neutral virtual world, blind date scenario, and job interview scenario. Results showed a significant difference between the three virtual scenarios in the level of self-reported anxiety and heart rate. In the second study, 24 participants were exposed to a job interview scenario in a virtual environment where the ratio between negative and positive dialogue feedback responses of a virtual character was systematically varied on-the-fly. Results yielded that within a dialogue the more positive dialogue feedback resulted in less self-reported anxiety, lower heart rate, and longer answers, while more negative dialogue feedback of the virtual character resulted in the opposite. The correlations between on the one hand the dialogue stressor ratio and on the other hand the means of SUD score, heart rate and audio length in the eight dialogue conditions showed a strong relationship: r(6 = 0.91, p = 0.002; r(6 = 0.76, p = 0.028 and r(6 = -0.94, p = 0.001 respectively. Furthermore, more anticipatory anxiety reported before exposure was found to coincide with more self-reported anxiety, and shorter answers during the virtual exposure. These results demonstrate that social dialogues in a virtual environment can be effectively manipulated for therapeutic purposes.

  20. Controlling social stress in virtual reality environments.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hartanto, Dwi; Kampmann, Isabel L; Morina, Nexhmedin; Emmelkamp, Paul G M; Neerincx, Mark A; Brinkman, Willem-Paul

    2014-01-01

    Virtual reality exposure therapy has been proposed as a viable alternative in the treatment of anxiety disorders, including social anxiety disorder. Therapists could benefit from extensive control of anxiety eliciting stimuli during virtual exposure. Two stimuli controls are studied in this study: the social dialogue situation, and the dialogue feedback responses (negative or positive) between a human and a virtual character. In the first study, 16 participants were exposed in three virtual reality scenarios: a neutral virtual world, blind date scenario, and job interview scenario. Results showed a significant difference between the three virtual scenarios in the level of self-reported anxiety and heart rate. In the second study, 24 participants were exposed to a job interview scenario in a virtual environment where the ratio between negative and positive dialogue feedback responses of a virtual character was systematically varied on-the-fly. Results yielded that within a dialogue the more positive dialogue feedback resulted in less self-reported anxiety, lower heart rate, and longer answers, while more negative dialogue feedback of the virtual character resulted in the opposite. The correlations between on the one hand the dialogue stressor ratio and on the other hand the means of SUD score, heart rate and audio length in the eight dialogue conditions showed a strong relationship: r(6) = 0.91, p = 0.002; r(6) = 0.76, p = 0.028 and r(6) = -0.94, p = 0.001 respectively. Furthermore, more anticipatory anxiety reported before exposure was found to coincide with more self-reported anxiety, and shorter answers during the virtual exposure. These results demonstrate that social dialogues in a virtual environment can be effectively manipulated for therapeutic purposes.

  1. Controlling Social Stress in Virtual Reality Environments

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hartanto, Dwi; Kampmann, Isabel L.; Morina, Nexhmedin; Emmelkamp, Paul G. M.; Neerincx, Mark A.; Brinkman, Willem-Paul

    2014-01-01

    Virtual reality exposure therapy has been proposed as a viable alternative in the treatment of anxiety disorders, including social anxiety disorder. Therapists could benefit from extensive control of anxiety eliciting stimuli during virtual exposure. Two stimuli controls are studied in this study: the social dialogue situation, and the dialogue feedback responses (negative or positive) between a human and a virtual character. In the first study, 16 participants were exposed in three virtual reality scenarios: a neutral virtual world, blind date scenario, and job interview scenario. Results showed a significant difference between the three virtual scenarios in the level of self-reported anxiety and heart rate. In the second study, 24 participants were exposed to a job interview scenario in a virtual environment where the ratio between negative and positive dialogue feedback responses of a virtual character was systematically varied on-the-fly. Results yielded that within a dialogue the more positive dialogue feedback resulted in less self-reported anxiety, lower heart rate, and longer answers, while more negative dialogue feedback of the virtual character resulted in the opposite. The correlations between on the one hand the dialogue stressor ratio and on the other hand the means of SUD score, heart rate and audio length in the eight dialogue conditions showed a strong relationship: r(6) = 0.91, p = 0.002; r(6) = 0.76, p = 0.028 and r(6) = −0.94, p = 0.001 respectively. Furthermore, more anticipatory anxiety reported before exposure was found to coincide with more self-reported anxiety, and shorter answers during the virtual exposure. These results demonstrate that social dialogues in a virtual environment can be effectively manipulated for therapeutic purposes. PMID:24671006

  2. Security and privacy in massively-multiplayer online games and social and corporate virtual worlds

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Hogben, G.; Barosso, D.; Bartle, R.; Chazeran, C.; de Zwart, M.; Doumen, J.M.; Gorniak, S.; Kaźmierczak, M.; Kaskenmaa, M.; Benavente López, D.; Martin, A.; Naumann, I.; Reynolds, R.; Richardson, J; Rossow, C.; Rywczyoska, A.; Thumann, M.

    2008-01-01

    2007 was the year of online gaming fraud - with malicious programs that specifically target online games and virtual worlds increasing by 145% and the emergence of over 30,000 new programs aimed at stealing online game passwords. Such malware is invariably aimed at the theft of virtual property

  3. Learning, Teaching and Ambiguity in Virtual Worlds

    Science.gov (United States)

    Carr, Diane; Oliver, Martin; Burn, Andrew

    What might online communities and informal learning practices teach us about virtual world pedagogy? In this chapter we describe a research project in which learning practices in online worlds such as World of Warcraft and Second LifeTM (SL) were investigated. Working within an action research framework, we employed a range of methods to investigate how members of online communities define the worlds they encounter, negotiate the terms of participation, and manage the incremental complexity of game worlds. The implications of such practices for online pedagogy were then explored through teaching in SL. SL eludes simple definitions. Users, or "residents", of SL partake of a range of pleasures and activities - socialising, building, creating and exhibiting art, playing games, exploring, shopping, or running a business, for instance. We argue that the variable nature of SL gives rise to degrees of ambiguity. This ambiguity impacts on inworld social practices, and has significant implications for online teaching and learning.

  4. Information dynamics in virtual worlds gaming and beyond

    CERN Document Server

    Evans, Woody

    2011-01-01

    Presents a broad examination of the nature of virtual worlds and the potential they provide in managing and expressing information practices through that medium, grounding information professionals and students of new media in the fundamental elements of virtual worlds and online gaming. The book details the practical issues in finding and using information in virtual environments and presents a general theory of librarianship as it relates to virtual gaming worlds. It is encompassed by a set of best practice methods that libraries can effectively execute in their own environments, meeting the

  5. Immersive Virtual Worlds for (E-) Learning

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Rehm, Matthias; Konnerup, Ulla

    2013-01-01

    Virtual worlds are becoming ever more popular and important for the information society allowing to meet “face-to-face” and at the same time be distributed across different places. This offers numerous possibilities of revolutionizing the way learning is realized over long distances and at a given...... location. But current uses of environments like Second Life make it very clear that there is a lack of interaction and learning concepts that are tailored to these kinds of collaborative environments resulting more or less in the replication of “always the same” this time in a virtual world. An example...... is a typical lecture that is now available as an in-world podcast. This chapter examines current state-of-the-art approaches of learning in and with virtual worlds in relation to the features of such environments and then proposes a research agenda tailored at making the learning experience truly interactive...

  6. VIRTUAL REALITY AS A TOOL FOR THE STUDY OF PSYCHOLOGICAL AND SOCIAL PHENOMENA

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Laura Aymerich-Franch

    2013-04-01

    Full Text Available Virtual reality is a technology that drastically alters the environment and self-representation through the creation of virtual worlds and avatars. These transformations facilitate the analysis of social and psychological phenomena hardly observable in a real environment. The paper presents the virtual reality as a methodological tool and describes the possibilities this technology offers to researchers in the field of Social Sciences presenting the results of the most relevant studies that have used this tool following the paradigm of Transformed Social Interaction and presents a case study.

  7. Exploitation of the Virtual Worlds in Tourism and Tourism Education

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Zejda Pavel

    2016-12-01

    Full Text Available Academics perceive a great potential of virtual worlds in various areas, including tourism and education. Efforts adapting the virtual worlds in practice are, however, still marginal. There is no clear definition of the virtual world. Therefore the author of this article attempts to provide one. The paper also focuses on the barriers of a wider exploitation of the virtual worlds and discusses the principles that might help to increase their potential in tourism area. One of the principles – gamification – favours a wider adaptation of the virtual worlds in tourism. Applying gamification principles provides visitors with some unique experiences while serving as a powerful marketing tool for institutions. The benefits of implementing tourism education activities based on cooperative principles set in an immersive environment of the virtual worlds are depicted afterwards. Finally, this paper includes successful case studies, which show advantages and drawbacks of some approaches in exploiting the virtual worlds in tourism and tourism education.

  8. Virtual Worlds: Relationship between Real Life and Experience in Second Life

    Science.gov (United States)

    Anstadt, Scott P.; Bradley, Shannon; Burnette, Ashley; Medley, Lesley L.

    2013-01-01

    Due to the unique applications of virtual reality in many modern contexts, Second Life (SL) offers inimitable opportunities for research and exploration and experiential learning as part of a distance learning curriculum assignment. A review of current research regarding SL examined real world social influences in online interactions and what the…

  9. Faculty Perspectives of Faculty Persona in a Virtual World

    Science.gov (United States)

    Blackmon, Stephanie J.

    2013-01-01

    Immersive virtual worlds provide a new way to deliver online courses or parts of online and face-to-face courses. There is a growing body of research on online learning, and the data on virtual worlds is also increasing. However, literature concerning professors' experiences with specific aspects of virtual worlds is limited. For example,…

  10. Facilitating 3D Virtual World Learning Environments Creation by Non-Technical End Users through Template-Based Virtual World Instantiation

    Science.gov (United States)

    Liu, Chang; Zhong, Ying; Ozercan, Sertac; Zhu, Qing

    2013-01-01

    This paper presents a template-based solution to overcome technical barriers non-technical computer end users face when developing functional learning environments in three-dimensional virtual worlds (3DVW). "iVirtualWorld," a prototype of a platform-independent 3DVW creation tool that implements the proposed solution, facilitates 3DVW…

  11. Virtual worlds. Meta-analysis of educational experiences from its beginnings

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Sergio Manuel DÍAZ FERNÁNDEZ

    2016-12-01

    Full Text Available Over a decade has passed since the specialized scientific literature presented in 2004 the first educational experience with virtual worlds. An evolutionary period that requires analysis to determine the adequacy of the developed experiences so far, enabling the formulation of guidelines and / or aspects to consider in future experiences to achieve better adjustment and adaptation to the specific framework.The investigation lies within the meta-analytic paradigm, with a quantitative and systematic review of the results of the 36 experiences that have been accessed, projecting an analysis and review of the same by using a form of observation, new and validated, in which a number of desirable compliance parameters are set, based on the current framework established by different experts.The results show a high degree of adaptation in didactic and pedagogical aspects, as well as communication and interaction, being lower in technical and support aspects, which can influence the work in virtual worlds. On the other hand, errors not meet the characteristics of the participants are detected. Failure to take into account their degree of socialization, their digital knowledge or communication skills in these environments, determines the validity of the designs and implementations, being important to consider in future experiences with virtual worlds.

  12. Enhancing Spiritualism in Virtual World

    Science.gov (United States)

    Dangwal, Kiran Lata; Singh, Shireesh Pal

    2012-01-01

    Spiritualism is one word which puts man on the highest plinth of life. Spirituality is the way we find meaning, hope, comfort and inner peace in life. Spirituality in the virtual World is generally known as Virtual Spirituality. A goldmine of wisdom from all kinds of religious and spiritual philosophies, traditions and practices can be found in…

  13. Collaborative Virtual Gaming Worlds in Higher Education

    Science.gov (United States)

    Whitton, Nicola; Hollins, Paul

    2008-01-01

    There is growing interest in the use of virtual gaming worlds in education, supported by the increased use of multi-user virtual environments (MUVEs) and massively multi-player online role-playing games (MMORPGs) for collaborative learning. However, this paper argues that collaborative gaming worlds have been in use much longer and are much wider…

  14. Satisfaction with virtual worlds: An integrated model of experiential value

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Verhagen, T.; Feldberg, J.F.M.; van den Hooff, B.J.; Meents, S.; Merikivi, J.

    2011-01-01

    Although virtual worlds increasingly attract users today, few studies have addressed what satisfies virtual world users. We therefore defined and tested an integrated model of experiential system value and virtual world satisfaction. Drawing upon expectancy-value and cognitive evaluation theories,

  15. PENGUJIAN COGNITIVE ABSORPTION TERHADAP KEPERCAYAAN-KEPERCAYAAN PENGGUNA UNTUK BERBAGI INFORMASI DI LINGKUNGAN VIRTUAL WORLDS

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Supardi Supardi

    2014-04-01

    Full Text Available Virtual Worlds (VWs are media-rich  cognitively  engaging technologies that geographically dispersed organizations  can use  as a cost effective workplace collaboration tool. Using  a sharing  information in virtual worlds environment, the aims of this study is to investigate cognitive absorption within individual beliefs about the technology of virtual worlds use. Cognitive absorption, theorized as being exhibited through the five dimensions of temporal dissociation, focused immersion, heightened enjoyment, control, and curiosity, is posited to be a proximal antecedent of two important beliefs about technology use: perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use. A model, based on Bandura's Social Cognitive Theory, was developed to test number of variables as the antecedents of cognitive absorption, which include social factor and individual like familiarity and personal innovativeness.A sample of 218 respondents participated in the research. In informing the results, the study utilized the partial least square model with the support for SmartPLS 2.0 software. Our findings suggest that beliefs about VWs usage can be influenced by cognitive absorption. Significant relationships were found between familiarity and cognitive absorption, and between personal innovativeness and cognitive absorption. Theoretical and practical implications are offered.

  16. Conducting empirical research in virtual worlds

    OpenAIRE

    Minocha, Shailey

    2011-01-01

    We will focus on the following aspects of conducting empirical research in virtual worlds: the toolbox of techniques for data collection; selection of technique(s) for the research questions; tips on how the techniques need to be adapted for conducting research in virtual worlds; guidance for developing research materials such as the consent form, project summary sheet, and how to address the possible concerns of an institution’s ethics committee who may not be familiar with the avatar-based ...

  17. Is There a Second Life for Virtual Worlds?

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ramaswami, Rama

    2011-01-01

    Just a few years ago, virtual worlds were credited with the power to transform the universe. Used since the late 1990s in military and medical applications, virtual worlds first gained mainstream media attention when Linden Lab released Second Life in 2003. While other worlds, including open source environments, have launched since then (examples…

  18. The Best of All Worlds: Immersive Interfaces for Art Education in Virtual and Real World Teaching and Learning Environments

    Science.gov (United States)

    Grenfell, Janette

    2013-01-01

    Selected ubiquitous technologies encourage collaborative participation between higher education students and educators within a virtual socially networked e-learning landscape. Multiple modes of teaching and learning, ranging from real world experiences, to text and digital images accessed within the Deakin studies online learning management…

  19. Fieldwork Skills in Virtual Worlds

    Science.gov (United States)

    Craven, Benjamin; Lloyd, Geoffrey; Gordon, Clare; Houghton, Jacqueline; Morgan, Daniel

    2017-04-01

    Virtual reality has an increasingly significant role to play in teaching and research, but for geological applications realistic landscapes are required that contain sufficient detail to prove viable for investigation by both inquisitive students and critical researchers. To create such virtual landscapes, we combine DTM data with digitally modelled outcrops in the game engine Unity. Our current landscapes are fictional worlds, invented to focus on generation techniques and the strategic and spatial immersion within a digital environment. These have proved very successful in undergraduate teaching; however, we are now moving onto recreating real landscapes for more advanced teaching and research. The first of these is focussed on Rhoscolyn, situated within the Ynys Mon Geopark on Anglesey, UK. It is a popular area for both teaching and research in structural geology so has a wide usage demographic. The base of the model is created from DTM data, both 1 m LiDAR and 5 m GPS point data, and manipulated with QGIS before import to Unity. Substance is added to the world via models of architectural elements (e.g. walls and buildings) and appropriate flora and fauna, including sounds. Texturing of these models is performed using 25 cm aerial imagery and field photographs. Whilst such elements enhance immersion, it is the use of digital outcrop models that fully completes the experience. From fieldwork, we have a library of photogrammetric outcrops that can be modelled into 3D features using free (VisualSFM and MeshLab) and non-free (AgiSoft Photoscan) tools. These models are then refined and converted in Maya to create models for better insertion into the Unity environment. The finished product is a virtual landscape; a Rhoscolyn `world' that is sufficiently detailed to provide a base not only for geological teaching and training but also for geological research. Additionally, the `Rhoscolyn World' represents a significant tool for those students who are unable to attend

  20. The Commercial Side of Virtual Play Worlds

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kargin, Tolga

    2018-01-01

    In recent years, virtual play spaces have become enormously popular among young children around the world. As yet, though, there has been relatively little research into the ways in which children interact on such sites and what they learn in the process. This article describes a study of kids' experiences with one such virtual world, Club…

  1. Collaborative virtual gaming worlds in higher education

    OpenAIRE

    Whitton, Nicola; Hollins, Paul

    2008-01-01

    There is growing interest in the use of virtual gaming worlds in education, supported by the increased use of multi-user virtual environments (MUVEs) and massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs) for collaborative learning. However, this paper argues that collaborative gaming worlds have been in use much longer and are much wider in scope; it considers the range of collaborative gaming worlds that exist and discusses their potential for learning, with particular reference to h...

  2. Cognitive Agents in Virtual Worlds : a Middleware Design Approach

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    van Oijen, Joost

    2014-01-01

    In the past decade, significant advances have been made in the technologies for creating virtual worlds. These advances are accompanied with the need for intelligent, human-like characters to populate these virtual worlds. Such characters are also known as intelligent virtual agents (IVAs). IVAs are

  3. Exploitation of the Virtual Worlds in Tourism and Tourism Education

    OpenAIRE

    Zejda Pavel; Zejda David

    2016-01-01

    Academics perceive a great potential of virtual worlds in various areas, including tourism and education. Efforts adapting the virtual worlds in practice are, however, still marginal. There is no clear definition of the virtual world. Therefore the author of this article attempts to provide one. The paper also focuses on the barriers of a wider exploitation of the virtual worlds and discusses the principles that might help to increase their potential in tourism area. One of the principles – g...

  4. Pedagogical Challenges of Spoken English Learning in the Second Life Virtual World: A Case Study

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zhang, Haisen

    2013-01-01

    As one of the emerging technologies, the Second Life virtual world provides learners of English as a Foreign Language with a unique opportunity of learning authentic language with native and non-native speakers of English in a virtual environment. It enables them to learn the target language in a real-life-like social communication environment. To…

  5. Added Value of Teaching in a Virtual World

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Christensen, Inger-Marie F.; Marunchak, Andrew; Stefanelli, Cristina

    2013-01-01

    This chapter discusses the educational potential of virtual worlds and the challenges faced when using them to facilitate communication and learning. Virtual worlds can be a valid means of engaging with and motivating younger audiences in today’s digital culture. They provide an authentic context...

  6. Realistic terrain visualization based on 3D virtual world technology

    Science.gov (United States)

    Huang, Fengru; Lin, Hui; Chen, Bin; Xiao, Cai

    2010-11-01

    The rapid advances in information technologies, e.g., network, graphics processing, and virtual world, have provided challenges and opportunities for new capabilities in information systems, Internet applications, and virtual geographic environments, especially geographic visualization and collaboration. In order to achieve meaningful geographic capabilities, we need to explore and understand how these technologies can be used to construct virtual geographic environments to help to engage geographic research. The generation of three-dimensional (3D) terrain plays an important part in geographical visualization, computer simulation, and virtual geographic environment applications. The paper introduces concepts and technologies of virtual worlds and virtual geographic environments, explores integration of realistic terrain and other geographic objects and phenomena of natural geographic environment based on SL/OpenSim virtual world technologies. Realistic 3D terrain visualization is a foundation of construction of a mirror world or a sand box model of the earth landscape and geographic environment. The capabilities of interaction and collaboration on geographic information are discussed as well. Further virtual geographic applications can be developed based on the foundation work of realistic terrain visualization in virtual environments.

  7. Being in a Virtual World

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Walther-Hansen, Mads; Grimshaw, Mark

    2016-01-01

    We present a theoretical framework by which virtual world sound designers may work towards the attainment of presence. Drawing on the study of cognitive metaphors and the view that sound is an emergent perception we offer an account of the environment as a salient and dynamic construct that funct......We present a theoretical framework by which virtual world sound designers may work towards the attainment of presence. Drawing on the study of cognitive metaphors and the view that sound is an emergent perception we offer an account of the environment as a salient and dynamic construct...... that functions as a synecdoche for the nonself. Separating environment from world, we discuss the role of sound in the forming of the environment and argue that it is this environment that establishes the means for presence because it is the process behind the construction of the environment that individuates...

  8. Assessing the Value of Real-life Brands in Virtual Worlds

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Mattsson, Jan; Barnes, Stuart; Hartley, Nicole

    2015-01-01

    World. A key finding is the difficulty in creating emotional brand value in Second Life which has serious implications for the sustainability of current real-life brands in Virtual Worlds. The paper rounds off with conclusions and implications for future research and practice in this very new area.......Virtual Worlds are a significant new market environment for brand-building through experiential customer service interactions. Using value theory, this paper aims to assess the experiential brand value of real-life brands that have moved to the Virtual World of Second Life. A key premise...... is that current brand offerings in Virtual Worlds do not offer consumers adequate experiential value. The results demonstrate both the validity of an axiological approach to examining brand value, and highlight significant problems in consumer perceptions of the experiential value of brands within the Virtual...

  9. Sounds of silence: How to animate virtual worlds with sound

    Science.gov (United States)

    Astheimer, Peter

    1993-01-01

    Sounds are an integral and sometimes annoying part of our daily life. Virtual worlds which imitate natural environments gain a lot of authenticity from fast, high quality visualization combined with sound effects. Sounds help to increase the degree of immersion for human dwellers in imaginary worlds significantly. The virtual reality toolkit of IGD (Institute for Computer Graphics) features a broad range of standard visual and advanced real-time audio components which interpret an object-oriented definition of the scene. The virtual reality system 'Virtual Design' realized with the toolkit enables the designer of virtual worlds to create a true audiovisual environment. Several examples on video demonstrate the usage of the audio features in Virtual Design.

  10. Distributed Virtual Reality: System Concepts for Cooperative Training and Commanding in Virtual Worlds

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Eckhard Freund

    2003-02-01

    Full Text Available The general aim of the development of virtual reality technology for automation applications at the IRF is to provide the framework for Projective Virtual Reality which allows users to "project" their actions in the virtual world into the real world primarily by means of robots but also by other means of automation. The framework is based on a new task-oriented approach which builds on the "task deduction" capabilities of a newly developed virtual reality system and a task planning component. The advantage of this new approach is that robots which work at great distances from the control station can be controlled as easily and intuitively as robots that work right next to the control station. Robot control technology now provides the user in the virtual world with a "prolonged arm" into the physical environment, thus paving the way for a new quality of userfriendly man machine interfaces for automation applications. Lately, this work has been enhanced by a new structure that allows to distribute the virtual reality application over multiple computers. With this new step, it is now possible for multiple users to work together in the same virtual room, although they may physically be thousands of miles apart. They only need an Internet or ISDN connection to share this new experience. Last but not least, the distribution technology has been further developed to not just allow users to cooperate but to be able to run the virtual world on many synchronized PCs so that a panorama projection or even a cave can be run with 10 synchronized PCs instead of high-end workstations, thus cutting down the costs for such a visualization environment drastically and allowing for a new range of applications.

  11. Pre-Service Teachers Designing Virtual World Learning Environments

    Science.gov (United States)

    Jacka, Lisa; Booth, Kate

    2012-01-01

    Integrating Information Technology Communications in the classroom has been an important part of pre-service teacher education for over a decade. The advent of virtual worlds provides the pre-service teacher with an opportunity to study teaching and learning in a highly immersive 3D computer-based environment. Virtual worlds also provide a place…

  12. "Whose second life is this?" How avatar-based racial cues shape ethno-racial minorities' perception of virtual worlds.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lee, Jong-Eun Roselyn; Park, Sung Gwan

    2011-11-01

    Research on social identity contingencies suggests that situational cues, such as a numerical representation of social identities in a given social environment, can trigger identity-associated threat for individuals whose social identity is marginalized. Given that popular virtual worlds (e.g., Second Life [SL]) are often criticized for White-avatar dominance or White bias, we examined the psychological effects of the alleged White dominance in avatar-based virtual worlds by conducting two experiments in which participants read fictitious profiles of SL resident avatars. White and non-White participants were randomly assigned to view either a set of White-dominant avatar profiles or a set of racially diverse ones. After reading the profiles, participants had an opportunity to customize avatars using the SL interface. The findings of Experiment 1 (n=59) revealed that non-White participants exposed to the White-dominant avatar profiles, when compared with those exposed to the racially diverse profiles, reported significantly lower levels of sense of belonging and intention to participate in SL. Experiment 2 (n=64) demonstrated that non-White participants exposed to the White-dominant avatar profiles gave significantly higher estimation of the White user population within SL; the data also showed that exposure to the White-dominant avatar profiles resulted in a greater sense of limitation on skin customization among non-White participants than among White participants. The present research suggests that ethno-racial minorities, when exposed to avatar-based cues that signal White dominance, may perceive the virtual world as identity threatening, thereby feeling psychologically disconnected and detached from it. Implications regarding racial/ethnic diversity in virtual worlds are discussed.

  13. Second Life: an overview of the potential of 3-D virtual worlds in medical and health education.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Boulos, Maged N Kamel; Hetherington, Lee; Wheeler, Steve

    2007-12-01

    This hybrid review-case study introduces three-dimensional (3-D) virtual worlds and their educational potential to medical/health librarians and educators. Second life (http://secondlife.com/) is perhaps the most popular virtual world platform in use today, with an emphasis on social interaction. We describe some medical and health education examples from Second Life, including Second Life Medical and Consumer Health Libraries (Healthinfo Island-funded by a grant from the US National Library of Medicine), and VNEC (Virtual Neurological Education Centre-developed at the University of Plymouth, UK), which we present as two detailed 'case studies'. The pedagogical potentials of Second Life are then discussed, as well as some issues and challenges related to the use of virtual worlds. We have also compiled an up-to-date resource page (http://healthcybermap.org/sl.htm), with additional online material and pointers to support and extend this study.

  14. A Second Chance at Health: How a 3D Virtual World Can Improve Health Self-Efficacy for Weight Loss Management Among Adults.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Behm-Morawitz, Elizabeth; Lewallen, Jennifer; Choi, Grace

    2016-02-01

    Health self-efficacy, or the beliefs in one's capabilities to perform health behaviors, is a significant factor in eliciting health behavior change, such as weight loss. Research has demonstrated that virtual embodiment has the potential to alter one's psychology and physicality, particularly in health contexts; however, little is known about the impacts embodiment in a virtual world has on health self-efficacy. The present research is a randomized controlled trial (N = 90) examining the effectiveness of virtual embodiment and play in a social virtual world (Second Life [SL]) for increasing health self-efficacy (exercise and nutrition efficacy) among overweight adults. Participants were randomly assigned to a 3D social virtual world (avatar virtual interaction experimental condition), 2D social networking site (no avatar virtual interaction control condition), or no intervention (no virtual interaction control condition). The findings of this study provide initial evidence for the use of SL to improve exercise efficacy and to support weight loss. Results also suggest that individuals who have higher self-presence with their avatar reap more benefits. Finally, quantitative findings are triangulated with qualitative data to increase confidence in the results and provide richer insight into the perceived effectiveness and limitations of SL for meeting weight loss goals. Themes resulting from the qualitative analysis indicate that participation in SL can improve motivation and efficacy to try new physical activities; however, individuals who have a dislike for video games may not be benefitted by avatar-based virtual interventions. Implications for research on the transformative potential of virtual embodiment and self-presence in general are discussed.

  15. Machinima interventions: innovative approaches to immersive virtual world curriculum integration

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Andrew John Middleton

    2008-12-01

    Full Text Available The educational value of Immersive Virtual Worlds (IVWs seems to be in their social immersive qualities and as an accessible simulation technology. In contrast to these synchronous applications this paper discusses the use of educational machinima developed in IVW virtual film sets. It also introduces the concept of media intervention, proposing that digital media works best when simply developed for deployment within a blended curriculum to inform learning activity, and where the media are specifically designed to set challenges, seed ideas, or illustrate problems. Machinima, digital films created in IVWs, or digital games offer a rich mechanism for delivering such interventions. Scenes are storyboarded, constructed, shot and edited using techniques similar to professional film production, drawing upon a cast of virtual world avatars controlled through a human–computer interface, rather than showing real-life actors. The approach enables academics or students to make films using screen capture software and desktop editing tools. In student-generated production models the learning value may be found in the production process itself. This paper discusses six case studies and several themes from research on ideas for educational machinima including: access to production; creativity in teaching and learning; media intervention methodology; production models; reusability; visualisation and simulation.

  16. Effectiveness of Collaborative Learning with 3D Virtual Worlds

    Science.gov (United States)

    Cho, Young Hoan; Lim, Kenneth Y. T.

    2017-01-01

    Virtual worlds have affordances to enhance collaborative learning in authentic contexts. Despite the potential of collaborative learning with a virtual world, few studies investigated whether it is more effective in student achievements than teacher-directed instruction. This study investigated the effectiveness of collaborative problem solving…

  17. A Virtual World as an Introduction towards Green IT Awareness

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Pascal Ravesteijn; Diana Boekman; Henk Plessius

    2013-01-01

    This paper describes a project to explore the possibilities of virtual worlds in educating Green IT. In the project a virtual world has been created with various assignments which are meant to create awareness on sustainability aspects of IT. The world (and the assignments) will be incorporated in a

  18. Playful mediation and virtual sociality

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Sihem NAJJAR

    2010-01-01

    Full Text Available As a space of sociability, virtual games, especially online role playing games, allow us to capture the interest of the playfulness in social life, but they are means by which users are able to experiment their relationship to others. The virtual games as a mediation device, constitute a "pretext" to forge friendships, develop love relationships, improve language skills, discover other cultures, etc. Based on a sociological survey of Tunisian Internet users (both sexes fans of virtual games we try to show how playful mediation is producing a multifaceted virtual sociality inherent in our contemporary societies.

  19. Social Media--A Virtual Pandora's Box: Prevalence, Possible Legal Liabilities, and Policies

    Science.gov (United States)

    Jennings, Susan Evans; Blount, Justin R.; Weatherly, M. Gail

    2014-01-01

    With the increase in the use of mobile devices in the workplace, both employer supplied and personally owned, and the major role social media has begun to play in today's world, businesses face many new challenges with their employees. Social media may be seen by some employers as a virtual Pandora's Box. Though it may seem to hold bountiful…

  20. Integrating a virtual agent into the real world

    OpenAIRE

    André, Elisabeth

    2007-01-01

    Integrating a virtual agent into the real world : the virtual anatomy assistant ritchie / K. Dorfmüller-Ulhaas ... - In: Intelligent virtual agents : 7th international conference, IVA 2007, Paris, France, September 17-19, 2007 ; proceedings / Catherine Pelachaud ... (eds.). - Berlin [u.a.] : Springer, 2007. - S. 211-224. - (Lecture notes in computer science ; 4722 : Lecture notes in artificial intelligence)

  1. Virtual Libraries and Education in Virtual Worlds: Twenty-First Century Library Services

    Science.gov (United States)

    Bell, Lori; Lindbloom, Mary-Carol; Peters, Tom; Pope, Kitty

    2008-01-01

    As the use of the Internet and time spent on the Internet by individuals grows, and the use of virtual worlds like Active Worlds and Second Life increases, the library needs to have an interactive place and role in these worlds as well as a bricks and mortar space. This article provides an overview of what some libraries are doing in these worlds,…

  2. Virtual worlds and social and educational inclusion: case study at Secondary Education Institute Cal Gravat

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Linda Castañeda Quintero

    2015-07-01

    Full Text Available This article presents a case study with the goal of becoming familiar with and understanding the incorporation of one virtual learning world –Espurnik- in a curricular diversification classroom with students in a situation of educational exclusion or academic failure. This investigation was carried out from an interpretive paradigm with a qualitative methodology grounded in the Case Studies. The data was collected using different qualitative techniques: documentary analysis, direct observation in the virtual world, semi-structured interview with the teacher, and group interview with the students. The conclusions indicate that the emphasis must not be placed on technologies, but rather on the methodological change that many of them foster, setting up the student not a consumer of information but rather a creator and producer of knowledge in a context of collaborative work, attending comprehensively to the community context of the students’ educational development.

  3. Virtual bystanders in a language lesson : Examining the effect of social evaluation, vicarious experience, cognitive consistency and praising on students' beliefs, self-efficacy and anxiety in a virtual reality environment

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Qu, C.; Ling, Y.; Heynderickx, I.; Brinkman, W.P.

    2015-01-01

    Bystanders in a real world's social setting have the ability to influence people’s beliefs and behavior. This study examines whether this effect can be recreated in a virtual environment, by exposing people to virtual bystanders in a classroom setting. Participants (n = 26) first witnessed virtual

  4. Virtual bystanders in a language lesson : examining the effect of social evaluation, vicarious experience, cognitive consistency and praising on students' beliefs, self-efficacy and anxiety in a virtual reality environment

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Qu, C.; Ling, Y.; Heynderickx, I.E.J.; Brinkman, W.P.

    2015-01-01

    Bystanders in a real world's social setting have the ability to influence people’s beliefs and behavior. This study examines whether this effect can be recreated in a virtual environment, by exposing people to virtual bystanders in a classroom setting. Participants (n = 26) first witnessed virtual

  5. Can virtual science foster real skills? A study of inquiry skills in a virtual world

    Science.gov (United States)

    Dodds, Heather E.

    Online education has grown into a part of the educational market answering the demand for learning at the learner's choice of time and place. Inquiry skills such as observing, questioning, collecting data, and devising fair experiments are an essential element of 21st-century online science coursework. Virtual immersive worlds such as Second Life are being used as new frontiers in science education. There have been few studies looking specifically at science education in virtual worlds that foster inquiry skills. This quantitative quasi-experimental nonrandomized control group pretest and posttest study explored what affect a virtual world experience had on inquiry skills as measured by the TIPS (Test of Integrated Process Skills) and TIPS II (Integrated Process Skills Test II) instruments. Participants between the ages of 18 and 65 were recruited from educator mailing lists and Second Life discussion boards and then sorted into the experimental group, which received instructions to utilize several displays in Mendelian genetics at the Genome Island location within Second Life, or the control group, which received text-based PDF documents of the same genetics course content. All participants, in the form of avatars, were experienced Second Life residents to reduce any novelty effect. This study found a greater increase in inquiry skills in the experimental group interacting using a virtual world to learn science content (0.90 points) than a control group that is presented only with online text-based content (0.87 points). Using a mixed between-within ANOVA (analysis of variance), with an alpha level of 0.05, there was no significant interaction between the control or experimental groups and inquiry skills, F (1, 58) = .783, p = .380, partial eta squared = .013, at the specified .05 alpha level suggesting no significant difference as a result of the virtual world exercise. However, there is not enough evidence to state that there was no effect because there was a

  6. What Children Should Know about Technology and the Virtual World

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zhao, Yong

    2010-01-01

    The dominant view of technology so far has been that it is a tool to help improve the teaching of traditional subjects--knowledge mostly about the local and physical world. But technology has created a new realm: the virtual world. It may not be physical or tangible, but the virtual world is indisputable and has a significant economy. If one…

  7. Walking in Place Through Virtual Worlds

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Nilsson, Niels Chr.; Serafin, Stefania; Nordahl, Rolf

    2016-01-01

    Immersive virtual reality (IVR) is seemingly on the verge of entering the homes of consumers. Enabling users to walk through virtual worlds in a limited physical space presents a challenge. With an outset in a taxonomy of virtual travel techniques, we argue that Walking-in-Place (WIP) techniques...... constitute a promising approach to virtual walking in relation to consumer IVR. Subsequently we review existing approaches to WIP locomotion and highlight the need for a more explicit focus on the perceived naturalness of WIP techniques; i.e., the degree to which WIP locomotion feels like real walking....... Finally, we summarize work we have performed in order to produce more natural WIP locomotion and present unexplored topics which need to be address if WIP techniques are to provide perceptually natural walking experiences....

  8. Virtual Worlds Turn Therapeutic for Autistic Disorders

    Science.gov (United States)

    Mangan, Katherine

    2008-01-01

    Asperger's patients have been treated by role-playing with real-life therapists. The virtual-reality town at the medical center is a new twist. The University of Texas at Dallas uses a platform from Second Life, the popular virtual world, in which patients go to an "island" customized for therapeutic purposes. The island was built by…

  9. Understanding virtual world usage : A multipurpose model and empirical testing

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Verhagen, Tibert; Feldberg, Frans; Van Den Hooff, Bart; Meents, Selmar

    2009-01-01

    This study reports an attempt to enhance our understanding of the reasons behind virtual world usage. By providing a mixture of utilitarian and hedonic value, virtual worlds represent an emerging class of multipurpose information systems (MPIS). Previous research seems to fall short in explaining

  10. Cybergogy as a framework for teaching design students in virtual worlds

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Chase, Scott Curland; Scopes, Lesley

    2012-01-01

    In recent years, 3D virtual worlds have been explored for design teaching, yet it is unclear whether a specific pedagogy is used or adapted for such activities. Here we describe the pedagogical model of Cybergogy of Learning Archetypes and Learning Domains, developed specifically for teaching in ...... immersive virtual worlds, and its application to introductory building classes in the virtual world Second Life for architectural design students and teachers as part of the ARCHI21 project.......In recent years, 3D virtual worlds have been explored for design teaching, yet it is unclear whether a specific pedagogy is used or adapted for such activities. Here we describe the pedagogical model of Cybergogy of Learning Archetypes and Learning Domains, developed specifically for teaching in 3D...

  11. Self-reflexive videogames: observations and corollaries on virtual worlds as philosophical artifacts

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Stefano Gualeni

    2016-11-01

    Full Text Available Self-reflexive videogames are videogames designed to materialize critical and/or satirical perspectives on the ways in which videogames themselves are designed, played, sold, manipulated, experienced, and understood as social objects. This essay focuses on the use of virtual worlds as mediators, and in particular on the use of videogames to guide and encourage reflections on technical, interactive, and thematic conventions in videogame design and development.

  12. Introduction: Philosophers of the World Unite! Theorising Digital Labour and Virtual Work—Definitions, Dimensions, and Forms

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Marisol Sandoval

    2014-09-01

    Full Text Available In 1845, Karl Marx (1845, 571 formulated the 11th Feuerbach Thesis: “The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it.” Today, interpreting the world has become an important form of labour that is expressed on and with the help of digital media. In this context it has become common to talk about digital labour and virtual work. Yet the changes that digital, social, and mobile media bring about in the world of labour and work have thus far only been little theoretically interpreted. In order to change the information society for the better, we first have to interpret digital labour with the help of critical theories. Social theorists of the world from different fields, backgrounds, interdisciplines, transdisciplines, and disciplines have to unite for this collective philosophical task. This special issue of tripleC: Communication, Capitalism & Critique aims to contribute to building a theoretical framework for the critical analysis of digital labour, virtual work, and related concepts that can initiate further debates, inform empirical studies, and inspire social struggles connected to work and labour in and beyond digital capitalism. The papers collected in this special issue (a provide systematic definitions of digital labour, (b analyse its specific dimension, and (c discuss different forms of digital labour.

  13. Virtual World Currency Value Fluctuation Prediction System Based on User Sentiment Analysis.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Young Bin Kim

    Full Text Available In this paper, we present a method for predicting the value of virtual currencies used in virtual gaming environments that support multiple users, such as massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs. Predicting virtual currency values in a virtual gaming environment has rarely been explored; it is difficult to apply real-world methods for predicting fluctuating currency values or shares to the virtual gaming world on account of differences in domains between the two worlds. To address this issue, we herein predict virtual currency value fluctuations by collecting user opinion data from a virtual community and analyzing user sentiments or emotions from the opinion data. The proposed method is straightforward and applicable to predicting virtual currencies as well as to gaming environments, including MMORPGs. We test the proposed method using large-scale MMORPGs and demonstrate that virtual currencies can be effectively and efficiently predicted with it.

  14. Virtual World Currency Value Fluctuation Prediction System Based on User Sentiment Analysis

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kim, Young Bin; Lee, Sang Hyeok; Kang, Shin Jin; Choi, Myung Jin; Lee, Jung; Kim, Chang Hun

    2015-01-01

    In this paper, we present a method for predicting the value of virtual currencies used in virtual gaming environments that support multiple users, such as massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs). Predicting virtual currency values in a virtual gaming environment has rarely been explored; it is difficult to apply real-world methods for predicting fluctuating currency values or shares to the virtual gaming world on account of differences in domains between the two worlds. To address this issue, we herein predict virtual currency value fluctuations by collecting user opinion data from a virtual community and analyzing user sentiments or emotions from the opinion data. The proposed method is straightforward and applicable to predicting virtual currencies as well as to gaming environments, including MMORPGs. We test the proposed method using large-scale MMORPGs and demonstrate that virtual currencies can be effectively and efficiently predicted with it. PMID:26241496

  15. Extending the reach of health care for obesity and diabetes using virtual worlds.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Morie, Jacquelyn Ford; Chance, Eric

    2011-03-01

    Today's epidemic of obesity and diabetes poses challenges to health care similar to those facing soldiers who return with postdeployment mental health issues. These include geographic barriers, social stigma, and the need for behavioral change. Researchers at University of Southern California's Institute for Creative Technologies are adapting their extensive experience in technological solutions for training to techniques that can aid veterans in need. These techniques show promise for concerns in the growing crisis of "diabesity." Virtual reality (VR) has already demonstrated itself as an impactful treatment method for several behavioral and mental health domains. Virtual worlds, the successor technology of original VR, inherited many of its predecessor's strengths but also presents the new affordances of accessibility, social connectivity, and avatar usage, which pave the way toward future treatment options on a broader scale. © 2011 Diabetes Technology Society.

  16. A Systematic, Inquiry-Based 7-Step Virtual Worlds Teacher Training

    Science.gov (United States)

    Nussli, Natalie Christina; Oh, Kevin

    2015-01-01

    Eighteen special education teachers explored one prominent example of three-dimensional virtual worlds, namely Second Life. This study aimed to (a) determine their perception of the effectiveness of a systematic 7-Step Virtual Worlds Teacher Training workshop in terms of enabling them to make informed decisions about the usability of virtual…

  17. Immersive Learning Environment Using 3D Virtual Worlds and Integrated Remote Experimentation

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Roderval Marcelino

    2013-01-01

    Full Text Available This project seeks to demonstrate the use of remote experimentation and 3D virtual environments applied to the teaching-learning in the areas of exact sciences-physics. In proposing the combination of remote experimentation and 3D virtual worlds in teaching-learning process, we intend to achieve greater geographic coverage, contributing to the construction of new methodologies of teaching support, speed of access and foremost motivation for students to continue in scientific study of the technology areas. The proposed architecture is based on a model implemented fully featured open source and open hardware. The virtual world was built in OpenSim software and integrated it a remote physics experiment called "electrical panel". Accessing the virtual world the user has total control of the experiment within the 3D virtual world.

  18. Virtual patients in a virtual world: Training paramedic students for practice.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Conradi, Emily; Kavia, Sheetal; Burden, David; Rice, Alan; Woodham, Luke; Beaumont, Chris; Savin-Baden, Maggi; Poulton, Terry

    2009-08-01

    Collaborative learning through case-based or problem-based learning (PBL) scenarios is an excellent way for students to acquire knowledge and develop decision-making skills. However, the process is threatened by the movement towards more self-directed learning and the migration of students from campus-based to workplace-based learning. Paper-based PBL cases can only proceed in a single direction which can prevent learners from exploring the impact of their decisions. The PREVIEW project, outlined in this article, trialled a replacement to traditional paper PBL with virtual patients (VPs) delivered through a virtual world platform. The idea was that an immersive 3D environment could provide (a) greater realism (b) active decision-making and (c) a suitable environment for collaboration amongst work-based learners meeting remotely. Five VP scenarios were designed for learners on a Paramedic Foundation Degree within the virtual world second life (SL). A player using the MedBiquitous VP international standard allowed cases to be played both within SL and on the web. Three testing days were run to evaluate the scenarios with paramedic students and tutors. Students unfamiliar with the SL environment worked through five PBL scenarios in small groups, shadowed by 'in-world' facilitators. Feedback indicated that the SL environment engages students effectively in learning, despite some technology barriers. Students believed SL could provide a more authentic learner environment than classroom-based PBL.

  19. Visualization Analytics for Second Language Vocabulary Learning in Virtual Worlds

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hsiao, Indy Y. T.; Lan, Yu-Ju; Kao, Chia-Ling; Li, Ping

    2017-01-01

    Language learning occurring in authentic contexts has been shown to be more effective. Virtual worlds provide simulated contexts that have the necessary elements of authentic contexts for language learning, and as a result, many studies have adopted virtual worlds as a useful platform for language learning. However, few studies so far have…

  20. Educating Avatars: On Virtual Worlds and Pedagogical Intent

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wang, Tsung Juang

    2011-01-01

    Virtual world technology is now being incorporated into various higher education programs, often with enthusiastic claims about the improvement of students' abilities to experience learning problems and tasks in computer-mediated virtual reality through the use of computer-generated personal agents or avatars. The interactivity of the avatars with…

  1. Intelligent Open Data 3D Maps in a Collaborative Virtual World

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Juho-Pekka Virtanen

    2015-05-01

    Full Text Available Three-dimensional (3D maps have many potential applications, such as navigation and urban planning. In this article, we present the use of a 3D virtual world platform Meshmoon to create intelligent open data 3D maps. A processing method is developed to enable the generation of 3D virtual environments from the open data of the National Land Survey of Finland. The article combines the elements needed in contemporary smart city concepts, such as the connection between attribute information and 3D objects, and the creation of collaborative virtual worlds from open data. By using our 3D virtual world platform, it is possible to create up-to-date, collaborative 3D virtual models, which are automatically updated on all viewers. In the scenes, all users are able to interact with the model, and with each other. With the developed processing methods, the creation of virtual world scenes was partially automated for collaboration activities.

  2. Social Experience in "World of Warcraft": Technological and Ideological Mediations

    Science.gov (United States)

    Crenshaw, Nicole Kathryn

    2017-01-01

    As society shifts towards spending more time online for business and leisure, examining human behavior in virtual environments is crucial. To better understand the role that games play in our society, I analyze social experience in World of Warcraft (WoW), one of the longest running massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMO). Since its…

  3. UbiWorld: An environment integrating virtual reality, supercomputing, and design

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Disz, T.; Papka, M.E.; Stevens, R. [Argonne National Lab., IL (United States). Mathematics and Computer Science Div.

    1997-07-01

    UbiWorld is a concept being developed by the Futures Laboratory group at Argonne National Laboratory that ties together the notion of ubiquitous computing (Ubicomp) with that of using virtual reality for rapid prototyping. The goal is to develop an environment where one can explore Ubicomp-type concepts without having to build real Ubicomp hardware. The basic notion is to extend object models in a virtual world by using distributed wide area heterogeneous computing technology to provide complex networking and processing capabilities to virtual reality objects.

  4. Virtual Worlds: A New Opportunity for People with Lifelong Disability?

    Science.gov (United States)

    Stendal, Karen; Balandin, Susan; Molka-Danielsen, Judith

    2011-01-01

    Virtual worlds, such as Second Life[R], are the latest star in the online communication sky. Created by Linden Lab, Second Life is a three-dimensional environment that provides a context for avatars to communicate and socialise with other avatars in a variety of settings (Bell, 2009). Virtual worlds have been used to train people with intellectual…

  5. Virtual Sustainability

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    William Sims Bainbridge

    2010-09-01

    Full Text Available In four ways, massively multiplayer online role-playing games may serve as tools for advancing sustainability goals, and as laboratories for developing alternatives to current social arrangements that have implications for the natural environment. First, by moving conspicuous consumption and other usually costly status competitions into virtual environments, these virtual worlds might reduce the need for physical resources. Second, they provide training that could prepare individuals to be teleworkers, and develop or demonstrate methods for using information technology to replace much transportation technology, notably in commuting. Third, virtual worlds and online games build international cooperation, even blending national cultures, thereby inching us toward not only the world consciousness needed for international agreements about the environment, but also toward non-spatial government that cuts across archaic nationalisms. Finally, realizing the potential social benefits of this new technology may urge us to reconsider a number of traditional societal institutions.

  6. The Role of Semantics in Next-Generation Online Virtual World-Based Retail Store

    Science.gov (United States)

    Sharma, Geetika; Anantaram, C.; Ghosh, Hiranmay

    Online virtual environments are increasingly becoming popular for entrepreneurship. While interactions are primarily between avatars, some interactions could occur through intelligent chatbots. Such interactions require connecting to backend business applications to obtain information, carry out real-world transactions etc. In this paper, we focus on integrating business application systems with virtual worlds. We discuss the probable features of a next-generation online virtual world-based retail store and the technologies involved in realizing the features of such a store. In particular, we examine the role of semantics in integrating popular virtual worlds with business applications to provide natural language based interactions.

  7. Using a virtual world for robot planning

    Science.gov (United States)

    Benjamin, D. Paul; Monaco, John V.; Lin, Yixia; Funk, Christopher; Lyons, Damian

    2012-06-01

    We are building a robot cognitive architecture that constructs a real-time virtual copy of itself and its environment, including people, and uses the model to process perceptual information and to plan its movements. This paper describes the structure of this architecture. The software components of this architecture include PhysX for the virtual world, OpenCV and the Point Cloud Library for visual processing, and the Soar cognitive architecture that controls the perceptual processing and task planning. The RS (Robot Schemas) language is implemented in Soar, providing the ability to reason about concurrency and time. This Soar/RS component controls visual processing, deciding which objects and dynamics to render into PhysX, and the degree of detail required for the task. As the robot runs, its virtual model diverges from physical reality, and errors grow. The Match-Mediated Difference component monitors these errors by comparing the visual data with corresponding data from virtual cameras, and notifies Soar/RS of significant differences, e.g. a new object that appears, or an object that changes direction unexpectedly. Soar/RS can then run PhysX much faster than real-time and search among possible future world paths to plan the robot's actions. We report experimental results in indoor environments.

  8. Establishing a Virtual Community of Practice in Simulation: The Value of Social Media.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Thoma, Brent; Brazil, Victoria; Spurr, Jesse; Palaganas, Janice; Eppich, Walter; Grant, Vincent; Cheng, Adam

    2018-04-01

    Professional development opportunities are not readily accessible for most simulation educators, who may only connect with simulation experts at periodic and costly conferences. Virtual communities of practice consist of individuals with a shared passion who communicate via virtual media to advance their own learning and that of others. A nascent virtual community of practice is developing online for healthcare simulation on social media platforms. Simulation educators should consider engaging on these platforms for their own benefit and to help develop healthcare simulation educators around the world. Herein, we describe this developing virtual community of practice and offer guidance to assist educators to engage, learn, and contribute to the growth of the community.

  9. A microbased shared virtual world prototype

    Science.gov (United States)

    Pitts, Gerald; Robinson, Mark; Strange, Steve

    1993-01-01

    Virtual reality (VR) allows sensory immersion and interaction with a computer-generated environment. The user adopts a physical interface with the computer, through Input/Output devices such as a head-mounted display, data glove, mouse, keyboard, or monitor, to experience an alternate universe. What this means is that the computer generates an environment which, in its ultimate extension, becomes indistinguishable from the real world. 'Imagine a wraparound television with three-dimensional programs, including three-dimensional sound, and solid objects that you can pick up and manipulate, even feel with your fingers and hands.... 'Imagine that you are the creator as well as the consumer of your artificial experience, with the power to use a gesture or word to remold the world you see and hear and feel. That part is not fiction... three-dimensional computer graphics, input/output devices, computer models that constitute a VR system make it possible, today, to immerse yourself in an artificial world and to reach in and reshape it.' Our research's goal was to propose a feasibility experiment in the construction of a networked virtual reality system, making use of current personal computer (PC) technology. The prototype was built using Borland C compiler, running on an IBM 486 33 MHz and a 386 33 MHz. Each game currently is represented as an IPX client on a non-dedicated Novell server. We initially posed the two questions: (1) Is there a need for networked virtual reality? (2) In what ways can the technology be made available to the most people possible?

  10. Exploring Non-Traditional Learning Methods in Virtual and Real-World Environments

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lukman, Rebeka; Krajnc, Majda

    2012-01-01

    This paper identifies the commonalities and differences within non-traditional learning methods regarding virtual and real-world environments. The non-traditional learning methods in real-world have been introduced within the following courses: Process Balances, Process Calculation, and Process Synthesis, and within the virtual environment through…

  11. Halting HIV/AIDS with avatars and havatars: a virtual world approach to modelling epidemics

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Smith? Robert J

    2009-11-01

    Full Text Available Abstract Background A major deficit of all approaches to epidemic modelling to date has been the need to approximate or guess at human behaviour in disease-transmission-related contexts. Avatars are generally human-like figures in virtual computer worlds controlled by human individuals. Methods We introduce the concept of a "havatar", which is a (human, avatar pairing. Evidence is mounting that this pairing behaves in virtual contexts much like the human in the pairing might behave in analogous real-world contexts. Results We propose that studies of havatars, in a virtual world, may give a realistic approximation of human behaviour in real-world contexts. If the virtual world approximates the real world in relevant details (geography, transportation, etc., virtual epidemics in that world could accurately simulate real-world epidemics. Havatar modelling of epidemics therefore offers a complementary tool for tackling how best to halt epidemics, including perhaps HIV/AIDS, since sexual behaviour is a significant component of some virtual worlds, such as Second Life. Conclusion Havatars place the control parameters of an epidemic in the hands of each individual. By providing tools that everyone can understand and use, we could democratise epidemiology.

  12. Virtual Reality Design: How Head-Mounted Displays Change Design Paradigms of Virtual Reality Worlds

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Christian Stein

    2016-09-01

    Full Text Available With the upcoming generation of virtual reality HMDs, new virtual worlds, scenarios, and games are created especially for them. These are no longer bound to a remote screen or a relatively static user, but to an HMD as a more immersive device. This article discusses requirements for virtual scenarios implemented in new-generation HMDs to achieve a comfortable user experience. Furthermore, the effects of positional tracking are introduced and the relation between the user’s virtual and physical body is analyzed. The observations made are exemplified by existing software prototypes. They indicate how the term “virtual reality,” with all its loaded connotations, may be reconceptualized to express the peculiarities of HMDs in the context of gaming, entertainment, and virtual experiences.

  13. Augmenting a Virtual World Game in a Physical Environment

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Offermans, S.A.M.; Hu, J.

    2013-01-01

    Computer games and virtual worlds offer unique possibilities for learning and personal development. Physical world play on the other hand offers its own unique opportunities. To combine these opportunities, we have developed the Augmented Home, a game which combines the qualities of both worlds and

  14. Assessing 3D Virtual World Disaster Training Through Adult Learning Theory

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Lee Taylor-Nelms

    2014-10-01

    Full Text Available As role-play, virtual reality, and simulated environments gain popularity through virtual worlds such as Second Life, the importance of identifying best practices for education and emergency management training becomes necessary. Using a formal needs assessment approach, we examined the extent to which 3D virtual tornado simulation trainings follow the principles of adult learning theory employed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency's (FEMA National Training and Education Division. Through a three-fold methodology of observation, interviews, and reflection on action, 3D virtual world tornado trainings were analyzed for congruence to adult learning theory.

  15. Using virtual worlds as collaborative environments for innovation and design

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Ehsani, Ehsan; Chase, Scott Curland

    2009-01-01

    In this paper we discuss observations and lessons learned in conducting architectural design projects in virtual worlds. By integrating a community of users in virtual worlds into a collaborative architectural design process, organisations can tap the community's creativity and intelligence throu....... Here we propose four modes of collaboration, based on the choices for degree of openness and governance structure, which are illustrated by four case studies....

  16. Sense of presence and anxiety during virtual social interactions between a human and virtual humans.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Morina, Nexhmedin; Brinkman, Willem-Paul; Hartanto, Dwi; Emmelkamp, Paul M G

    2014-01-01

    Virtual reality exposure therapy (VRET) has been shown to be effective in treatment of anxiety disorders. Yet, there is lack of research on the extent to which interaction between the individual and virtual humans can be successfully implanted to increase levels of anxiety for therapeutic purposes. This proof-of-concept pilot study aimed at examining levels of the sense of presence and anxiety during exposure to virtual environments involving social interaction with virtual humans and using different virtual reality displays. A non-clinical sample of 38 participants was randomly assigned to either a head-mounted display (HMD) with motion tracker and sterescopic view condition or a one-screen projection-based virtual reality display condition. Participants in both conditions engaged in free speech dialogues with virtual humans controlled by research assistants. It was hypothesized that exposure to virtual social interactions will elicit moderate levels of sense of presence and anxiety in both groups. Further it was expected that participants in the HMD condition will report higher scores of sense of presence and anxiety than participants in the one-screen projection-based display condition. Results revealed that in both conditions virtual social interactions were associated with moderate levels of sense of presence and anxiety. Additionally, participants in the HMD condition reported significantly higher levels of presence than those in the one-screen projection-based display condition (p = .001). However, contrary to the expectations neither the average level of anxiety nor the highest level of anxiety during exposure to social virtual environments differed between the groups (p = .97 and p = .75, respectively). The findings suggest that virtual social interactions can be successfully applied in VRET to enhance sense of presence and anxiety. Furthermore, our results indicate that one-screen projection-based displays can successfully activate levels of anxiety in

  17. Sense of presence and anxiety during virtual social interactions between a human and virtual humans

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Nexhmedin Morina

    2014-04-01

    Full Text Available Virtual reality exposure therapy (VRET has been shown to be effective in treatment of anxiety disorders. Yet, there is lack of research on the extent to which interaction between the individual and virtual humans can be successfully implanted to increase levels of anxiety for therapeutic purposes. This proof-of-concept pilot study aimed at examining levels of the sense of presence and anxiety during exposure to virtual environments involving social interaction with virtual humans and using different virtual reality displays. A non-clinical sample of 38 participants was randomly assigned to either a head-mounted display (HMD with motion tracker and sterescopic view condition or a one-screen projection-based virtual reality display condition. Participants in both conditions engaged in free speech dialogues with virtual humans controlled by research assistants. It was hypothesized that exposure to virtual social interactions will elicit moderate levels of sense of presence and anxiety in both groups. Further it was expected that participants in the HMD condition will report higher scores of sense of presence and anxiety than participants in the one-screen projection-based display condition. Results revealed that in both conditions virtual social interactions were associated with moderate levels of sense of presence and anxiety. Additionally, participants in the HMD condition reported significantly higher levels of presence than those in the one-screen projection-based display condition (p = .001. However, contrary to the expectations neither the average level of anxiety nor the highest level of anxiety during exposure to social virtual environments differed between the groups (p = .97 and p = .75, respectively. The findings suggest that virtual social interactions can be successfully applied in VRET to enhance sense of presence and anxiety. Furthermore, our results indicate that one-screen projection-based displays can successfully activate levels

  18. Virtual Worlds, Simulations, and Games for Education: A Unifying View

    Science.gov (United States)

    Aldrich, Clark

    2009-01-01

    While there is some overlap in the uses and structures of virtual worlds, games, and simulations and the three often look similar, their differences are profound. Clark Aldrich presents a taxonomy of virtual environments that recognizes both the distinctions and the similarities among virtual environments for learning. All three, he suggests, are…

  19. Feasibility Pilot Study: Training Soft Skills in Virtual Worlds.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Abshier, Patricia

    2012-04-01

    In a world where funding is limited, training for healthcare professionals is turning more and more to distance learning in an effort to maintain a knowledgeable and skilled work force. In 2010, Cicatelli Associates, Inc. began exploring the feasibility of using games and virtual worlds as an alternative means to teach skills-training in a distance-learning environment. The pilot study was conducted with six individuals familiar with general counseling and communication skills used by the healthcare industry to promote behavior change. Participants reported that the venue, although challenging at first, showed great potential for use with healthcare providers, as it allowed for more interaction and activities than traditional Webinars. However, there are significant limitations that must be overcome in order for this healthcare training modality to be utilized on a large scale. These limitations included a lack of microgestures and issues regarding the technology being used. In spite of the limitations, however, the potential use of virtual worlds for the training of healthcare providers exists and should be researched further. This article discusses the need and intended benefits of virtual world training as well as the results and conclusions of the pilot study.

  20. Rapid prototyping 3D virtual world interfaces within a virtual factory environment

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kosta, Charles Paul; Krolak, Patrick D.

    1993-01-01

    On-going work into user requirements analysis using CLIPS (NASA/JSC) expert systems as an intelligent event simulator has led to research into three-dimensional (3D) interfaces. Previous work involved CLIPS and two-dimensional (2D) models. Integral to this work was the development of the University of Massachusetts Lowell parallel version of CLIPS, called PCLIPS. This allowed us to create both a Software Bus and a group problem-solving environment for expert systems development. By shifting the PCLIPS paradigm to use the VEOS messaging protocol we have merged VEOS (HlTL/Seattle) and CLIPS into a distributed virtual worlds prototyping environment (VCLIPS). VCLIPS uses the VEOS protocol layer to allow multiple experts to cooperate on a single problem. We have begun to look at the control of a virtual factory. In the virtual factory there are actors and objects as found in our Lincoln Logs Factory of the Future project. In this artificial reality architecture there are three VCLIPS entities in action. One entity is responsible for display and user events in the 3D virtual world. Another is responsible for either simulating the virtual factory or communicating with the real factory. The third is a user interface expert. The interface expert maps user input levels, within the current prototype, to control information for the factory. The interface to the virtual factory is based on a camera paradigm. The graphics subsystem generates camera views of the factory on standard X-Window displays. The camera allows for view control and object control. Control or the factory is accomplished by the user reaching into the camera views to perform object interactions. All communication between the separate CLIPS expert systems is done through VEOS.

  1. Evaluating the Pedagogical Impact of a Virtual World Using Concept Mapping

    Science.gov (United States)

    MacKinnon, Gregory; Saklofske, Jon

    2011-01-01

    A virtual world was created in an effort to supplement the study of the novel "The Natural Daughter". The educational impact of the virtual world experience on college students of English Literature was assessed using concept mapping as a measure of conceptual change. While conceptual change was evident, the origin of the growth was…

  2. Corporate Learning in a Virtual World

    Science.gov (United States)

    Cole, Anne; Berge, Zane L.

    2009-01-01

    Corporate training professionals led the explosion of e-learning solutions in the 1990s. Yet in 2008, as new generations of technology-savvy, computer games-oriented employees are entering the workforce, corporate training departments are far behind universities in exploring the use of virtual worlds like Second Life or Protosphere as platforms…

  3. Spontane strategier i innovationsnetværk: materialitetens betydning for stabiliseringen af virtuelle verdner som professionelt kommunikationsmedie [Spontaneous strategies in innovation networks: The importance of materiality in stabilising virtual worlds

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Emil Husted

    2012-09-01

    Full Text Available Much research has dealt with how social and organisational processes change when they take place in virtual spaces. This article considers innovation processes in which actors try to establish virtual worlds as platforms for professional communication. However, instead of focusing on internal communication processes in virtual worlds, the article seeks to question the dichotomy between physical and virtual worlds and to explore the importance of materiality in organising the virtual. Adopting a perspective inspired by actor-network theory, the article argues that physical places and objects do not only serve as context for innovation processes, but on the contrary are incorporated as strategic resources that actively help create the virtual worlds. The article is based on an empirical analysis of five Danish companies, and shows how companies make use of physical places and objects as strategic resources in the innovation process. Thus the article contributes to the literature on innovation in new media such as virtual worlds.

  4. Integrating Virtual Worlds with Tangible User Interfaces for Teaching Mathematics: A Pilot Study.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Guerrero, Graciela; Ayala, Andrés; Mateu, Juan; Casades, Laura; Alamán, Xavier

    2016-10-25

    This article presents a pilot study of the use of two new tangible interfaces and virtual worlds for teaching geometry in a secondary school. The first tangible device allows the user to control a virtual object in six degrees of freedom. The second tangible device is used to modify virtual objects, changing attributes such as position, size, rotation and color. A pilot study on using these devices was carried out at the "Florida Secundaria" high school. A virtual world was built where students used the tangible interfaces to manipulate geometrical figures in order to learn different geometrical concepts. The pilot experiment results suggest that the use of tangible interfaces and virtual worlds allowed a more meaningful learning (concepts learnt were more durable).

  5. Integrating Virtual Worlds with Tangible User Interfaces for Teaching Mathematics: A Pilot Study

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Graciela Guerrero

    2016-10-01

    Full Text Available This article presents a pilot study of the use of two new tangible interfaces and virtual worlds for teaching geometry in a secondary school. The first tangible device allows the user to control a virtual object in six degrees of freedom. The second tangible device is used to modify virtual objects, changing attributes such as position, size, rotation and color. A pilot study on using these devices was carried out at the “Florida Secundaria” high school. A virtual world was built where students used the tangible interfaces to manipulate geometrical figures in order to learn different geometrical concepts. The pilot experiment results suggest that the use of tangible interfaces and virtual worlds allowed a more meaningful learning (concepts learnt were more durable.

  6. The role of E-mentorship in a virtual world for youth transplant recipients.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Cantrell, Kathryn; Fischer, Amy; Bouzaher, Alisha; Bers, Marina

    2010-01-01

    Because of geographic distances, many youth transplant recipients do not have the opportunity to meet and form relationships with peers who have undergone similar experiences. This article explores the role of E-mentorship in virtual environments. Most specifically, by analyzing data from a study conducted with the Zora virtual world with pediatric transplant recipients, suggestions and recommendations are given for conceiving the role of virtual mentors and allocating the needed resources. Zora is a graphical virtual world designed to create a community that offers psychoeducational support and the possibility of participating in virtual activities following a curriculum explicitly designed to address issues of school transition and medical adherence. Activities are designed to foster relationships, teach technological skills, and facilitate the formation of a support network of peers and mentors.This article addresses the research question, "What makes a successful E-mentorship model in virtual worlds for children with serious illnesses?" by looking at E-mentoring patterns such as time spent online, chat analysis, initiation of conversation, initiation of activities, and out-of-world contact.

  7. Construction of Intelligent Virtual Worlds Using a Grammatical Framework

    OpenAIRE

    López García, Gabriel; Gallego Sánchez, Antonio Javier; Molina-Carmona, Rafael; Compañ, Patricia

    2014-01-01

    The potential of integrating multiagent systems and virtual environments has not been exploited to its whole extent. This paper proposes a model based on grammars, called Minerva, to construct complex virtual environments that integrate the features of agents. A virtual world is described as a set of dynamic and static elements. The static part is represented by a sequence of primitives and transformations and the dynamic elements by a series of agents. Agent activation and communication is a...

  8. REDES SOCIALES VIRTUALES Y LA BIOÉTICA VIRTUAL SOCIAL NETWORKS AND BIOETHICS

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Jorge Arturo Pérez Pérez

    2011-06-01

    Full Text Available RESUMEN:La investigación tiende a indagar por las condiciones psicológicas (obsesivas, socio – familiares, fisiológicas y emocionales de los estudiantes de la Universidad de San Buenaventura –Medellín de mes de agosto de 2010, que tienden a destinar parte de su tiempo a las Redes Sociales Virtuales y hacer una reflexión desde la Bioética frente al tema.Abstract:This piece of research tends to inquire into the (obsessive psychological, socio-family, physiological, and emotional conditions of the students at Saint Bonaventure University, Medellin Branch, back in the month of August 2010, who have the tendency to spend their free time in the Virtual Social Networks and then make an analysis of this issue, from the Bioethical viewpoint.

  9. 3D Interactions between Virtual Worlds and Real Life in an E-Learning Community

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Ulrike Lucke

    2011-01-01

    Full Text Available Virtual worlds became an appealing and fascinating component of today's internet. In particular, the number of educational providers that see a potential for E-Learning in such new platforms increases. Unfortunately, most of the environments and processes implemented up to now do not exceed a virtual modelling of real-world scenarios. In particular, this paper shows that Second Life can be more than just another learning platform. A flexible and bidirectional link between the reality and the virtual world enables synchronous and seamless interaction between users and devices across both worlds. The primary advantages of this interconnection are a spatial extension of face-to-face and online learning scenarios and a closer relationship between virtual learners and the real world.

  10. Exploring key determinants of virtual worlds business success based on users' experience and perception

    OpenAIRE

    Xu , Xiaobo (Bob)

    2010-01-01

    Given the growth and popularity of virtual worlds, companies have a strong interest in presenting themselves successfully in virtual worlds. We designed an experimental study to identify the key determinants of virtual worlds business success based on users’ experience and perception. The preliminary results indicate that Starbucks, McDonalds, and Paris are the 3 most favorite sites. Furthermore, 5 key determinants (entertainment, functionality, interactivity, reality, and s...

  11. World wide web and virtual reality in developing and using environmental models

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Guariso, G.

    2001-01-01

    The application of World wide web as an active component of environmental decision support system is still largely unexplored. Environmental problems are distributed in nature, both from the physical and from the social point of view; the Web is thus an ideal tool to share concepts and decisions among multiple interested parties. Also Virtual Reality (VR) that has not find, up to know, a large application in the development and teaching of environmental models. The paper shows some recent applications that highlight the potential of these tools [it

  12. Understanding users’ motivations to engage in virtual worlds: A multipurpose model and empirical testing

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Verhagen, T.; Feldberg, J.F.M.; van den Hooff, B.J.; Meents, S.; Merikivi, J.

    2012-01-01

    Despite the growth and commercial potential of virtual worlds, relatively little is known about what drives users' motivations to engage in virtual worlds. This paper proposes and empirically tests a conceptual model aimed at filling this research gap. Given the multipurpose nature of virtual words

  13. Situated learning in virtual simulations: Researching the authentic dimension in virtual worlds

    OpenAIRE

    Falconer, L.

    2013-01-01

    This paper describes and discusses a case study of postgraduate students undertaking accident investigation and risk assessment exercises in an online virtual world as part of their course curriculum. These exercises were constructed to overcome the ethical and practical barriers inherent in real-world exercises. In particular this paper focusses upon the potential of such exercises to facilitate the authentic dimension of situated learning and identifies some of the factors that affect the s...

  14. Crossing the Virtual World Barrier with OpenAvatar

    Science.gov (United States)

    Joy, Bruce; Kavle, Lori; Tan, Ian

    2012-01-01

    There are multiple standards and formats for 3D models in virtual environments. The problem is that there is no open source platform for generating models out of discrete parts; this results in the process of having to "reinvent the wheel" when new games, virtual worlds and simulations want to enable their users to create their own avatars or easily customize in-world objects. OpenAvatar is designed to provide a framework to allow artists and programmers to create reusable assets which can be used by end users to generate vast numbers of complete models that are unique and functional. OpenAvatar serves as a framework which facilitates the modularization of 3D models allowing parts to be interchanged within a set of logical constraints.

  15. Ghost Whisperer's Ghost in the Machine: An example of pop cultural representation of virtual worlds

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Reinhard, CarrieLynn D.

    2009-01-01

    Analysis of an episode of the CBS series "Ghost Whisperer" for how it depicts a) what is a virtual world and b) the tensions that are involved in discussing the uses and effects of a virtual world.  Discussion focuses on the overriding negative reception of virtual worlds in popular culture due...

  16. The Therapeutic Stage Encounters the Virtual World

    Science.gov (United States)

    Imholz, Susan

    2008-01-01

    Clinical research in expressive therapies, psychodrama in particular, offer education researchers and software designers descriptive analyses and evidence-based impact studies on attitudinal shifts and enhanced problem solving abilities for patients and students who participate in psychodrama role-play. Gaming environments and virtual worlds that…

  17. Managing in the Virtual World: How Second Life is Rewriting the Rules of "Real Life" Business

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wyld, David C.

    In this paper, we will explore the growth of virtual worlds - one of the most exciting and fast-growing concepts in the Web 2.0 era. We will see that while there has been significant growth across all demographic groups, online gaming in MMOGs (Massively Multiplayer Online Games) are finding particular appeal in today's youth - the so-called "digital native" generation. We then overview the today's virtual world marketplace, both in the youth and adult-oriented markets. Second Life is emerging as the most important virtual world today, due to the intense interest amongst both large organizations and individual entrepreneurs to conduct real business in the virtual environment. Due to its prominence today and its forecasted growth over the next decade, we take a look at the unscripted world of Second Life, examining the corporate presence in-world, as well as the economic, technical, legal, ethical and security issues involved for companies doing business in the virtual world. In conclusion, we present an analysis of where we stand in terms of virtual world development today and a projection of where we will be heading in the near future. Finally, we present advice to management practitioners and academicians on how to learn about virtual worlds and explore the world of opportunities in them.

  18. PENGUJIAN COGNITIVE ABSORPTION TERHADAP KEPERCAYAAN-KEPERCAYAAN PENGGUNA UNTUK BERBAGI INFORMASI DI LINGKUNGAN VIRTUAL WORLDS

    OpenAIRE

    Supardi Supardi

    2014-01-01

    Virtual Worlds (VWs) are media-rich  cognitively  engaging technologies that geographically dispersed organizations  can use  as a cost effective workplace collaboration tool. Using  a sharing  information in virtual worlds environment, the aims of this study is to investigate cognitive absorption within individual beliefs about the technology of virtual worlds use. Cognitive absorption, theorized as being exhibited through the five dimensions of temporal dissociation, focused immersion, heig...

  19. Interreality in practice: bridging virtual and real worlds in the treatment of posttraumatic stress disorders.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Riva, Giuseppe; Raspelli, Simona; Algeri, Davide; Pallavicini, Federica; Gorini, Alessandra; Wiederhold, Brenda K; Gaggioli, Andrea

    2010-02-01

    The use of new technologies, particularly virtual reality, is not new in the treatment of posttraumatic stress disorders (PTSD): VR is used to facilitate the activation of the traumatic event during exposure therapy. However, during the therapy, VR is a new and distinct realm, separate from the emotions and behaviors experienced by the patient in the real world: the behavior of the patient in VR has no direct effects on the real-life experience; the emotions and problems experienced by the patient in the real world are not directly addressed in the VR exposure. In this article, we suggest that the use of a new technological paradigm, Interreality, may improve the clinical outcome of PTSD. The main feature of Interreality is a twofold link between the virtual and real worlds: (a) behavior in the physical world influences the experience in the virtual one; (b) behavior in the virtual world influences the experience in the real one. This is achieved through 3D shared virtual worlds; biosensors and activity sensors (from the real to the virtual world); and personal digital assistants and/or mobile phones (from the virtual world to the real one). We describe different technologies that are involved in the Interreality vision and its clinical rationale. To illustrate the concept of Interreality in practice, a clinical scenario is also presented and discussed: Rosa, a 55-year-old nurse, involved in a major car accident.

  20. The perception of spatial layout in real and virtual worlds.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Arthur, E J; Hancock, P A; Chrysler, S T

    1997-01-01

    As human-machine interfaces grow more immersive and graphically-oriented, virtual environment systems become more prominent as the medium for human-machine communication. Often, virtual environments (VE) are built to provide exact metrical representations of existing or proposed physical spaces. However, it is not known how individuals develop representational models of these spaces in which they are immersed and how those models may be distorted with respect to both the virtual and real-world equivalents. To evaluate the process of model development, the present experiment examined participant's ability to reproduce a complex spatial layout of objects having experienced them previously under different viewing conditions. The layout consisted of nine common objects arranged on a flat plane. These objects could be viewed in a free binocular virtual condition, a free binocular real-world condition, and in a static monocular view of the real world. The first two allowed active exploration of the environment while the latter condition allowed the participant only a passive opportunity to observe from a single viewpoint. Viewing conditions were a between-subject variable with 10 participants randomly assigned to each condition. Performance was assessed using mapping accuracy and triadic comparisons of relative inter-object distances. Mapping results showed a significant effect of viewing condition where, interestingly, the static monocular condition was superior to both the active virtual and real binocular conditions. Results for the triadic comparisons showed a significant interaction for gender by viewing condition in which males were more accurate than females. These results suggest that the situation model resulting from interaction with a virtual environment was indistinguishable from interaction with real objects at least within the constraints of the present procedure.

  1. "This One's for VIP Users!": Participation and Commercial Strategies in Children's Virtual Worlds

    OpenAIRE

    Carolina Martinez

    2014-01-01

    Through the integrated framework of participation theory and political economy, this article analyzes participatory opportunities in the virtual world Habbo Hotel, and how participation is constrained and framed by the producer's commercial strategies, which are based on advertising and sales of virtual goods. The study also looks into the ways in which the producer Sulake Corporation discursively represents the virtual world, and how the users with various forms of tactics try to bypass the ...

  2. Virtual Worlds for Language Learning: From Theory to Practice. Telecollaboration in Education. Volume 2

    Science.gov (United States)

    Sadler, Randall

    2012-01-01

    This book focuses on one area in the field of Computer-Mediated Communication that has recently exploded in popularity--Virtual Worlds. Virtual Worlds are online multiplayer three-dimensional environments where avatars represent their real world counterparts. In particular, this text explores the potential for these environments to be used for…

  3. A brave new world: considering the pedagogic potential of Virtual World Field Trips (VWFTs in initial teacher education

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Fitzsimons Sabrina

    2016-07-01

    Full Text Available In its broadest and historical sense, place-based education refers to education that occurs outside of the physical boundaries of a school building (Dewey 1910; Sobel 1996; Theobald 1997; Woodhouse and Knapp 2000. Place-based education, colloquially referred to as the ‘field trip’, is predominantly considered a pedagogic tool of the sciences. It involves a physical movement from the school-based location to a place of interest, for example, a geography field trip to an ecological landscape or science visit to a local museum. This paper considers the use of virtual world field trips (VWFTs within the context of a pre-service Teacher Education programme. The paper presents data from one undergraduate module offered on a programme of initial teacher education. The paper identifies three significant elements of virtual world field trips: place, people and content. First, the virtual world can provide access to places not possible in the offline context as a result of geographic, economic or religious factors. Second, exposure to and dialogue with a variety of world views can challenge students’ assumptions, facilitate reflection and provide an opportunity for oneto-one teaching encounters. Third, from a teacher educator perspective, engagement in virtual world field trips can provide a space for teachers to model teaching methodologies and model creative learning techniques, thus providing student teachers with an insight into different approaches to teaching.

  4. An action selection architecture for autonomous virtual humans in persistent worlds

    OpenAIRE

    Sevin, Etienne de; Thalmann, Daniel

    2007-01-01

    Nowadays, virtual humans such as non-player characters in computer games need to have a strong autonomy in order to live their own life in persistent virtual worlds. When designing autonomous virtual humans, the action selection problem needs to be considered, as it is responsible for decision making at each moment in time. Indeed action selection architectures for autonomous virtual humans need to be reactive, proactive, motivational, and emotional to obtain a high degree of autonomy and ind...

  5. Virtual World, Defined from a Technological Perspective, and Applied to Video Games, Mixed Reality and the Metaverse

    OpenAIRE

    Nevelsteen, Kim J. L.

    2015-01-01

    There is no generally accepted definition for a virtual world, with many complimentary terms and acronyms having emerged implying a virtual world. Advances in systems architecture techniques such as, host migration of instances, mobile ad-hoc networking, and distributed computing, bring in to question whether those architectures can actually support a virtual world. Without a concrete definition, controversy ensues and it is problematic to design an architecture for a virtual world. Several r...

  6. Curricular Implications of Virtual World Technology: A Review of Business Applications

    Science.gov (United States)

    Cyphert, Dale; Wurtz, M. Susan; Duclos, Leslie K.

    2013-01-01

    As business organizations grow increasingly virtual, traditional principles of organizational communication require examination and modification. This article considers the curricular implications of the growing business uses of virtual world technology through three different lenses--students as employee-users, students as strategic designers and…

  7. Worlds of affect: virtual geographies of video games

    OpenAIRE

    Ian Graham Ronald Shaw; Barney Warf

    2009-01-01

    Video games are virtual worlds, each with its own, distinctive spatiality. This paper suggests that there are two interrelated conceptual dimensions to the study of video games. First, there are the representational issues concerning the worlds depicted in video games, such as those portraying hypersexualized women or Orientalist depictions of Arab enemies. We suggest, however, that these cultural, sexual, and political representations are not the only forces doing work on the player within t...

  8. Future Game Developers within a Virtual World: Learner Archetypes and Team Leader Attributes

    Science.gov (United States)

    Franetovic, Marija

    2016-01-01

    This case study research sought to understand a subset of the next generation in reference to virtual world learning within a game development course. The students completed an ill-structured team project which was facilitated using authentic learning strategies within a virtual world over a period of seven weeks. Research findings emerged from…

  9. Virtual reality exposure in the treatment of social phobia.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Klinger, Evelyne; Légeron, Patrick; Roy, Stéphane; Chemin, Isabelle; Lauer, Françoise; Nugues, Pierre

    2004-01-01

    Social phobia is one of the most frequent psychiatric disorders and is accessible to two forms of scientifically validated treatments: anti-depressant drugs and cognitive-behavioral therapies. Graded exposure to feared social situations (either in vivo or by imagining the situations) is fundamental to obtain an improvement of the anxious symptoms. Virtual reality (VR) may be an alternative to these standard exposure techniques and seems to bring significant advantages by allowing exposures to numerous and varied situations. Moreover studies have shown that human subjects are appropriately sensitive to virtual environments. This chapter reports the definition of a VR-based clinical protocol and a study to treat social phobia using virtual reality techniques. The virtual environments used in the treatment reproduce four situations that social phobics feel the most threatening: performance, intimacy, scrutiny and assertiveness. With the help of the therapist, the patient learns adapted cognitions and behaviors when coping with social situations, with the aim of reducing her or his anxiety in the corresponding real life situations. Some studies have been carried out using virtual reality in the treatment of fear of public speaking, which is only a small part of the symptomatology of most of social phobic patients. The novelty of our work is to address a larger group of situations that the phobic patients experience with high anxiety. In our protocol, the efficacy of the virtual reality treatment is compared to well established and well validated group cognitive-behavioral treatment.

  10. Virtual Construction of Social Reality Through New Medium-Internet

    OpenAIRE

    KARASAR, Sahin

    2002-01-01

    This is a study on the creation of social reality in virtual setting such as chat/discussion/list groups, based on a theoretical framework of social and cultural reality. It was tried to be found how closer one can get to and create the reality in relation with others in virtual settings. It is a survey type study. For this, a virtually communicated group (45 persons) was selected and given a questionnaire in their natural virtual settings. The members were questioned on their socializatio...

  11. Virtually naked: virtual environment reveals sex-dependent nature of skin disclosure.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Anna M Lomanowska

    Full Text Available The human tendency to reveal or cover naked skin reflects a competition between the individual propensity for social interactions related to sexual appeal and interpersonal touch versus climatic, environmental, physical, and cultural constraints. However, due to the ubiquitous nature of these constraints, isolating on a large scale the spontaneous human tendency to reveal naked skin has remained impossible. Using the online 3-dimensional virtual world of Second Life, we examined spontaneous human skin-covering behavior unhindered by real-world climatic, environmental, and physical variables. Analysis of hundreds of avatars revealed that virtual females disclose substantially more naked skin than virtual males. This phenomenon was not related to avatar hypersexualization as evaluated by measurement of sexually dimorphic body proportions. Furthermore, analysis of skin-covering behavior of a population of culturally homogeneous avatars indicated that the propensity of female avatars to reveal naked skin persisted despite explicit cultural norms promoting less revealing attire. These findings have implications for further understanding how sex-specific aspects of skin disclosure influence human social interactions in both virtual and real settings.

  12. SOCIAL INSTITUTION OF EDUCATION AND COMPUTER VIRTUAL REALITY: POINTS OF INFLUENCE

    OpenAIRE

    Tarakanov Sergey Anatolevich

    2012-01-01

    This article discusses the impact of computer virtual reality to education as a social institution. Author gives a description of education as a social institution. Outlines the main changes of the institute of education under the influence of a virtual online-environment. Author makes the following conclusions: 1. Computer virtual reality expands sphere of activity of social institution of education. 2. Computer virtual reality deletes status and role differences. It influences on the system...

  13. Building a sense of virtual community: the role of the features of social networking sites.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Chen, Chi-Wen; Lin, Chiun-Sin

    2014-07-01

    In recent years, social networking sites have received increased attention because of the potential of this medium to transform business by building virtual communities. However, theoretical and empirical studies investigating how specific features of social networking sites contribute to building a sense of virtual community (SOVC)-an important dimension of a successful virtual community-are rare. Furthermore, SOVC scales have been developed, and research on this issue has been called for, but few studies have heeded this call. On the basis of prior literature, this study proposes that perceptions of the three most salient features of social networking sites-system quality (SQ), information quality (IQ), and social information exchange (SIE)-play a key role in fostering SOVC. In particular, SQ is proposed to increase IQ and SIE, and SIE is proposed to enhance IQ, both of which thereafter build SOVC. The research model was examined in the context of Facebook, one of the most popular social networking sites in the world. We adopted Blanchard's scales to measure SOVC. Data gathered using a Web-based questionnaire, and analyzed with partial least squares, were utilized to test the model. The results demonstrate that SIE, SQ, and IQ are the factors that form SOVC. The findings also suggest that SQ plays a fundamental role in supporting SIE and IQ in social networking sites. Implications for theory, practice, and future research directions are discussed.

  14. Increasing student engagement and retention using immersive interfaces virtual worlds, gaming and simulation

    CERN Document Server

    Wankel, Charles

    2012-01-01

    Increasing Student Engagement and Retention Using Immersive Interfaces: Virtual Worlds, Gaming, and Simulation uses case studies, surveys, and literature reviews to critically examine how gaming, simulation, and virtualization are being used to improve teamwork and leadership skills in students, create engaging communities of practice, and as experiential learning tools to create inter-cultural, multi-perspective, and global experiences. Chapters include how to increase learner engagement using serious games, using game features for classroom engagement, using client-based peer assessment in multi-role, whole-enterprise simulations, using virtual worlds to develop teacher candidate skills, enhancing leadership skills through virtual simulation, using online video simulation for educational leadership, using augmented reality in education, using open source software in education, using educational robotics laboratories to enhance active learning, and utilizing the virtual learning environment to encourage facu...

  15. Controlling social stress in virtual reality environments

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Hartanto, D.; Kampmann, I.L.; Morina, N.; Emmelkamp, P.G.M.; Neerincx, M.A.; Brinkman, W.P.

    2014-01-01

    Virtual reality exposure therapy has been proposed as a viable alternative in the treatment of anxiety disorders, including social anxiety disorder. Therapists could benefit from extensive control of anxiety eliciting stimuli during virtual exposure. Two stimuli controls are studied in this study:

  16. Designing Socially Intelligent Virtual Companions

    OpenAIRE

    Yu, Han; Shen, Zhiqi; Wu, Qiong; Miao, Chunyan

    2014-01-01

    Virtual companions that interact with users in a socially complex environment require a wide range of social skills. Displaying curiosity is simultaneously a factor to improve a companion's believability and to unobtrusively affect the user's activities over time. Curiosity represents a drive to know new things. It is a major driving force for engaging learners in active learning. Existing research work pays little attention in curiosity. In this paper, we enrich the social skills of a virtua...

  17. Design and evaluation of a simulation for pediatric dentistry in virtual worlds.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Papadopoulos, Lazaros; Pentzou, Afroditi-Evaggelia; Louloudiadis, Konstantinos; Tsiatsos, Thrasyvoulos-Konstantinos

    2013-10-29

    Three-dimensional virtual worlds are becoming very popular among educators in the medical field. Virtual clinics and patients are already used for case study and role play in both undergraduate and continuing education levels. Dental education can also take advantage of the virtual world's pedagogical features in order to give students the opportunity to interact with virtual patients (VPs) and practice in treatment planning. The objective of this study was to design and evaluate a virtual patient as a supplemental teaching tool for pediatric dentistry. A child VP, called Erietta, was created by utilizing the programming and building tools that online virtual worlds offer. The case is about an eight-year old girl visiting the dentist with her mother for the first time. Communication techniques such as Tell-Show-Do and parents' interference management were the basic elements of the educational scenario on which the VP was based. An evaluation of the simulation was made by 103 dental students in their fourth year of study. Two groups were formed: an experimental group which was exposed to the simulation (n=52) and a control group which did not receive the simulation (n=51). At the end, both groups were asked to complete a knowledge questionnaire and the results were compared. A statistically significant difference between the two groups was found by applying a t test for independent samples (Pworld offers significant learning potential when used as a supplement to the traditional teaching techniques.

  18. Interpersonal Influence in Virtual Social Networks and Consumer Decisions

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Eduardo Botti Abbade

    2014-04-01

    Full Text Available This study aimed to analyze the attitude of college students regarding to interpersonal influence in virtual social networks related to consume decisions. It was conducted a survey with 200 college students from an Institution of Higher Education located in Santa Maria/RS. The sample was obtained through voluntary adhesion and the data collection instrument was applied in a virtual environment. Scales were adapted to measure and evaluate the propensity of students to influence and be influenced by their virtual contacts. The results suggest that the scales adapted are satisfactory to measure what they intend to do. The study also found that men are more able to influence the opinions of their virtual social contacts. On the other hand, the time dedicated to access the Internet positively and significantly influences the propensity of users to be influenced by their virtual social contacts. The correlation between the ability to influence the propensity to be influenced is significant and positive.

  19. Augmented Virtuality: A Real-time Process for Presenting Real-world Visual Sensory Information in an Immersive Virtual Environment for Planetary Exploration

    Science.gov (United States)

    McFadden, D.; Tavakkoli, A.; Regenbrecht, J.; Wilson, B.

    2017-12-01

    Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) applications have recently seen an impressive growth, thanks to the advent of commercial Head Mounted Displays (HMDs). This new visualization era has opened the possibility of presenting researchers from multiple disciplines with data visualization techniques not possible via traditional 2D screens. In a purely VR environment researchers are presented with the visual data in a virtual environment, whereas in a purely AR application, a piece of virtual object is projected into the real world with which researchers could interact. There are several limitations to the purely VR or AR application when taken within the context of remote planetary exploration. For example, in a purely VR environment, contents of the planet surface (e.g. rocks, terrain, or other features) should be created off-line from a multitude of images using image processing techniques to generate 3D mesh data that will populate the virtual surface of the planet. This process usually takes a tremendous amount of computational resources and cannot be delivered in real-time. As an alternative, video frames may be superimposed on the virtual environment to save processing time. However, such rendered video frames will lack 3D visual information -i.e. depth information. In this paper, we present a technique to utilize a remotely situated robot's stereoscopic cameras to provide a live visual feed from the real world into the virtual environment in which planetary scientists are immersed. Moreover, the proposed technique will blend the virtual environment with the real world in such a way as to preserve both the depth and visual information from the real world while allowing for the sensation of immersion when the entire sequence is viewed via an HMD such as Oculus Rift. The figure shows the virtual environment with an overlay of the real-world stereoscopic video being presented in real-time into the virtual environment. Notice the preservation of the object

  20. Behavioral and network origins of wealth inequality: insights from a virtual world.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Benedikt Fuchs

    Full Text Available Almost universally, wealth is not distributed uniformly within societies or economies. Even though wealth data have been collected in various forms for centuries, the origins for the observed wealth-disparity and social inequality are not yet fully understood. Especially the impact and connections of human behavior on wealth could so far not be inferred from data. Here we study wealth data from the virtual economy of the massive multiplayer online game (MMOG Pardus. This data not only contains every player's wealth at every point in time, but also all actions over a timespan of almost a decade. We find that wealth distributions in the virtual world are very similar to those in Western countries. In particular we find an approximate exponential distribution for low wealth levels and a power-law tail for high levels. The Gini index is found to be g = 0.65, which is close to the indices of many Western countries. We find that wealth-increase rates depend on the time when players entered the game. Players that entered the game early on tend to have remarkably higher wealth-increase rates than those who joined later. Studying the players' positions within their social networks, we find that the local position in the trade network is most relevant for wealth. Wealthy people have high in- and out-degrees in the trade network, relatively low nearest-neighbor degrees, and low clustering coefficients. Wealthy players have many mutual friendships and are socially well respected by others, but spend more time on business than on socializing. Wealthy players have few personal enemies, but show animosity towards players that behave as public enemies. We find that players that are not organized within social groups are significantly poorer on average. We observe that "political" status and wealth go hand in hand.

  1. Behavioral and network origins of wealth inequality: insights from a virtual world.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Fuchs, Benedikt; Thurner, Stefan

    2014-01-01

    Almost universally, wealth is not distributed uniformly within societies or economies. Even though wealth data have been collected in various forms for centuries, the origins for the observed wealth-disparity and social inequality are not yet fully understood. Especially the impact and connections of human behavior on wealth could so far not be inferred from data. Here we study wealth data from the virtual economy of the massive multiplayer online game (MMOG) Pardus. This data not only contains every player's wealth at every point in time, but also all actions over a timespan of almost a decade. We find that wealth distributions in the virtual world are very similar to those in Western countries. In particular we find an approximate exponential distribution for low wealth levels and a power-law tail for high levels. The Gini index is found to be g = 0.65, which is close to the indices of many Western countries. We find that wealth-increase rates depend on the time when players entered the game. Players that entered the game early on tend to have remarkably higher wealth-increase rates than those who joined later. Studying the players' positions within their social networks, we find that the local position in the trade network is most relevant for wealth. Wealthy people have high in- and out-degrees in the trade network, relatively low nearest-neighbor degrees, and low clustering coefficients. Wealthy players have many mutual friendships and are socially well respected by others, but spend more time on business than on socializing. Wealthy players have few personal enemies, but show animosity towards players that behave as public enemies. We find that players that are not organized within social groups are significantly poorer on average. We observe that "political" status and wealth go hand in hand.

  2. The Use of Virtual Ethnography in Distance Education Research

    Science.gov (United States)

    Uzun, Kadriye; Aydin, Cengiz Hakan

    2012-01-01

    3D virtual worlds can and have been used as a meeting place for distance education courses. Virtual worlds allow for group learning of the kind enjoyed by students gathered in a virtual classroom, where they know they are in a communal space, they are aware of the social process of learning and are affected by the presence and behaviour of their…

  3. Virtual Worlds and the Learner Hero: How Today's Video Games Can Inform Tomorrow's Digital Learning Environments

    Science.gov (United States)

    Rigby, C. Scott; Przybylski, Andrew K.

    2009-01-01

    Participation in expansive video games called "virtual worlds" has become a mainstream leisure activity for tens of millions of people around the world. The growth of this industry and the strong motivational appeal of these digital worlds invite a closer examination as to how educators can learn from today's virtual worlds in the development of…

  4. Cyberbullying: Student's Behavior In Virtual Worlds

    OpenAIRE

    Wangid, Muhammad Nur

    2016-01-01

    Abstract: Concerning about student’s negative behaviors in using of the internet encouraged the survey to describe the behavior of students in the virtual world. The sample consisted of 497 students, consisting of 336 women and 161 men, taken by proportional random sampling. Instruments of data collection using questionnaire. The results showed that mobile phones become the primary tool in the move to the internet is more widely used to send the message. Using internet lasting for more two h...

  5. Usability engineering and social presence for interaction, collaboration and learning in Second Life for the provision of real-world financial services

    OpenAIRE

    McCafferty, Laurene

    2010-01-01

    Virtual environments offer an exciting platform for social science research. The persistent nature of online virtual worlds such as Second Life however has increased the potential for both companies and institutions looking to establish a virtual presence and researchers looking to measure the evolving forms of human behaviour displayed when interacting within them. Since the use of the Internet has become widespread, commercial enterprises are particularly interested in explor...

  6. Social Interaction Development through Immersive Virtual Environments

    Science.gov (United States)

    Beach, Jason; Wendt, Jeremy

    2014-01-01

    The purpose of this pilot study was to determine if participants could improve their social interaction skills by participating in a virtual immersive environment. The participants used a developing virtual reality head-mounted display to engage themselves in a fully-immersive environment. While in the environment, participants had an opportunity…

  7. From We-Media to I-Media: Identity Transformations in the Virtual World

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Alexandr G. Asmolov

    2009-01-01

    Full Text Available The blogs as the platform for a virtual personality construction are considered in the article on the assumption of the positions of Lev S.Vygotsky’s cultural-historical approach. Internet journalism practices are considered as the example for the processes of virtual “I” formation. The authors affirm that the appearance of consecutive and stable “I-representation” in Internet is the necessary condition for a change in dynamics of social nets development from motives which are out of Internet in physical space towards situation when a virtual personality is enough full-fledged to be a motive for new social interactions creation not leaving Internet. As a result a virtual personality turns into a net-creating factor and Internet loses its unoriginality in relation to physical space. Using Lev Vygotsky’s “internal speech” concept, the article suggests to consider this interaction as a dairy discourse – “A dialog of internal voices”, which turns a virtual personality from the product of self representation into the product of social interaction. The authors affirm that the ability to construct a virtual personality is the integral part for personality formation in the new information society and propose to regard journalism practices as one of the methods of effective self representation in Internet.

  8. CASES ON COLLABORATION IN VIRTUAL LEARNIONG ENVIRONMENTS: Processes and Interactions

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Reviewed by Yasin OZARSLAN

    2010-01-01

    Full Text Available Collaboration in Virtual Learning Environment brings meaningful learning interactions between learners in virtual environments. This book collects case studies of collaborative virtual learning environments focusing on the nature of human interactions in virtual spaces and defining the types and qualities of learning processes in these spaces from the perspectives of learners, teachers, designers, and professional and academic developers in various disciplines, learning communities and universities from around the world. This book addresses the research cases on experiences, implementations, and applications of virtual learning environments.The book's broader audience is anyone who is interested in areas such as collaborative virtual learning environments, interactive technologies and virtual communities, social interaction and social competence, distance education and collaborative learning. The book is edited by Donna Russell who is an Assistant Professor at the University of Missouri-Kansas City and co-owner of Arete‘ Consulting, LLC. It is consisted of 358 pages covering 19 articles and provides information about context for characteristics and implications of the varied virtual learning environments. Topics covered in this book are argumentative interactions and learning, collaborative learning and work in digital libraries, collaborative virtual learning environments , digital communities to enhance retention, distance education ,interactive technologies and virtual communities, massively multi-user virtual environments, online graduate community, online training programs, social interaction and social competence and virtual story-worlds.

  9. Attitude and Self-Efficacy Change: English Language Learning in Virtual Worlds

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zheng, Dongping; Young, Michael F.; Brewer, Robert A.; Wagner, Manuela

    2009-01-01

    This study explored affective factors in learning English as a foreign language in a 3D game-like virtual world, Quest Atlantis (QA). Through the use of communication tools (e.g., chat, bulletin board, telegrams, and email), 3D avatars, and 2D webpage navigation tools in virtual space, nonnative English speakers (NNES) co-solved online…

  10. Training Educators to Design Lessons Incorporating Virtual Worlds

    Science.gov (United States)

    Downey, Steve

    2012-01-01

    In the past decade, virtual worlds have progressed from isolated sectors of the Internet, inhabited by computer and fantasy role-playing enthusiasts, to one of the fastest growing sectors in the gaming industry. In the process, they have established themselves as promising venues for the delivery of online instruction. Unfortunately, during that…

  11. Designing Virtual Worlds for Use in Mathematics Education.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Winn, William; Bricken, William

    Virtual Reality (VR) is a computer generated, multi-dimensional, inclusive environment that can build axioms of algebra into the behavior of the world. This paper discusses the use of VR to represent part of the algebra curriculum in order to improve students' classroom experiences in learning algebra. Students learn to construct their knowledge…

  12. Virtual Reality for Enhanced Ecological Validity and Experimental Control in the Clinical, Affective and Social Neurosciences

    Science.gov (United States)

    Parsons, Thomas D.

    2015-01-01

    An essential tension can be found between researchers interested in ecological validity and those concerned with maintaining experimental control. Research in the human neurosciences often involves the use of simple and static stimuli lacking many of the potentially important aspects of real world activities and interactions. While this research is valuable, there is a growing interest in the human neurosciences to use cues about target states in the real world via multimodal scenarios that involve visual, semantic, and prosodic information. These scenarios should include dynamic stimuli presented concurrently or serially in a manner that allows researchers to assess the integrative processes carried out by perceivers over time. Furthermore, there is growing interest in contextually embedded stimuli that can constrain participant interpretations of cues about a target’s internal states. Virtual reality environments proffer assessment paradigms that combine the experimental control of laboratory measures with emotionally engaging background narratives to enhance affective experience and social interactions. The present review highlights the potential of virtual reality environments for enhanced ecological validity in the clinical, affective, and social neurosciences. PMID:26696869

  13. [Cognitive research about the use of virtual worlds among the students enrolled to the faculty of medicine and surgery "Campus Bio-Medico University" in Rome].

    Science.gov (United States)

    Tambone, V; Alessi, A; Macchi, I; Milighetti, S; Muzii, L

    2009-01-01

    The main difference between a virtual reality and a generic representation is to be directly involved into the action you are performing. As a matter of fact, within the shift from real to virtual world, our biological physique does not mutate but is amplified and connected to the virtual world by technological interfaces. Training using a virtual reality simulator is an option to supplement (or replace) standard training. One of the two main goals of our study is to test, at first, how much students enrolled to the Faculty of Medicine at "University Campus Bio-Medico of Rome" are familiar with synthetic worlds, how long they have been using them and how they would like their Avatar to look like. Moreover, the second aim is to collect students' opinion about the use of virtual, interactive environments to enable learning and participation in dynamic, problem based, clinical, virtual simulations. Simulations might be used to allow learners to make mistakes safely in lieu of real life situations, learn from those mistakes and ultimately to improve performances by subsequent avoidance of those mistakes. The selected approach to the study is based on a semi-structured questionnaire made of 14 questions administered to all the medical students. Most of the students appear not to be very confident with virtual worlds mostly because of a lack of interest. However, a large majority of them are likely to use a virtual world for fun or escaping from reality. Students would select and customize their Avatar by giving her/him the same sexual identity, same figure, same social class but different employment. It is important to notice that a wide majority of the students is interested in practicing on a virtual world in order to manage new experiences and being able to face them; their willing is to get benefits from the ability to make mistakes in a safe environment as well as to record a positive impact on their understanding.

  14. Rapid prototyping, astronaut training, and experiment control and supervision: distributed virtual worlds for COLUMBUS, the European Space Laboratory module

    Science.gov (United States)

    Freund, Eckhard; Rossmann, Juergen

    2002-02-01

    In 2004, the European COLUMBUS Module is to be attached to the International Space Station. On the way to the successful planning, deployment and operation of the module, computer generated and animated models are being used to optimize performance. Under contract of the German Space Agency DLR, it has become IRF's task to provide a Projective Virtual Reality System to provide a virtual world built after the planned layout of the COLUMBUS module let astronauts and experimentators practice operational procedures and the handling of experiments. The key features of the system currently being realized comprise the possibility for distributed multi-user access to the virtual lab and the visualization of real-world experiment data. Through the capabilities to share the virtual world, cooperative operations can be practiced easily, but also trainers and trainees can work together more effectively sharing the virtual environment. The capability to visualize real-world data will be used to introduce measured data of experiments into the virtual world online in order to realistically interact with the science-reference model hardware: The user's actions in the virtual world are translated into corresponding changes of the inputs of the science reference model hardware; the measured data is than in turn fed back into the virtual world. During the operation of COLUMBUS, the capabilities for distributed access and the capabilities to visualize measured data through the use of metaphors and augmentations of the virtual world may be used to provide virtual access to the COLUMBUS module, e.g. via Internet. Currently, finishing touches are being put to the system. In November 2001 the virtual world shall be operational, so that besides the design and the key ideas, first experimental results can be presented.

  15. A Declarative Approach to Procedural Generation of Virtual Worlds

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Smelik, R.M.

    2011-01-01

    With the ever increasing costs of manual content creation for 3D virtual worlds, the potential of generating content automatically becomes too attractive to ignore. However, for most designers, procedural generation methods are complex and unintuitive to use, and offer little user control.

  16. A declarative approach to procedural modeling of virtual worlds

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Smelik, R.M.; Tutenel, T.; Kraker, K.J.de; Bidarra, R.

    2011-01-01

    With the ever increasing costs of manual content creation for virtual worlds, the potential of creating it automatically becomes too attractive to ignore. However, for most designers, traditional procedural content generation methods are complex and unintuitive to use, hard to control, and generated

  17. Envisioning the Educational Possibilities of User-Created Virtual Worlds

    Science.gov (United States)

    Antonacci, David M.; Modaress, Nellie

    2008-01-01

    Educational games and simulations can engage students in higher-level cognitive thinking, such as interpreting, analyzing, discovering, evaluating, acting, and problem solving. Recent technical advances in multiplayer, user-created virtual worlds have significantly expanded the capabilities of user interaction and development within these…

  18. Design and implementation of a virtual world training simulation of ICU first hour handover processes.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Brown, Ross; Rasmussen, Rune; Baldwin, Ian; Wyeth, Peta

    2012-08-01

    Nursing training for an Intensive Care Unit (ICU) is a resource intensive process. High demands are made on staff, students and physical resources. Interactive, 3D computer simulations, known as virtual worlds, are increasingly being used to supplement training regimes in the health sciences; especially in areas such as complex hospital ward processes. Such worlds have been found to be very useful in maximising the utilisation of training resources. Our aim is to design and develop a novel virtual world application for teaching and training Intensive Care nurses in the approach and method for shift handover, to provide an independent, but rigorous approach to teaching these important skills. In this paper we present a virtual world simulator for students to practice key steps in handing over the 24/7 care requirements of intensive care patients during the commencing first hour of a shift. We describe the modelling process to provide a convincing interactive simulation of the handover steps involved. The virtual world provides a practice tool for students to test their analytical skills with scenarios previously provided by simple physical simulations, and live on the job training. Additional educational benefits include facilitation of remote learning, high flexibility in study hours and the automatic recording of a reviewable log from the session. To the best of our knowledge, we believe this is a novel and original application of virtual worlds to an ICU handover process. The major outcome of the work was a virtual world environment for training nurses in the shift handover process, designed and developed for use by postgraduate nurses in training. Copyright © 2012 Australian College of Critical Care Nurses Ltd. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  19. Virtual Studio Practices: Visual Artists, Social Media and Creativity

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Kylie Budge

    2013-12-01

    Full Text Available Artists’ practices are varied. Two extremes include the need for complete solitude when working and others who seek social environments such as collaborations in communal studio settings. In addition to these real life studio practices new technologies and social media have made it possible for artists to use virtual studio practices in the process of developing creative work. Working virtually offers a range of interesting benefits for creative practice. This article explores the author’s recent experiences in virtual studio practices in light of the literature on this topic and considers the implications for creativity. It highlights five specific benefits in using virtual studio practices and considers possible limitations of working in such a manner. In exploring virtual studio practices and arguing the case for such ways of working, this article contributes to research and understandings about creative practice by discussing one artist’s reflective experience of using virtual studio practices.

  20. Musical journey: a virtual world gamification experience for music learning

    OpenAIRE

    Gomes, José; Figueiredo, Mauro; Amante, Lúcia

    2014-01-01

    Games are an integral part of the learning process of humans, in particular for children, who exploit the imagery as an intrinsic part of their lives. Features from games have been successfully implemented as a means to captivate and motivate students to perform learning at various levels of education in traditional schools. This paper presents a virtual world – Musical Journey – representing the Aesthetic Periods of Music History. This virtual environment allows students to freely explore an...

  1. Jenna Ng (ed., Understanding Machinima. Essays on Filmmaking in Virtual Worlds

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Vincenzo Idone Cassone

    2015-09-01

    Full Text Available Understanding Machinima. Essays on Filmmaking in Virtual Worlds (Bloomsbury 2013, edited by Jenna Ng is an intriguing incursion into the world of machinima from a Media Studies point-of-view, trying to address the topic beyond game’s environment, in connection with the evolution of the contemporary mediascape.

  2. Using SecondLife Online Virtual World Technology to Introduce Educators to the Digital Culture

    Science.gov (United States)

    Jamison, John

    2008-01-01

    The rapidly changing culture resulting from new technologies and digital gaming has created an increasing language gap between traditional educators and today's learners (Natkin, 2006; Seely-Brown, 2000). This study seeks to use the online virtual world of SecondLife.com as a tool to introduce educators to this new environment for learning. This study observes the activities and perceptions of a group of educators given unscripted access to this virtual environment. The results 'suggest that although serious technology limitations do currently exist, the potential of this virtual world environment as a learning experience for educators is strong.

  3. Sense of presence and anxiety during virtual social interactions between a human and virtual humans

    OpenAIRE

    Morina, Nexhmedin; Brinkman, Willem-Paul; Hartanto, Dwi; Emmelkamp, Paul M.G.

    2014-01-01

    Virtual reality exposure therapy (VRET) has been shown to be effective in treatment of anxiety disorders. Yet, there is lack of research on the extent to which interaction between the individual and virtual humans can be successfully implanted to increase levels of anxiety for therapeutic purposes. This proof-of-concept pilot study aimed at examining levels of the sense of presence and anxiety during exposure to virtual environments involving social interaction with virtual humans and using d...

  4. Environmental Social Stress, Paranoia and Psychosis Liability: A Virtual Reality Study.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Veling, Wim; Pot-Kolder, Roos; Counotte, Jacqueline; van Os, Jim; van der Gaag, Mark

    2016-11-01

    The impact of social environments on mental states is difficult to assess, limiting the understanding of which aspects of the social environment contribute to the onset of psychotic symptoms and how individual characteristics moderate this outcome. This study aimed to test sensitivity to environmental social stress as a mechanism of psychosis using Virtual Reality (VR) experiments. Fifty-five patients with recent onset psychotic disorder, 20 patients at ultra high risk for psychosis, 42 siblings of patients with psychosis, and 53 controls walked 5 times in a virtual bar with different levels of environmental social stress. Virtual social stressors were population density, ethnic density and hostility. Paranoia about virtual humans and subjective distress in response to virtual social stress exposures were measured with State Social Paranoia Scale (SSPS) and self-rated momentary subjective distress (SUD), respectively. Pre-existing (subclinical) symptoms were assessed with the Community Assessment of Psychic Experiences (CAPE), Green Paranoid Thoughts Scale (GPTS) and the Social Interaction Anxiety Scale (SIAS). Paranoia and subjective distress increased with degree of social stress in the environment. Psychosis liability and pre-existing symptoms, in particular negative affect, positively impacted the level of paranoia and distress in response to social stress. These results provide experimental evidence that heightened sensitivity to environmental social stress may play an important role in the onset and course of psychosis. © The Author 2016. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Maryland Psychiatric Research Center. All rights reserved. For permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com.

  5. Virtual Reality for Artificial Intelligence: human-centered simulation for social science.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Cipresso, Pietro; Riva, Giuseppe

    2015-01-01

    There is a long last tradition in Artificial Intelligence as use of Robots endowing human peculiarities, from a cognitive and emotional point of view, and not only in shape. Today Artificial Intelligence is more oriented to several form of collective intelligence, also building robot simulators (hardware or software) to deeply understand collective behaviors in human beings and society as a whole. Modeling has also been crucial in the social sciences, to understand how complex systems can arise from simple rules. However, while engineers' simulations can be performed in the physical world using robots, for social scientist this is impossible. For decades, researchers tried to improve simulations by endowing artificial agents with simple and complex rules that emulated human behavior also by using artificial intelligence (AI). To include human beings and their real intelligence within artificial societies is now the big challenge. We present an hybrid (human-artificial) platform where experiments can be performed by simulated artificial worlds in the following manner: 1) agents' behaviors are regulated by the behaviors shown in Virtual Reality involving real human beings exposed to specific situations to simulate, and 2) technology transfers these rules into the artificial world. These form a closed-loop of real behaviors inserted into artificial agents, which can be used to study real society.

  6. Clustering avatars behaviours from Virtual Worlds interactions

    OpenAIRE

    Bello Orgaz, Gema; R-Moreno, María Dolores; Camacho, David; Barrero, David F.

    2012-01-01

    This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here for your personal use. Not for redistribution. The definitive Version of Record was published in Proceedings of the 4th International Workshop on Web Intelligence & Communities, http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2189736.2189743 Virtual Worlds (VWs) platforms and applications provide a practical implementation of the Metaverse concept. These applications, as highly inmersive and interactive 3D environments, have become very popular in soci...

  7. Avatar-mediation and Transformation of Practice in a 3D Virtual World

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Riis, Marianne

    The purpose of this study is to understand and conceptualize the transformation of a particular community of pedagogical practice based on the implementation of the 3D virtual world, Second Life™. The community setting is a course at the Master's programme on ICT and Learning (MIL), Aalborg...... with knowledge about 3D Virtual Worlds, the influence of the avatar phenomenon and the consequences of 3D-remediation in relation to teaching and learning in online education. Based on the findings, a conceptual design model, a set of design principles, and a design framework has been developed....

  8. Purposes for Literacy in Children's Use of the Online Virtual World "Club Penguin"

    Science.gov (United States)

    Marsh, Jackie

    2014-01-01

    This paper reports on a study of the purposes for literacy discernible in young children's use of the virtual world, "Club Penguin." Twenty-six children aged between 5 and 11 took part in semi-structured interviews in which their use of virtual worlds was explored. Further, three 11-year-old children were filmed using "Club…

  9. Navigating a 2D Virtual World using Direct Brain Stimulation

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Darby M. Losey

    2016-11-01

    Full Text Available Can the human brain learn to interpret inputs from a virtual world delivered directly through brain stimulation? We answer this question by describing the first demonstration of humans playing a computer game utilizing only direct brain stimulation and no other sensory inputs. The demonstration also provides the first instance of artificial sensory information, in this case depth, being delivered directly to the human brain through noninvasive methods. Our approach utilizes transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS of the human visual cortex to convey binary information about obstacles in a virtual maze. At certain intensities, TMS elicits visual percepts known as phosphenes, which transmits information to the subject about their current location within the maze. Using this computer-brain interface (CBI, five subjects successfully navigated an average of 92% of all the steps in a variety of virtual maze worlds. They also became more accurate in solving the task over time. These results suggest that humans can learn to utilize information delivered directly and noninvasively to their brains to solve tasks that cannot be solved using their natural senses, opening the door to human sensory augmentation and novel modes of human-computer interaction.

  10. Motivational interviewing workshop in a virtual world: learning as avatars.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Shershneva, Marianna; Kim, Ji-Hye; Kear, Cynthia; Heyden, Robin; Heyden, Neil; Lee, Jay; Mitchell, Suzanne

    2014-04-01

    Limited research has been done to understand outcomes of continuing medical education offered in three-dimensional, immersive virtual worlds. We studied a case of a virtual world workshop on motivational interviewing (MI) applied to smoking cessation counseling and its educational impact. To facilitate content development and evaluation, we specified desired MI competencies. The workshop consisted of three sessions, which included lectures, practice with standardized patients, and chat interactions. Data were collected from 13 primary care physicians and residents through workshop observation, and pre- and 3-month post-workshop telephone/Skype interviews and interactions with standardized patients. Interactions with standardized patients were assessed by an expert using a validated MI tool and by standardized patients using a tool developed for this study. For 11 participants who attended two or three sessions, we conducted paired-samples t tests comparing mean differences between the competency scores before and after the workshop. Expert assessment showed significant improvement on six of seven MI competencies. All participants reported learning new knowledge and skills, and nine described incorporating new learning into their clinical practice. Practicing MI with standardized patients and/or observing others' practice appeared to be the most helpful workshop component. The evaluated workshop had positive impact on participants' competencies and practice as related to MI applied to smoking cessation counseling. Our findings support further exploration of three-dimensional virtual worlds as learning environments for continuing medical education.

  11. Virtual Chironomia: A Multimodal Study of Verbal and Non-Verbal Communication in a Virtual World

    Science.gov (United States)

    Verhulsdonck, Gustav

    2010-01-01

    This mixed methods study examined the various aspects of multimodal use of non-verbal communication in virtual worlds during dyadic negotiations. Quantitative analysis uncovered a treatment effect whereby people with more rhetorical certainty used more neutral non-verbal communication; whereas people that were rhetorically less certain used more…

  12. Virtual and live social facilitation while exergaming: competitiveness moderates exercise intensity.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Snyder, Amanda L; Anderson-Hanley, Cay; Arciero, Paul J

    2012-04-01

    Grounded in social facilitation theory, this study compared the impact on exercise intensity of a virtual versus a live competitor, when riding a virtual reality-enhanced stationary bike ("cybercycle"). It was hypothesized that competitiveness would moderate effects. Twenty-three female college students were exposed to three conditions on a cybercycle: solo training, virtual competitor, and live competitor. After training without a competitor (solo condition for familiarization with equipment), participants competed against a virtual avatar or live rider (random order of presentation). A repeated-measures analysis revealed a significant condition (virtual/live) by competitiveness (high/low) interaction for exercise intensity (watts). More competitive participants exhibited significantly greater exercise intensity when competing against a live versus virtual competitor. The implication is that live competitors can have an added social facilitation effect and influence exercise intensity, although competitiveness moderates this effect.

  13. Human agency beliefs influence behaviour during virtual social interactions.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Caruana, Nathan; Spirou, Dean; Brock, Jon

    2017-01-01

    In recent years, with the emergence of relatively inexpensive and accessible virtual reality technologies, it is now possible to deliver compelling and realistic simulations of human-to-human interaction. Neuroimaging studies have shown that, when participants believe they are interacting via a virtual interface with another human agent, they show different patterns of brain activity compared to when they know that their virtual partner is computer-controlled. The suggestion is that users adopt an "intentional stance" by attributing mental states to their virtual partner. However, it remains unclear how beliefs in the agency of a virtual partner influence participants' behaviour and subjective experience of the interaction. We investigated this issue in the context of a cooperative "joint attention" game in which participants interacted via an eye tracker with a virtual onscreen partner, directing each other's eye gaze to different screen locations. Half of the participants were correctly informed that their partner was controlled by a computer algorithm ("Computer" condition). The other half were misled into believing that the virtual character was controlled by a second participant in another room ("Human" condition). Those in the "Human" condition were slower to make eye contact with their partner and more likely to try and guide their partner before they had established mutual eye contact than participants in the "Computer" condition. They also responded more rapidly when their partner was guiding them, although the same effect was also found for a control condition in which they responded to an arrow cue. Results confirm the influence of human agency beliefs on behaviour in this virtual social interaction context. They further suggest that researchers and developers attempting to simulate social interactions should consider the impact of agency beliefs on user experience in other social contexts, and their effect on the achievement of the application's goals.

  14. Human agency beliefs influence behaviour during virtual social interactions

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Nathan Caruana

    2017-09-01

    Full Text Available In recent years, with the emergence of relatively inexpensive and accessible virtual reality technologies, it is now possible to deliver compelling and realistic simulations of human-to-human interaction. Neuroimaging studies have shown that, when participants believe they are interacting via a virtual interface with another human agent, they show different patterns of brain activity compared to when they know that their virtual partner is computer-controlled. The suggestion is that users adopt an “intentional stance” by attributing mental states to their virtual partner. However, it remains unclear how beliefs in the agency of a virtual partner influence participants’ behaviour and subjective experience of the interaction. We investigated this issue in the context of a cooperative “joint attention” game in which participants interacted via an eye tracker with a virtual onscreen partner, directing each other’s eye gaze to different screen locations. Half of the participants were correctly informed that their partner was controlled by a computer algorithm (“Computer” condition. The other half were misled into believing that the virtual character was controlled by a second participant in another room (“Human” condition. Those in the “Human” condition were slower to make eye contact with their partner and more likely to try and guide their partner before they had established mutual eye contact than participants in the “Computer” condition. They also responded more rapidly when their partner was guiding them, although the same effect was also found for a control condition in which they responded to an arrow cue. Results confirm the influence of human agency beliefs on behaviour in this virtual social interaction context. They further suggest that researchers and developers attempting to simulate social interactions should consider the impact of agency beliefs on user experience in other social contexts, and their effect

  15. Neural mechanisms tracking popularity in real-world social networks.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zerubavel, Noam; Bearman, Peter S; Weber, Jochen; Ochsner, Kevin N

    2015-12-08

    Differences in popularity are a key aspect of status in virtually all human groups and shape social interactions within them. Little is known, however, about how we track and neurally represent others' popularity. We addressed this question in two real-world social networks using sociometric methods to quantify popularity. Each group member (perceiver) viewed faces of every other group member (target) while whole-brain functional MRI data were collected. Independent functional localizer tasks were used to identify brain systems supporting affective valuation (ventromedial prefrontal cortex, ventral striatum, amygdala) and social cognition (dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, precuneus, temporoparietal junction), respectively. During the face-viewing task, activity in both types of neural systems tracked targets' sociometric popularity, even when controlling for potential confounds. The target popularity-social cognition system relationship was mediated by valuation system activity, suggesting that observing popular individuals elicits value signals that facilitate understanding their mental states. The target popularity-valuation system relationship was strongest for popular perceivers, suggesting enhanced sensitivity to differences among other group members' popularity. Popular group members also demonstrated greater interpersonal sensitivity by more accurately predicting how their own personalities were perceived by other individuals in the social network. These data offer insights into the mechanisms by which status guides social behavior.

  16. Social interactions in virtual reality exposure therapy: A proof-of-concept pilot study.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Morina, Nexhmedin; Brinkman, Willem-Paul; Hartanto, Dwi; Kampmann, Isabel L; Emmelkamp, Paul M G

    2015-01-01

    Research on virtual reality exposure therapy (VRET) has demonstrated good treatment efficacy with regards to several anxiety disorders. Yet, there is lack of knowledge about the value of integrating interaction between clients and virtual humans in VRET. Such interaction might prove effective in treating psychological complaints that involve social interactions, such as social anxiety. A VRET system specifically designed to expose clients with social anxiety disorder to anxiety provoking social situations was applied to 16 and 18 individuals with high and low levels of social anxiety, respectively. Participants engaged in two exposure sessions in several free speech dialogues with virtual humans while being monitored by a therapist. Participants with high levels of social anxiety reported significantly lower levels of social anxiety three months after exposure to two virtual reality interaction sessions than before treatment (p anxiety, no significant change of social anxiety was reported between pre-treatment and follow-up. Additionally, participants in both groups reported higher self-efficacy three months after treatment than before treatment (ps ≤ 0.001). These findings indicate that virtual reality technology that incorporates social interactions may be successfully applied for therapeutic purposes.

  17. Increasing accessibility to the blind of virtual environments, using a virtual mobility aid based on the "EyeCane": feasibility study.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Shachar Maidenbaum

    Full Text Available Virtual worlds and environments are becoming an increasingly central part of our lives, yet they are still far from accessible to the blind. This is especially unfortunate as such environments hold great potential for them for uses such as social interaction, online education and especially for use with familiarizing the visually impaired user with a real environment virtually from the comfort and safety of his own home before visiting it in the real world. We have implemented a simple algorithm to improve this situation using single-point depth information, enabling the blind to use a virtual cane, modeled on the "EyeCane" electronic travel aid, within any virtual environment with minimal pre-processing. Use of the Virtual-EyeCane, enables this experience to potentially be later used in real world environments with identical stimuli to those from the virtual environment. We show the fast-learned practical use of this algorithm for navigation in simple environments.

  18. Improving Teaching and Learning of Computer Programming through the Use of the Second Life Virtual World

    Science.gov (United States)

    Esteves, Micaela; Fonseca, Benjamim; Morgado, Leonel; Martins, Paulo

    2011-01-01

    The emergence of new technologies such as three-dimensional virtual worlds brings new opportunities for teaching and learning. We conducted an action research approach to the analysis of how teaching and learning of computer programming at the university level could be developed within the Second Life virtual world. Results support the notion that…

  19. Exposure to virtual social interactions in the treatment of social anxiety disorder: A randomized controlled trial.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kampmann, Isabel L; Emmelkamp, Paul M G; Hartanto, Dwi; Brinkman, Willem-Paul; Zijlstra, Bonne J H; Morina, Nexhmedin

    2016-02-01

    This randomized controlled trial investigated the efficacy of a stand-alone virtual reality exposure intervention comprising verbal interaction with virtual humans to target heterogeneous social fears in participants with social anxiety disorder. Sixty participants (Mage = 36.9 years; 63.3% women) diagnosed with social anxiety disorder were randomly assigned to individual virtual reality exposure therapy (VRET), individual in vivo exposure therapy (iVET), or waiting-list. Multilevel regression analyses revealed that both treatment groups improved from pre-to postassessment on social anxiety symptoms, speech duration, perceived stress, and avoidant personality disorder related beliefs when compared to the waiting-list. Participants receiving iVET, but not VRET, improved on fear of negative evaluation, speech performance, general anxiety, depression, and quality of life relative to those on waiting-list. The iVET condition was further superior to the VRET condition regarding decreases in social anxiety symptoms at post- and follow-up assessments, and avoidant personality disorder related beliefs at follow-up. At follow-up, all improvements were significant for iVET. For VRET, only the effect for perceived stress was significant. VRET containing extensive verbal interaction without any cognitive components can effectively reduce complaints of generalized social anxiety disorder. Future technological and psychological improvements of virtual social interactions might further enhance the efficacy of VRET for social anxiety disorder. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  20. Knowledge sharing in virtual communities: A social exchange theory perspective

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Li Jinyang

    2015-01-01

    Full Text Available Purpose: The author tried to identify the knowledge sharing behaviors on the internet, using structural equation modeling methods, proposing a model based on social exchange theory in which share willingness, trust, reciprocity, altruism tended to have impact on people’s knowledge sharing behaviors in virtual communities. Design/methodology/approach: We presented an empirical research which integrated social exchange theory and structural equation modeling methods to analyze several important factors influencing members’ knowledge sharing behaviors in virtual communities. Findings: We analyzed the knowledge sharing behaviors in virtual communities. We found that members’ altruism can not predict knowledge sharing behaviors. We also found that members’ sharing willingness is the most important factor on virtual community knowledge sharing behaviors compared with trust, reciprocity and altruism. Originality/value: From the perspective of social exchange theory, we did empirical test and verified the proposed research model by using structural equation modeling methods. Our finding can help recognize people’s incentive about knowledge sharing.

  1. Navigation and wayfinding in learning spaces in 3D virtual worlds

    OpenAIRE

    Minocha, Shailey; Hardy, Christopher

    2016-01-01

    There is a lack of published research on the design guidelines of learning spaces in virtual worlds. Therefore, when institutions aspire to create learning spaces in Second Life, there are few studies or guidelines to inform them except for individual case studies. The Design of Learning Spaces in 3D Virtual Environments (DELVE) project, funded by the Joint Information Systems Committee in the UK, was one of the first initiatives that identified through empirical investigations the usability ...

  2. A Method for Teaching the Modeling of Manikins Suitable for Third-Person 3-D Virtual Worlds and Games

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Nick V. Flor

    2012-08-01

    Full Text Available Virtual Worlds have the potential to transform the way people learn, work, and play. With the emerging fields of service science and design science, professors and students at universities are in a unique position to lead the research and development of innovative and value-adding virtual worlds. However, a key barrier in the development of virtual worlds—especially for business, technical, and non-artistic students—is the ability to model human figures in 3-D for use as avatars and automated characters in virtual worlds. There are no articles in either research or teaching journals which describe methods that non-artists can use to create 3-D human figures. This paper presents a repeatable and flexible method I have taught successfully to both artists and business students, which allows them to quickly model human-like figures (manikins that are sufficient for prototype purposes and that allows students and researchers alike to explore the development of new kinds of virtual worlds.

  3. Students' Evaluation of a Virtual World for Procedural Training in a Tertiary-Education Course

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ramírez, Jaime; Rico, Mariano; Riofrío-Luzcando, Diego; Berrocal-Lobo, Marta; de Antonio, Angélica

    2018-01-01

    This article presents an investigation on the educational value of virtual worlds intended for the acquisition of procedural knowledge. This investigation takes as a case of study a virtual laboratory on biotechnology. A remarkable feature in this virtual laboratory is an automatic tutor that supervises student's actions and provides tutoring…

  4. How to Do Things with Mouse Clicks: Applying Austin's Speech Act Theory to Explain Learning in Virtual Worlds

    Science.gov (United States)

    Loke, Swee-Kin; Golding, Clinton

    2016-01-01

    This article addresses learning in desktop virtual worlds where students role play for professional education. When students role play in such virtual worlds, they can learn some knowledge and skills that are useful in the physical world. However, existing learning theories do not provide a plausible explanation of how performing non-verbal…

  5. Virtual Community, social network and media environment of Canary Isands regional digital newspapers

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Dr. Francisco Manuel Mateos Rodríguez

    2008-01-01

    Full Text Available The impact of the new communication and information technologies has favoured the creation of multiple local newspaper websites in the Canary Islands, thus making the regional press emerge as an alternative on the rise. This tendency affects significantly both traditional and new editions of the different regional and local newspapers from the Canaries and motivates a different distribution, positioning and development within the local media environment in which these media share a novel dimension of communication with a specific virtual community and social network within the World Wide Web.

  6. Competência social para interagir em ambientes virtuais de aprendizagem Las competencias sociales para interactuar en plataformas virtuales de aprendizaje Social abilities to interact in virtual learning environments

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Edilaine Cristina da Silva

    2011-03-01

    Full Text Available Objetivo. Investigar a associação entre as características de competência social para interagir no meio acadêmico e o uso das ferramentas de comunicação do ambiente virtual. Metodologia. Estudo quantitativo, participarem 32 estudantes de graduação de enfermagem, alunos do Curso On-line de Transtornos de Humor e de Personalidade, parte da disciplina Enfermagem Psiquiátrica. O ambiente virtual de aprendizagem utilizado para o Curso On-line foi o TELEDUC. Registro de acessos a ferramentas de comunicação; Questionário de Característica Social para interagir com colegas no âmbito acadêmico (QCS. Foram realizados testes de correlação de Pearson entre os escores obtidos das características de competência social e a frequência de uso das ferramentas de comunicação do ambiente virtual. Resultados. Observou-se correlação positiva moderada entre o fator sociabilidade e acessos a ferramentas "Chat" (r=0.61 e "Fórum" (r=0.50; correlação negativa moderada entre os níveis de agressividade e a ferramenta "Correio" (r=-0.37; correlação positiva entre níveis de liderança e o "Correio" (r=0,53; correlação negativa moderada entre os níveis de inibição e as ferramentas "Chat" (r=-0.65 e "Fórum" (r=-0.63. Conclusão. A competência social contribui para a participação do estudante em processos educativos à distância, portanto deve ser levada em consideração no processo ensinoaprendizagem realizada em ambientes virtuais.Objetivo. Investigar la asociación entre las características de las habilidades sociales para interactuar académicamente y el uso de herramientas de comunicación de plataforma virtual de aprendizaje. Estudio cuantitativo, realizado en Ribeirão Preto, São Paulo, Brasil, en 2006. Participaron 32 estudiantes de enfermería del curso en línea sobre Transtornos del Humor y Personalidad, parte del curso de Enfermería Psiquiátrica. La plataforma de aprendizaje virtual utilizada para el curso en línea fue

  7. Late commitment: virtual story characters that can frame their world

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Swartjes, I.M.T.; Theune, Mariet

    2009-01-01

    Our long-term aim is to build virtual agents that can partake together with human interactors as characters in a story, which emerges from their interactions wich each other and with the story world (the emergent narrative approach). Improvisational theatre -- as a real-life example -- suggests an

  8. A second life for eHealth: prospects for the use of 3-D virtual worlds in clinical psychology.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Gorini, Alessandra; Gaggioli, Andrea; Vigna, Cinzia; Riva, Giuseppe

    2008-08-05

    The aim of the present paper is to describe the role played by three-dimensional (3-D) virtual worlds in eHealth applications, addressing some potential advantages and issues related to the use of this emerging medium in clinical practice. Due to the enormous diffusion of the World Wide Web (WWW), telepsychology, and telehealth in general, have become accepted and validated methods for the treatment of many different health care concerns. The introduction of the Web 2.0 has facilitated the development of new forms of collaborative interaction between multiple users based on 3-D virtual worlds. This paper describes the development and implementation of a form of tailored immersive e-therapy called p-health whose key factor is interreality, that is, the creation of a hybrid augmented experience merging physical and virtual worlds. We suggest that compared with conventional telehealth applications such as emails, chat, and videoconferences, the interaction between real and 3-D virtual worlds may convey greater feelings of presence, facilitate the clinical communication process, positively influence group processes and cohesiveness in group-based therapies, and foster higher levels of interpersonal trust between therapists and patients. However, challenges related to the potentially addictive nature of such virtual worlds and questions related to privacy and personal safety will also be discussed.

  9. Virtual reality exposure therapy for social phobia

    OpenAIRE

    Herbelin, Bruno

    2005-01-01

    This thesis presents researches and experiments performed in collaboration with a psychiatrist in order to validate and improve the use of virtual reality in social phobia psychotherapy. Cognitive and behavioral therapies are strongly based on the exposure to anxiety provoking stimuli. Virtual reality seems to be appropriate for such exposures as it allows for on-demand reproduction of reality. The idea has been validated for the treatment of various phobias but is more delicate in the case o...

  10. Designing Shared Virtual Reality Gaming Experiences in Local Multi-platform Games

    OpenAIRE

    Liszio , Stefan; Masuch , Maic

    2016-01-01

    Part 4: Short Papers; International audience; Designing multiplayer virtual reality games is a challenging task since immersion is easily destroyed by real world influences. However, providing fun and social virtual reality experiences is inevitable for establishing virtual reality gaming as a convincing new medium. We propose a design approach to integrate social interactions into the game design while retaining immersion, and present design methods to implement this approach. Furthermore, w...

  11. People with Disabilities Leading the Design of Serious Games and Virtual Worlds.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Yurgos Politis

    2017-06-01

    Full Text Available Games and virtual worlds have many potential benefits for people with intellectual disabilities (ID and autism spectrum disorder (ASD, in terms of training, education, and rehabilitation. However, because this population presents a wide range of specific needs and abilities, it can be difficult to design games which are engaging and present optimum levels of challenge to players. By including individuals with ID and ASD in the design phase we can help meet their specific needs and preferences by personalizing an intervention through the exploration of experimental techniques, methods and assistive technologies. By embracing the Responsible Research and Innovation approach, we bring science and society closer together to shape the world for future generations. A number of approaches for achieving such inclusion have been described, such as User Sensitive Inclusive Design, Universal Design, and Design for All. Here we discuss three specific examples of the design of games and virtual worlds for people with ID/ASD and illustrate how they attempt to meet their needs. Namely 1 a blended approach of computerised program and applied behaviour analysis for reading skills 2 immersive gameplay for employment and transferable skills training and 3 virtual reality training to enhance communication skills.

  12. Development, Implementation, and Assessment of General Chemistry Lab Experiments Performed in the Virtual World of Second Life

    Science.gov (United States)

    Winkelmann, Kurt; Keeney-Kennicutt, Wendy; Fowler, Debra; Macik, Maria

    2017-01-01

    Virtual worlds are a potential medium for teaching college-level chemistry laboratory courses. To determine the feasibility of conducting chemistry experiments in such an environment, undergraduate students performed two experiments in the immersive virtual world of Second Life (SL) as part of their regular General Chemistry 2 laboratory course.…

  13. What about the Firewall? Creating Virtual Worlds in a Public Primary School Using Sim-on-a-Stick

    Science.gov (United States)

    Jacka, Lisa; Booth, Kate

    2012-01-01

    Virtual worlds are highly immersive, engaging and popular computer mediated environments being explored by children and adults. Why then aren't more teachers using virtual worlds in the classroom with primary and secondary school students? Reasons often cited are the learning required to master the technology, low-end graphics cards, poor…

  14. Using virtual worlds for patient and public engagement.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Taylor, Michael J; Kaur, Meerat; Sharma, Uvarshi; Taylor, Dave; Reed, Julie E; Darzi, Ara

    Patient and public involvement is fundamental in healthcare and many methods attempt to facilitate this engagement. The present study investigated use of computer-generated environments known as 'virtual worlds' (VW) as an involvement method. The VW used in the present research was Second Life, which is 3-dimensional, publically accessible and internet-based. It is accessed using digital self-representations, or 'avatars', through which users navigate the virtual environment and communicate with one another. Participants were patients with long-term conditions, frequently involved in shaping health research and care. Some had mobility and communication difficulties, potentially making involvement through traditional face-to-face modes of engagement challenging. There were 2 stages to this study. Stage-1: Participants were introduced to VWs and Second Life. This was followed by a face-to-face focus group discussion (FGD) in order to gain their views on use of SL. Stage-2: An FGD attended by 8 people (4 patients, 3 researchers, 1 healthcare professional) was conducted in Second Life. Training and support on using Second Life had been provided for participants. The FGD took place successfully, although some technical and communication difficulties were experienced. Data was collected in the form of interviews and questionnaires from the patients about their experience of using the virtual world. Participants recognised the potential of VWs as a platform for patient engagement, especially for those who suffer from chronic conditions that impact severely upon their mobility and communication. Participant feedback indicated that potential barriers include technical problems with VW programs and potential user inexperience of using VWs, which may be counteracted by ensuring provision of continuous training and support. In conclusion, this study established the feasibility of using VWs for patient FGDs and indicates a potential of use of VWs for engagement in future

  15. Cotton Island: Students' Learning Motivation Using a Virtual World

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wyss, Jamie; Lee, Seung-Eun; Domina, Tanya; MacGillivray, Maureen

    2014-01-01

    As technology advances, it is important for teachers to seamlessly integrate technology into their innovative teaching techniques. Using virtual worlds is one alternative to traditional teaching methods that can provide rich learning experiences. The purpose of this article is twofold: (a) to present Cotton Island, an avatar-based 3-D virtual…

  16. THE NATURE OF USING VIRTUAL WORLDS BY A CHILD AS A LEARNING PLATFORM: A Case Study

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Ahmet BAYTAK

    2011-08-01

    Full Text Available The development of new technologies is found inevitable and children interests toward online platforms and virtual worlds are rapidly growing. In addition, there is a consensus that use of technology for primary or secondary school education is effective for achievement and motivation. In research and practice there are many educational implementations of technology in classrooms that were found useful.Similar to most qualitative studies, the purpose of this study also cannot be narrowed down to a single sentence but the overarching aim of the study is to explore the nature of using virtual worlds as a learning platform during. The theoretical background of this study is rooted from the constructivism and constructionism learning approaches. Consisted with its theoretical framework, this study has followed a qualitative case study research method to explore the nature of the construct. The case is a bounded system that is narrowed to a single case (Merriam, 1988; Stake, 1995; Yin, 2003. There are various types of data collected within this system. Based on the data collected and the research-suggested case study data analysis approaches, the following themes were emerged; realty, learning by discovering, learning by design, scaffolding and chunking information, and real life desires.After using Whyville virtual platform, the aim of this study was expected to start new discussion on young children using more complex virtual worlds such as Second Life. Thus, the results of this study could be guidance for transmission process of children toward Second Life type of virtual worlds. Even though a further discussion may need about the nature of using the virtual worlds, the primary findings of these case studies suggest some practical implications for children’s education.

  17. Droni e turismo virtuale

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Valeria Minucciani

    2015-08-01

    Full Text Available Virtual tourism has been through at least three generations. The first is a special form of e-commerce, and no doubt it has much changed the way you plan your travel. Second generation of virtual tourism has exploited georeference: the user can know the services offered nearby and, with appropriate apps and augmented reality, receive information about places. An important contribution has been made in this field by social media (see Flickr, as well as Tripadvisor. The third generation of virtual tourism even replaces the travel experience: first proposing visits in virtual worlds, then in the real world. That allows tourism to social classes that are excluded. The goal is to send in the real place an "avatar", that can perform what tourist wants. Some experiments have been recently performed with robots, here a visit by drones is proposed. In particular, indoor visits are difficult because it is necessary to re-create a microgeodetic reference system in a closed and confined environment, to allow remote control and to ensure the protection of the cultural property. It has also to be considered the issue of the size of the drone, its autonomy and shooting video (which must be 360 degrees and high definition. The real experience is irreplaceable, but this form of tourism can find many interesting applications and strengthen real tourism. In conclusion, we believe that not only this performances are now within the reach of our technical capabilities, but  they also represent an effective response to certain social and cultural issues.

  18. Droni e turismo virtuale

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Valeria Minucciani

    2015-08-01

    Full Text Available Virtual tourism has been through at least three generations.The first is a special form of e-commerce, and no doubt it has much changed the way you plan your travel. Second generation of virtual tourism has exploited georeference: the user can know the services offered nearby and, with appropriate apps and augmented reality, receive information about places.An important contribution has been made in this field by social media (see Flickr, as well as Tripadvisor. The third generation of virtual tourism even replaces the travel experience: first proposing visits in virtual worlds, then in the real world. That allows tourism to social classes that are excluded.The goal is to send in the real place an "avatar", that can perform what tourist wants. Some experiments have been recently performed with robots, here a visit by drones is proposed. In particular, indoor visits are difficult because it is necessary to re-create a microgeodetic reference system in a closed and confined environment, to allow remote control and to ensure the protection of the cultural property. It has also to be considered the issue of the size of the drone, its autonomy and shooting video (which must be 360 degrees and high definition.The real experience is irreplaceable, but this form of tourism can find many interesting applications and strengthen real tourism.In conclusion, we believe that not only this performances are now within the reach of our technical capabilities, but  they also represent an effective response to certain social and cultural issues. 

  19. Transduction between worlds: using virtual and mixed reality for earth and planetary science

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hedley, N.; Lochhead, I.; Aagesen, S.; Lonergan, C. D.; Benoy, N.

    2017-12-01

    Virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) have the potential to transform the way we visualize multidimensional geospatial datasets in support of geoscience research, exploration and analysis. The beauty of virtual environments is that they can be built at any scale, users can view them at many levels of abstraction, move through them in unconventional ways, and experience spatial phenomena as if they had superpowers. Similarly, augmented reality allows you to bring the power of virtual 3D data visualizations into everyday spaces. Spliced together, these interface technologies hold incredible potential to support 21st-century geoscience. In my ongoing research, my team and I have made significant advances to connect data and virtual simulations with real geographic spaces, using virtual environments, geospatial augmented reality and mixed reality. These research efforts have yielded new capabilities to connect users with spatial data and phenomena. These innovations include: geospatial x-ray vision; flexible mixed reality; augmented 3D GIS; situated augmented reality 3D simulations of tsunamis and other phenomena interacting with real geomorphology; augmented visual analytics; and immersive GIS. These new modalities redefine the ways in which we can connect digital spaces of spatial analysis, simulation and geovisualization, with geographic spaces of data collection, fieldwork, interpretation and communication. In a way, we are talking about transduction between real and virtual worlds. Taking a mixed reality approach to this, we can link real and virtual worlds. This paper presents a selection of our 3D geovisual interface projects in terrestrial, coastal, underwater and other environments. Using rigorous applied geoscience data, analyses and simulations, our research aims to transform the novelty of virtual and augmented reality interface technologies into game-changing mixed reality geoscience.

  20. The BladeMistress Corpus: From Talk to Action in Virtual Worlds

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    A. Leuski; C. Eickhoff (Carsten); J. Ganis; V.P. Lavrenko

    2012-01-01

    htmlabstractVirtual Worlds (VW) are online environments where people come together to interact and perform various tasks. The chat transcripts of interactions in VWs pose unique opportunities and challenges for language analysis: Firstly, the language of the transcripts is very brief, informal, and

  1. L2 Immersion in 3D Virtual Worlds: The Next Thing to Being There?

    Science.gov (United States)

    Paillat, Edith

    2014-01-01

    Second Life is one of the many three-dimensional virtual environments accessible through a computer and a fast broadband connection. Thousands of participants connect to this platform to interact virtually with the world, join international communities of practice and, for some, role play groups. Unlike online role play games however, Second Life…

  2. The power of Virtual Globes for valorising cultural heritage and enabling sustainable tourism: NASA World Wind applications

    Science.gov (United States)

    Brovelli, M.; Hogan, P.; Minghini, M.; Zamboni, G.

    2013-10-01

    Inspired by the visionary idea of Digital Earth, as well as from the tremendous improvements in geo-technologies, use of virtual globes has been changing the way people approach to geographic information on the Web. Unlike the traditional 2D-visualization typical of Geographic Information Systems (GIS), virtual globes offer multi-dimensional, fully-realistic content visualization which allows for a much richer user experience. This research investigates the potential for using virtual globes to foster tourism and enhance cultural heritage. The paper first outlines the state of the art for existing virtual globes, pointing out some possible categorizations according to license type, platform-dependence, application type, default layers, functionalities and freedom of customization. Based on this analysis, the NASA World Wind virtual globe is the preferred tool for promoting tourism and cultural heritage. This is because its open source nature allows unlimited customization (in terms of both data and functionalities), and its Java core supports platform-independence. Relevant tourism-oriented World Wind-based applications, dealing with both the Web promotion of historical cartography and the setup of a participatory Web platform exploiting crowd-sourced data, are described. Finally, the paper presents a project focusing on the promotion of the Via Regina area (crossing the border between Italy and Switzerland) through an ad hoc World Wind customization. World Wind can thus be considered an ideal virtual globe for tourism applications, as it can be shaped to increase awareness of cultural history and, in turn, enhance touristic experience.

  3. Designing and Developing Game-Like Learning Experience in Virtual Worlds: Challenges and Design Decisions of Novice Instructional Designers

    Science.gov (United States)

    Yilmaz, Turkan Karakus; Cagiltay, Kursat

    2016-01-01

    Many virtual worlds have been adopted for implementation within educational settings because they are potentially useful for building effective learning environments. Since the flexibility of virtual worlds challenges to obtain effective and efficient educational outcomes, the design of such platforms need more attention. In the present study, the…

  4. The feasibility and impact of delivering a mind-body intervention in a virtual world.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hoch, Daniel B; Watson, Alice J; Linton, Deborah A; Bello, Heather E; Senelly, Marco; Milik, Mariola T; Baim, Margaret A; Jethwani, Kamal; Fricchione, Gregory L; Benson, Herbert; Kvedar, Joseph C

    2012-01-01

    Mind-body medical approaches may ameliorate chronic disease. Stress reduction is particularly helpful, but face-to-face delivery systems cannot reach all those who might benefit. An online, 3-dimensional virtual world may be able to support the rich interpersonal interactions required of this approach. In this pilot study, we explore the feasibility of translating a face-to-face stress reduction program into an online virtual setting and estimate the effect size of the intervention. Domain experts in virtual world technology joined with mind body practitioners to translate an existing 8 week relaxation response-based resiliency program into an 8-week virtual world-based program in Second Life™ (SL). Twenty-four healthy volunteers with at least one month's experience in SL completed the program. Each subject filled out the Perceived Stress Scale (PSS) and the Symptom Checklist 90- Revised (SCL-90-R) before and after taking part. Participants took part in one of 3 groups of about 10 subjects. The participants found the program to be helpful and enjoyable. Many reported that the virtual environment was an excellent substitute for the preferred face-to-face approach. On quantitative measures, there was a general trend toward decreased perceived stress, (15.7 to 15.0), symptoms of depression, (57.6 to 57.0) and anxiety (56.8 to 54.8). There was a significant decrease of 2.8 points on the SCL-90-R Global Severity Index (pmind-body medical intervention through a virtual environment and that it is well received. Moreover, the small reduction in psychological distress suggests further research is warranted. Based on the data collected for this project, a randomized trial with less than 50 subjects would be appropriately powered if perceived stress is the primary outcome.

  5. The feasibility and impact of delivering a mind-body intervention in a virtual world.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Daniel B Hoch

    Full Text Available INTRODUCTION: Mind-body medical approaches may ameliorate chronic disease. Stress reduction is particularly helpful, but face-to-face delivery systems cannot reach all those who might benefit. An online, 3-dimensional virtual world may be able to support the rich interpersonal interactions required of this approach. In this pilot study, we explore the feasibility of translating a face-to-face stress reduction program into an online virtual setting and estimate the effect size of the intervention. METHODS AND FINDINGS: Domain experts in virtual world technology joined with mind body practitioners to translate an existing 8 week relaxation response-based resiliency program into an 8-week virtual world-based program in Second Life™ (SL. Twenty-four healthy volunteers with at least one month's experience in SL completed the program. Each subject filled out the Perceived Stress Scale (PSS and the Symptom Checklist 90- Revised (SCL-90-R before and after taking part. Participants took part in one of 3 groups of about 10 subjects. The participants found the program to be helpful and enjoyable. Many reported that the virtual environment was an excellent substitute for the preferred face-to-face approach. On quantitative measures, there was a general trend toward decreased perceived stress, (15.7 to 15.0, symptoms of depression, (57.6 to 57.0 and anxiety (56.8 to 54.8. There was a significant decrease of 2.8 points on the SCL-90-R Global Severity Index (p<0.05. CONCLUSIONS: This pilot project showed that it is feasible to deliver a typical mind-body medical intervention through a virtual environment and that it is well received. Moreover, the small reduction in psychological distress suggests further research is warranted. Based on the data collected for this project, a randomized trial with less than 50 subjects would be appropriately powered if perceived stress is the primary outcome.

  6. Toward Educational Virtual Worlds: Should Identity Federation Be a Concern?

    Science.gov (United States)

    Cruz, Gonçalo; Costa, António; Martins, Paulo; Gonçalves, Ramiro; Barroso, João

    2015-01-01

    3D Virtual Worlds are being used for education and training purposes in a cross-disciplinary way. However, its widespread adoption, particularly in formal learning contexts, is far from being a reality due a broad range of technological challenges. In this reflection paper, our main goal is to argue why and how identity federation should be…

  7. Knowledge Contribution in Virtual Communities: Accounting for Multiple Dimensions of Social Presence through Social Identity

    Science.gov (United States)

    Shen, Kathy Ning; Yu, Angela Yan; Khalifa, Mohamed

    2010-01-01

    Integrating social presence theory and social identity theory, this study brings system design and social influence aspects together to explain their joint effects on knowledge contribution in virtual communities (VCs). Different from most prior information systems (IS) research that adopts a uni-dimensional approach and restricts social presence…

  8. Social environments and interpersonal distance regulation in psychosis: A virtual reality study.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Geraets, Chris N W; van Beilen, Marije; Pot-Kolder, Roos; Counotte, Jacqueline; van der Gaag, Mark; Veling, Wim

    2018-02-01

    Experimentally studying the influence of social environments on mental health and behavior is challenging, as social context is difficult to standardize in laboratory settings. Virtual Reality (VR) enables studying social interaction in terms of interpersonal distance in a more ecologically valid manner. Regulation of interpersonal distance may be abnormal in patients with psychotic disorders and influenced by environmental stress, symptoms or distress. To investigate interpersonal distance in people with a psychotic disorder and at ultrahigh risk for psychosis (UHR) compared to siblings and controls in virtual social environments, and explore the relationship between clinical characteristics and interpersonal distance. Nineteen UHR patients, 52 patients with psychotic disorders, 40 siblings of patients with a psychotic disorder and 47 controls were exposed to virtual cafés. In five virtual café visits, participants were exposed to different levels of social stress, in terms of crowdedness, ethnicity and hostility. Measures on interpersonal distance, distress and state paranoia were obtained. Baseline measures included trait paranoia, social anxiety, depressive, positive and negative symptoms. Interpersonal distance increased when social stressors were present in the environment. No difference in interpersonal distance regulation was found between the groups. Social anxiety and distress were positively associated with interpersonal distance in the total sample. This VR paradigm indicates that interpersonal distance regulation in response to environmental social stressors is unaltered in people with psychosis or UHR. Environmental stress, social anxiety and distress trigger both people with and without psychosis to maintain larger interpersonal distances in social situations. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  9. The feasibility and acceptability of virtual environments in the treatment of childhood social anxiety disorder

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wong, Nina; Beidel, Deborah C.; Spitalnick, Josh

    2013-01-01

    Objective Two significant challenges for the dissemination of social skills training programs are the need to assure generalizability and provide sufficient practice opportunities. In the case of social anxiety disorder, virtual environments may provide one strategy to address these issues. This study evaluated the utility of an interactive virtual school environment for the treatment of social anxiety disorder in preadolescent children. Method Eleven children with a primary diagnosis of social anxiety disorder between 8 to 12 years old participated in this initial feasibility trial. All children were treated with Social Effectiveness Therapy for Children, an empirically supported treatment for children with social anxiety disorder. However, the in vivo peer generalization sessions and standard parent-assisted homework assignments were substituted by practice in a virtual environment. Results Overall, the virtual environment programs were acceptable, feasible, and credible treatment components. Both children and clinicians were satisfied with using the virtual environment technology, and children believed it was a high quality program overall. Additionally, parents were satisfied with the virtual environment augmented treatment and indicated that they would recommend the program to family and friends. Conclusion Virtual environments are viewed as acceptable and credible by potential recipients. Furthermore, they are easy to implement by even novice users and appear to be useful adjunctive elements for the treatment of childhood social anxiety disorder. PMID:24144182

  10. Social Media in Virtual Marketing

    OpenAIRE

    Jalees, Tariq; Tariq, Huma; Zaman, Syed Imran; Alam Kazmi, Syed Hasnain

    2015-01-01

    Social media usage in the world and especially in Pakistan has a high growth due to which it (social media) has a potential of becoming an effective marketing tool. Despite its comparatively low cost and significance, marketers are not effectively utilizing social media. Thus the aim of this study is to measure the influence (effect) of four social variables: social capital, trust, homophily and interpersonal influence on electronic word of mouth (eWOM) communication. The sample size for the stu...

  11. Copyright, Culture, and Community in Virtual Worlds

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Dan Burk

    2016-11-01

    Full Text Available Communities that interact on-line through computer games and other virtual worlds are mediated by the audiovisual content of the game interface. Much of this content is subject to copyright law, which confers on the copyright owner the legal right to prevent certain unauthorized uses of the content. Such exclusive rights impose a limiting factor on the development of communities that are situated around the interface content, as the rights, privileges, and exceptions associated with copyright generally tend to disregard the cultural significance of copyrighted content. This limiting effect of copyright is well illustrated by examination of the copying of content by virtual diaspora communities such as that formed around the game Uru: Ages of Myst; thus, the opportunity for on-line communities to legally access the graphical elements on which those communities are built is fraught with potential legal liability. This presents the reciprocal situation from efforts to protect the cultural properties of indigenous communities as traditional knowledge. Reconsideration of current copyright law would be required in order to accommodate the cohesion of on-line communities and related cultural uses of copyrighted content.

  12. Situating Pedagogies, Positions and Practices in Immersive Virtual Worlds.

    OpenAIRE

    Savin-Baden, Maggi; Gourlay, L.; Tombs, C.; Steils, N.; Tombs, G.; Mawer, M.

    2010-01-01

    Background: The literature on immersive virtual worlds and e-learning to date largely indicates that technology has led the pedagogy. Although rationales for implementing e-learning have included flexibility of provision and supporting diversity, none of these recommendations have helped to provide strong pedagogical location. Furthermore, there is little, if any, exploration of the kinds of e-learning spaces that are commonly adopted in higher education or the rationale for their use.\\ud \\ud...

  13. Enhance Learning on Software Project Management through a Role-Play Game in a Virtual World

    Science.gov (United States)

    Maratou, Vicky; Chatzidaki, Eleni; Xenos, Michalis

    2016-01-01

    This article presents a role-play game for software project management (SPM) in a three-dimensional online multiuser virtual world. The Opensimulator platform is used for the creation of an immersive virtual environment that facilitates students' collaboration and realistic interaction, in order to manage unexpected events occurring during the…

  14. Undergraduate Student Self-Efficacy and Perceptions of Virtual World Learning Experience

    Science.gov (United States)

    Stanton, Lorraine May

    2017-01-01

    Virtual worlds are innovative teaching and learning methods that can provide immersive and engaging learning experiences (Lu, 2010). Though they have potential benefits, students sometimes experience a steep learning curve and discomfort with the technology (Warburton, 2009). This study explored how students in two American Studies classes using…

  15. ATLAS Virtual Visits bringing the world into the ATLAS control room

    CERN Document Server

    AUTHOR|(CDS)2051192; The ATLAS collaboration; Yacoob, Sahal

    2016-01-01

    ATLAS Virtual Visits is a project initiated in 2011 for the Education & Outreach program of the ATLAS Experiment at CERN. Its goal is to promote public appreciation of the LHC physics program and particle physics, in general, through direct dialogue between ATLAS physicists and remote audiences. A Virtual Visit is an IP-based videoconference, coupled with a public webcast and video recording, between ATLAS physicists and remote locations around the world, that typically include high school or university classrooms, Masterclasses, science fairs, or other special events, usually hosted by collaboration members. Over the past two years, more than 10,000 people, from all of the world’s continents, have actively participated in ATLAS Virtual Visits, with many more enjoying the experience from the publicly available webcasts and recordings. We present an overview of our experience and discuss potential development for the future.

  16. Virtual reality in the treatment of persecutory delusions: randomised controlled experimental study testing how to reduce delusional conviction

    Science.gov (United States)

    Freeman, Daniel; Bradley, Jonathan; Antley, Angus; Bourke, Emilie; DeWeever, Natalie; Evans, Nicole; Černis, Emma; Sheaves, Bryony; Waite, Felicity; Dunn, Graham; Slater, Mel; Clark, David M.

    2016-01-01

    Background Persecutory delusions may be unfounded threat beliefs maintained by safety-seeking behaviours that prevent disconfirmatory evidence being successfully processed. Use of virtual reality could facilitate new learning. Aims To test the hypothesis that enabling patients to test the threat predictions of persecutory delusions in virtual reality social environments with the dropping of safety-seeking behaviours (virtual reality cognitive therapy) would lead to greater delusion reduction than exposure alone (virtual reality exposure). Method Conviction in delusions and distress in a real-world situation were assessed in 30 patients with persecutory delusions. Patients were then randomised to virtual reality cognitive therapy or virtual reality exposure, both with 30 min in graded virtual reality social environments. Delusion conviction and real-world distress were then reassessed. Results In comparison with exposure, virtual reality cognitive therapy led to large reductions in delusional conviction (reduction 22.0%, P = 0.024, Cohen's d = 1.3) and real-world distress (reduction 19.6%, P = 0.020, Cohen's d = 0.8). Conclusion Cognitive therapy using virtual reality could prove highly effective in treating delusions. PMID:27151071

  17. Analysis of real value of virtual currency in game World of Warcraft

    OpenAIRE

    Šilha, Daniel

    2015-01-01

    This bachelor thesis aims to analyze in its first part the price development of WoW token after its launching to the world markets. It seeks the origin of price shocks andidentifies common determinants for world markets with WoW token. The differences between world markets are also examined. The real value of virtual currency (gold) used in this game, is determined, based on the price of WoW token. Introduction of WoW token is aimed to reduce the power of black market. The impact of Wow token...

  18. Using Virtual Reality to Help Students with Social Interaction Skills

    Science.gov (United States)

    Beach, Jason; Wendt, Jeremy

    2015-01-01

    The purpose of this study was to determine if participants could improve their social interaction skills by participating in a virtual immersive environment. The participants used a developing virtual reality head-mounted display to engage themselves in a fully-immersive environment. While in the environment, participants had an opportunity to…

  19. Exploring the Relationship of Motivation, Anxiety, and Virtual Worlds in the Experiences of Two Spanish Language Learners: A Case Study

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wehner, Amy Katherine

    2014-01-01

    Virtual Worlds (VWs) in foreign language education are slowly becoming more popular. Many studies have looked at the affordances of these worlds and how they affect some aspects of language acquisition. However, it is still unknown to what extent, if any, these virtual worlds can play a role in affecting motivation and anxiety. The purpose of this…

  20. Promoting health in virtual worlds: lessons from second life.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Suomi, Reima; Mäntymäki, Matti; Söderlund, Sari

    2014-10-13

    Social media services can help empower people to take greater responsibility for their health. For example, virtual worlds are media-rich environments that have many technically advantageous characteristics that can be used for Health 2.0 purposes. Second Life has been used to build environments where people can obtain information and interact with other users for peer support and advice from health care professionals. The intent of the study was to find out whether Second Life is a working and functional platform supporting the empowerment of people in health-related issues. We conducted a review of the current health-related activity in Second Life, coupled with an extensive series of observations and interactions with the respective resources inside Second Life. A total of 24 operative health resources were found in Second Life, indicating that health-related activity is rather limited in Second Life, though at first glance it appears to contain very rich health-related content. The other main shortcomings of Second Life relate to a lack of activity, a low number of resource users, problems with Second Life's search features, and the difficulty of finding trustworthy information. For the average user, Second Life offers very little unique value compared to other online health resources.

  1. Circadian Rhythms in Socializing Propensity

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zhang, Cheng; Phang, Chee Wei; Zeng, Xiaohua; Wang, Ximeng; Xu, Yunjie; Huang, Yun; Contractor, Noshir

    2015-01-01

    Using large-scale interaction data from a virtual world, we show that people’s propensity to socialize (forming new social connections) varies by hour of the day. We arrive at our results by longitudinally tracking people’s friend-adding activities in a virtual world. Specifically, we find that people are most likely to socialize during the evening, at approximately 8 p.m. and 12 a.m., and are least likely to do so in the morning, at approximately 8 a.m. Such patterns prevail on weekdays and weekends and are robust to variations in individual characteristics and geographical conditions. PMID:26353080

  2. Circadian Rhythms in Socializing Propensity.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zhang, Cheng; Phang, Chee Wei; Zeng, Xiaohua; Wang, Ximeng; Xu, Yunjie; Huang, Yun; Contractor, Noshir

    2015-01-01

    Using large-scale interaction data from a virtual world, we show that people's propensity to socialize (forming new social connections) varies by hour of the day. We arrive at our results by longitudinally tracking people's friend-adding activities in a virtual world. Specifically, we find that people are most likely to socialize during the evening, at approximately 8 p.m. and 12 a.m., and are least likely to do so in the morning, at approximately 8 a.m. Such patterns prevail on weekdays and weekends and are robust to variations in individual characteristics and geographical conditions.

  3. Avatar-mediation and transformation of practice in a 3D virtual world

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Riis, Marianne

    2016-01-01

    The purpose of this study is to understand and conceptualize the transformation of a particular community of pedagogical practice based on the implementation of the 3D virtual world, Second Life™. The community setting is a course at the Danish online postgraduate Master's programme on ICT...... and Learning, which is formally situated at Aalborg University. The study is guided by two research questions focusing on the participants' responses to the avatar phenomenon and the design of the course. In order to conduct and theorize about the transformation of this community of practice due to the 3D....... In summary, the study contributes with knowledge about 3D Virtual Worlds, the influence of the avatar phenomenon and the consequences of 3D-remediation in relation to teaching and learning in online education. Based on the findings, a conceptual design model, a set of design principles, and a design...

  4. Virtual boundaries: ethical considerations for use of social media in social work.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kimball, Ericka; Kim, JaeRan

    2013-04-01

    In real life, we often use physical cues to help us identify our role and put the appropriate boundaries in place, but online it is more difficult to determine where our boundaries lie. This article provides and overview of various social media tools and uses along with personal and professional considerations to help in guiding the ethical use of social media tools. As the use of social media continues to grow, the importance of virtual boundaries will also rise. Therefore, proactive considerations that include policies and guidelines that encourage responsible and ethical use of social media are needed to help social workers mediate personal and professional boundaries.

  5. High psychosis liability is associated with altered autonomic balance during exposure to Virtual Reality social stressors.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Counotte, Jacqueline; Pot-Kolder, Roos; van Roon, Arie M; Hoskam, Olivier; van der Gaag, Mark; Veling, Wim

    2017-06-01

    Social stressors are associated with an increased risk of psychosis. Stress sensitisation is thought to be an underlying mechanism and may be reflected in an altered autonomic stress response. Using an experimental Virtual Reality design, the autonomic stress response to social stressors was examined in participants with different liability to psychosis. Fifty-five patients with recent onset psychotic disorder, 20 patients at ultra-high risk for psychosis, 42 siblings of patients with psychosis and 53 controls were exposed to social stressors (crowdedness, ethnic minority status and hostility) in a Virtual Reality environment. Heart rate variability parameters and skin conductance levels were measured at baseline and during Virtual Reality experiments. High psychosis liability groups had significantly increased heart rate and decreased heart rate variability compared to low liability groups both at baseline and during Virtual Reality experiments. Both low frequency (LF) and high frequency (HF) power were reduced, while the LF/HF ratio was similar between groups. The number of virtual social stressors significantly affected heart rate, HF, LF/HF and skin conductance level. There was no interaction between psychosis liability and amount of virtual social stress. High liability to psychosis is associated with decreased parasympathetic activity in virtual social environments, which reflects generally high levels of arousal, rather than increased autonomic reactivity to social stressors. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  6. PLEs from virtual ethnography to social web

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Luis Torres

    2011-12-01

    Full Text Available En este artículo se presenta una investigación exploratoria basada en la etnografía virtualdesde un entorno de investigación y aprendizaje con nuevas tecnologías. La etnografía esun método de investigación cualitativo de las ciencias sociales que es usadoprincipalmente en la antropología socio-cultural, donde tiene su fundamento teórico. Elobjetivo fue explorar la web 2.0 y sus herramientas desde la etnografía virtual. Elmétodo de investigación es basado en la etnografía virtual y la observación participante,la cual se realizó participando en comunidades virtuales y por medio de un blog y otrasherramientas 2.0. El resultado de la experiencia etnográfica es un modelo descriptivo dela web 2.0 basado en un Entorno Personal de Aprendizaje (PLE.

  7. Factors influencing purchase intent in virtual worlds : a review of the literature

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Bleize, Danielle; Antheunis, Marjolijn

    2016-01-01

    Previous empirical studies have identified several factors that seem to play a role in determining purchase intent in virtual worlds; three-dimensional online environments in which users interact while represented by their avatars. So far however, a clear overview of these factors is lacking, and

  8. Virtual First Impressions Matter: The Effect of Social Networking Sites on Impression Formation in Virtual Teams

    Science.gov (United States)

    Cummings, Jeffrey

    2012-01-01

    The introduction of social media has changed the way individuals communicate and collaborate both within and outside the organization. While social media has the potential to change how organizations interact internally, minimal research has examined the impact this media may have within a virtual team environment. This dissertation examines a…

  9. Childhood trauma, psychosis liability and social stress reactivity: a virtual reality study.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Veling, W; Counotte, J; Pot-Kolder, R; van Os, J; van der Gaag, M

    2016-12-01

    Childhood trauma is associated with higher risk for mental disorders, including psychosis. Heightened sensitivity to social stress may be a mechanism. This virtual reality study tested the effect of childhood trauma on level of paranoid ideations and distress in response to social stress, in interaction with psychosis liability and level of social stress exposure. Seventy-five individuals with higher psychosis liability (55 with recent onset psychotic disorder and 20 at ultra-high risk for psychosis) and 95 individuals with lower psychosis liability (42 siblings and 53 controls) were exposed to a virtual café in five experiments with 0-3 social stressors (crowded, other ethnicity and hostility). Paranoid ideation was measured after each experiment. Subjective distress was self-rated before and after experiments. Multilevel random regression analyses were used to test main effects of childhood trauma and interaction effects. Childhood trauma was more prevalent in individuals with higher psychosis liability, and was associated with higher level of (subclinical) psychotic and affective symptoms. Individuals with a history of childhood trauma responded with more subjective distress to virtual social stress exposures. The effects of childhood trauma on paranoia and subjective distress were significantly stronger when the number of virtual environmental stressors increased. Higher psychosis liability increased the effect of childhood trauma on peak subjective distress and stress reactivity during experiments. Childhood trauma is associated with heightened social stress sensitivity and may contribute to psychotic and affective dysregulation later in life, through a sensitized paranoid and stress response to social stressors.

  10. Socially anxious and confident men interact with a forward virtual woman: an experimental study.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Xueni Pan

    Full Text Available Male volunteers entered an immersive virtual reality that depicted a party, where they were approached by a lone virtual woman who initiated a conversation. The goal was to study how socially anxious and socially confident men would react to this event. Interest focused on whether the socially anxious participants would exhibit sustained anxiety during the conversation or whether this would diminish over time, and differ from the responses of the more socially confident men.The scenario was a party with five virtual characters, four sitting at a distance from the participant and talking amongst themselves and one lone woman standing closer. The woman approached the participant, introduced herself and initiated a conversation that was first about mundane matters and then became more personal and intimate. Participants were men who were either relatively socially confident (18 or socially anxious in their relationships with women (18. A second experimental factor was whether or not the other four characters occasionally looked towards the participant. There was a post-trial questionnaire about social anxiety in relation to the experience, and skin conductance and ECG physiological measures were recorded. Our expectation was that the socially anxious participants would show greater anxiety throughout.Compared to baseline readings both socially confident and socially anxious groups on average showed signs of significantly increased stress at the initial approach of the virtual woman. The stress then diminished once the conversation entered into the mundane phase and then did not significantly change. Comparing pre- and post-questionnaire anxiety scores there was no change for the more confident participants but a significant decrease in average score amongst the anxious group. The methodology of placing socially anxious participants in a virtual reality where they can gain experience of how to act in a stressful situation promises a novel way

  11. Socially Anxious and Confident Men Interact with a Forward Virtual Woman: An Experimental Study

    Science.gov (United States)

    Pan, Xueni; Gillies, Marco; Barker, Chris; Clark, David M.; Slater, Mel

    2012-01-01

    Background Male volunteers entered an immersive virtual reality that depicted a party, where they were approached by a lone virtual woman who initiated a conversation. The goal was to study how socially anxious and socially confident men would react to this event. Interest focused on whether the socially anxious participants would exhibit sustained anxiety during the conversation or whether this would diminish over time, and differ from the responses of the more socially confident men. Methodology The scenario was a party with five virtual characters, four sitting at a distance from the participant and talking amongst themselves and one lone woman standing closer. The woman approached the participant, introduced herself and initiated a conversation that was first about mundane matters and then became more personal and intimate. Participants were men who were either relatively socially confident (18) or socially anxious in their relationships with women (18). A second experimental factor was whether or not the other four characters occasionally looked towards the participant. There was a post-trial questionnaire about social anxiety in relation to the experience, and skin conductance and ECG physiological measures were recorded. Our expectation was that the socially anxious participants would show greater anxiety throughout. Conclusions Compared to baseline readings both socially confident and socially anxious groups on average showed signs of significantly increased stress at the initial approach of the virtual woman. The stress then diminished once the conversation entered into the mundane phase and then did not significantly change. Comparing pre- and post-questionnaire anxiety scores there was no change for the more confident participants but a significant decrease in average score amongst the anxious group. The methodology of placing socially anxious participants in a virtual reality where they can gain experience of how to act in a stressful situation promises

  12. Planos de realidad, identidad virtual y discurso en las redes sociales

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Jesús Portillo Fernández

    2016-06-01

    Full Text Available The purpose of this study is to describe the levels of reality in the use of social networks and instant messaging services, the user’s identity and some key discursive mechanisms of communication on the web. An analysis of the parallel relationship between physical reality and virtual enviroments; static identity and e-showcasing on social networks; and the role of the monologue, the context and topoi in cyber-speech was conducted. The study of the tools for interaction in social networks as well as the discursive intentions highlighted the development of projection and participation strategies, a change of identity (an ongoing replacement of physical identity with virtual identity and massive information rather than knowledge. There seemed to be a need to manage massive data because of the plural, emerging reality, the possibility to create an immutable digital identity and the use of virtual environments as communicative launchers rather than as interactive environments.

  13. Usalpharma: A Cloud-Based Architecture to Support Quality Assurance Training Processes in Health Area Using Virtual Worlds

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Francisco J. García-Peñalvo

    2014-01-01

    Full Text Available This paper discusses how cloud-based architectures can extend and enhance the functionality of the training environments based on virtual worlds and how, from this cloud perspective, we can provide support to analysis of training processes in the area of health, specifically in the field of training processes in quality assurance for pharmaceutical laboratories, presenting a tool for data retrieval and analysis that allows facing the knowledge discovery in the happenings inside the virtual worlds.

  14. Usalpharma: A Cloud-Based Architecture to Support Quality Assurance Training Processes in Health Area Using Virtual Worlds

    Science.gov (United States)

    García-Peñalvo, Francisco J.; Pérez-Blanco, Jonás Samuel; Martín-Suárez, Ana

    2014-01-01

    This paper discusses how cloud-based architectures can extend and enhance the functionality of the training environments based on virtual worlds and how, from this cloud perspective, we can provide support to analysis of training processes in the area of health, specifically in the field of training processes in quality assurance for pharmaceutical laboratories, presenting a tool for data retrieval and analysis that allows facing the knowledge discovery in the happenings inside the virtual worlds. PMID:24778593

  15. The Benefits and Barriers of Using Virtual Worlds to Engage Healthcare Professionals on Distance Learning Programmes

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hack, Catherine Jane

    2016-01-01

    Using the delivery of a large postgraduate distance learning module in bioethics to health professionals as an illustrative example, the type of learning activity that could be enhanced through delivery in an immersive virtual world (IVW) was explored. Several activities were repurposed from the "traditional" virtual learning environment…

  16. Bringing the Real World in: Reflection on Building a Virtual Learning Environment

    Science.gov (United States)

    Mundkur, Anuradha; Ellickson, Cara

    2012-01-01

    We reflect on translating participatory and experiential learning methodologies into an online teaching environment through a Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) that simulates the "real-world" contexts of international development in order to develop an applied critical understanding of gender analysis and gender mainstreaming. Rather than being…

  17. The man, the machine and the sacred: when the virtual reality reenchants the world

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Olivier NANNIPIERI

    2011-01-01

    Full Text Available The rationality associated with the technical progress were able to let believe that the world became disillusioned. Now, far from disillusioning the world, certain technical devices reveal the sacred dimension inherent to any human activity. Indeed, paradoxically, we shall show that the human-machine interaction producing virtual environments is an experience of the sacred.

  18. Virtual Exploratories

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Jensen, Sisse Siggaard

    2006-01-01

    -systems, the paper introduces the designing strategy referred to as virtual exploratories. Some of the advanced virtual worlds may inspire the design of such provoking and challenging virtual exploratories, and especially the Massively Multi-User Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPGS). However, if we have to learn from...... the design and activity of the advanced virtual worlds and role-playing games, then the empirical research on the actors’ activity, while they are acting, is an important precondition to it. A step towards the conception of such a designing strategy for virtual exploratories is currently pursued....... [1] The research project: Actors and Avatars Communicating in Virtual Worlds – an Empirical Analysis of Actors’ Sense-making Strategies When Based on a Communication Theoretical Approach’ (2006-2007) is supported...

  19. Virtual hand: a 3D tactile interface to virtual environments

    Science.gov (United States)

    Rogowitz, Bernice E.; Borrel, Paul

    2008-02-01

    We introduce a novel system that allows users to experience the sensation of touch in a computer graphics environment. In this system, the user places his/her hand on an array of pins, which is moved about space on a 6 degree-of-freedom robot arm. The surface of the pins defines a surface in the virtual world. This "virtual hand" can move about the virtual world. When the virtual hand encounters an object in the virtual world, the heights of the pins are adjusted so that they represent the object's shape, surface, and texture. A control system integrates pin and robot arm motions to transmit information about objects in the computer graphics world to the user. It also allows the user to edit, change and move the virtual objects, shapes and textures. This system provides a general framework for touching, manipulating, and modifying objects in a 3-D computer graphics environment, which may be useful in a wide range of applications, including computer games, computer aided design systems, and immersive virtual worlds.

  20. Virtual Trondheim: A Virtual Environment for Tourism and Education

    OpenAIRE

    Jose, Dawn Alphonse

    2015-01-01

    The purpose of this study is to investigate whether educational activities in tourism can be supported by virtual reality technologies, using virtual world frameworks. Settings of virtual world of SecondLife and a recent Virtual Reality technology known as Oculus Rift were used in the thesis work with the city of Trondheim as the main context. Theoretical studies on Virtual Reality systems were conducted and data for the research were obtained through empirical studies condu...

  1. Unwritten rules: virtual bargaining underpins social interaction, culture, and society.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Misyak, Jennifer B; Melkonyan, Tigran; Zeitoun, Hossam; Chater, Nick

    2014-10-01

    Many social interactions require humans to coordinate their behavior across a range of scales. However, aspects of intentional coordination remain puzzling from within several approaches in cognitive science. Sketching a new perspective, we propose that the complex behavioral patterns - or 'unwritten rules' - governing such coordination emerge from an ongoing process of 'virtual bargaining'. Social participants behave on the basis of what they would agree to do if they were explicitly to bargain, provided the agreement that would arise from such discussion is commonly known. Although intuitively simple, this interpretation has implications for understanding a broad spectrum of social, economic, and cultural phenomena (including joint action, team reasoning, communication, and language) that, we argue, depend fundamentally on the virtual bargains themselves. Copyright © 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.

  2. Virtual Relationship Violence and Perspectives on Punishment: Do Gender or Nationality Matter?

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Alison Marganski

    2013-06-01

    Full Text Available Given the increasingly popular use of socially interactive technology (SIT, it is believed that the way in which individuals communicate and experience relationships has drastically been changing. For those who partake in this electronic world, damaging behaviors akin to those found in the real world have emerged. Yet, we know little about the extent of these behaviors in the context of romantic relationships, especially from a gender or cultural standpoint. Research on dating violence generally indicates that women experience in-person victimization at higher rates than men, although some research has called this into question. It also suggests that some national groups experience higher rates of violence than others. However, research is almost non-existent when it comes to exploring violence in the digital world. This study investigated gender and nationality in (1 the nature and extent of socially interactive intimate violence, and (2 perceptions of the seriousness of virtual relationship violence. Using a sample of students from the United States and Poland, findings revealed that socially interactive technology may serve as a new avenue for aggressing against partners, as virtual relationship violence was not uncommon and reflected some patterns present in the real world. Some unexpected patterns also emerged. The results of this research signal a possible transferability of covert intimate violence and highlight ways in which inequalities may exist in our virtual worlds.

  3. La confianza de los adolescentes escolarizados en las redes sociales virtuales

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Angela Marcela Soler Fonseca

    2016-10-01

    Full Text Available Este artículo hace aproximación a la realidad de la confianza que se da en las relaciones generadas desde las redes sociales y aplicaciones virtuales más usadas por los adolescentes escolarizados, en los instituciones educativas de Tunja. El fortalecimiento de la confianza cumple una función dinamizadora de formación social y ciudadana en las relaciones escolares, y marcan un derrotero que da respuesta a las complejidades de la convivencia escolar, inclusive a aquellas de la virtualidad que trascienden las instituciones educativas. El estudio de caso múltiple se llevó a cabo en dos instituciones educativas: una privada católica y otra pública laica; ambas con horizonte institucional basado en la formación humana y caracterizadas por la convergencia cultural de sus actores. La investigación mixta, pudo contrastar las voces de los usuarios de estos medios, con los datos cuantitativos y cualitativos obtenidos. Se concluye que los adolescentes escolarizados confían medianamente en las relaciones generadas en las redes sociales virtuales; es decir, han provocado un pensamiento crítico de las mismas, que promueve la prevención y el autocuidado en la Red. Así mismo, la red social virtual más usada es Facebook y la aplicación móvil virtual con mayor aceptación es WhatsApp, las cuales son manejadas en y para la socialización escolar.

  4. Social influence on evacuation behavior in real and virtual environments

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Max Kinateder

    2016-07-01

    Full Text Available Virtual reality (VR is a promising tool to study evacuation behavior as it allows experimentally controlled, safe simulation of otherwise dangerous situations. However, validation studies comparing evacuation behavior in real and virtual environments are still scarce. We compare the decision to evacuate in response to a fire alarm in matched physical and virtual environments. 150 participants were tested individually in a one-trial experiment in one of three conditions. In the Control condition, the fire alarm sounded while the participant performed a bogus perceptual matching task. In the Passive bystander condition, the participant performed the task together with a confederate who ignored the fire alarm. In the Active bystander condition, the confederate left the room when the fire alarm went off. Half of the participants in each condition experienced the scenario in the real laboratory, and the other half in a matched virtual environment with a virtual bystander, presented in a head-mounted display. The active bystander group was more likely to evacuate, and the passive bystander group less likely to evacuate, than the control group. This pattern of social influence was observed in both the real and virtual environments, although the overall response to the virtual alarm was reduced; positive influence was comparable, whereas negative influence was weaker in VR. We found no reliable gender effects for the participant or the bystander. These findings extend the bystander effect to the decision to evacuate, revealing a positive as well as the previous negative social influence. The results support the ecological validity of VR as a research tool to study evacuation behavior in emergency situations, with the caveat that effect sizes may be smaller in VR.

  5. Virtually Out of This World!

    Science.gov (United States)

    2002-01-01

    Ames Research Center granted Reality Capture Technologies (RCT), Inc., a license to further develop NASA's Mars Map software platform. The company incorporated NASA#s innovation into software that uses the Virtual Plant Model (VPM)(TM) to structure, modify, and implement the construction sites of industrial facilities, as well as develop, validate, and train operators on procedures. The VPM orchestrates the exchange of information between engineering, production, and business transaction systems. This enables users to simulate, control, and optimize work processes while increasing the reliability of critical business decisions. Engineers can complete the construction process and test various aspects of it in virtual reality before building the actual structure. With virtual access to and simulation of the construction site, project personnel can manage, access control, and respond to changes on complex constructions more effectively. Engineers can also create operating procedures, training, and documentation. Virtual Plant Model(TM) is a trademark of Reality Capture Technologies, Inc.

  6. Evaluating the Usability of Pinchigator, a system for Navigating Virtual Worlds using Pinch Gloves

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hamilton, George S.; Brookman, Stephen; Dumas, Joseph D. II; Tilghman, Neal

    2003-01-01

    Appropriate design of two dimensional user interfaces (2D U/I) utilizing the well known WIMP (Window, Icon, Menu, Pointing device) environment for computer software is well studied and guidance can be found in several standards. Three-dimensional U/I design is not nearly so mature as 2D U/I, and standards bodies have not reached consensus on what makes a usable interface. This is especially true when the tools for interacting with the virtual environment may include stereo viewing, real time trackers and pinch gloves instead of just a mouse & keyboard. Over the last several years the authors have created a 3D U/I system dubbed Pinchigator for navigating virtual worlds based on the dVise dV/Mockup visualization software, Fakespace Pinch Gloves and Pohlemus trackers. The current work is to test the usability of the system on several virtual worlds, suggest improvements to increase Pinchigator s usability, and then to generalize about what was learned and how those lessons might be applied to improve other 3D U/I systems.

  7. When "Teaching a Class of Daemons, Dragons and Trainee Teachers"--Learning the Pedagogy of the Virtual Classroom

    Science.gov (United States)

    Woollard, John

    2012-01-01

    Virtual worlds can offer opportunities to further extend the experience, skills and understanding of professionals, in this case pre-service teachers. Based on the empirical evidence provided by professional, pre-service teachers, this paper describes the social and emotional aspects of being and learning in a virtual world and the implications…

  8. [Learning about social determinants of health through chronicles, using a virtual learning environment].

    Science.gov (United States)

    Restrepo-Palacio, Sonia; Amaya-Guio, Jairo

    2016-01-01

    To describe the contributions of a pedagogical strategy based on the construction of chronicles, using a Virtual Learning Environment for training medical students from Universidad de La Sabana on social determinants of health. Descriptive study with a qualitative approach. Design and implementation of a Virtual Learning Environment based on the ADDIE instructional model. A Virtual Learning Environment was implemented with an instructional design based on the five phases of the ADDIE model, on the grounds of meaningful learning and social constructivism, and through the narration of chronicles or life stories as a pedagogical strategy. During the course, the structural determinants and intermediaries were addressed, and nine chronicles were produced by working groups made up of four or five students, who demonstrated meaningful learning from real life stories, presented a coherent sequence, and kept a thread; 82% of these students incorporated in their contents most of the social determinants of health, emphasizing on the concepts of equity or inequity, equality or inequality, justice or injustice and social cohesion. A Virtual Learning Environment, based on an appropriate instructional design, allows to facilitate learning of social determinants of health through a constructivist pedagogical approach by analyzing chronicles or life stories created by ninth-semester students of medicine from Universidad de La Sabana.

  9. Social networks: communication and change

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Gustavo Cardoso

    2011-01-01

    Full Text Available Virtual social networks have brought about the possibility for open and plural debate, where all those with the necessary literacy skills and means are able to participate in the creation and dissemination of information. By pressing political agents and determining the “agenda” of a lot of the media, users demonstrate that we stand at an ideal platform for creating both real social movements and more or less fleeting events, as manifestos or virtual campaigns. Nonetheless, in order to understand the role of virtual social networks in today’s world, we need to answer some prior questions. Are we facing a new communication model, whereby the product of “disinterested” interactivity creates an aura of confidence in disseminated information, often quite higher that that seen in the “old media”? Will that interactivity be a chance to fight-off citizens’ growing detachment with regard to the “res publica”? Will we find in citizen-made journalism, transmitted through virtual social networks, the consecration of a true fourth power? On the other hand, can we call the distinct collective movements we have seen emerging true “social movements”?The present article aims to examine this and other issues that come to the fore in the intricate social world of cyberspace.

  10. Cross-cultural assessment of automatically generated multimodal referring expressions in a virtual world

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    van der Sluis, Ielka; Luz, Saturnino; Breitfuss, Werner; Ishizuka, Mitsuru; Prendinger, Helmut

    This paper presents an assessment of automatically generated multimodal referring expressions as produced by embodied conversational agents in a virtual world. The algorithm used for this purpose employs general principles of human motor control and cooperativity in dialogues that can be

  11. Interweaving interactions in virtual worlds: a case study.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Cantamesse, Matteo; Galimberti, Carlo; Giacoma, Gianandrea

    2011-01-01

    The aim of this study was to examine the effect of playing the online game World of Warcraft (WoW), both on adolescent's (effective) social interaction and on the competence they developed on it. Social interactions within the game environment have been investigated by integrating qualitative and quantitative methods: conversation analysis and social network analysis (SNA). From a psychosocial point of view, the in-game interactions, and in particular conversational exchanges, turn out to be a collaborative path of the joint definition of identities and social ties, with reflection on in-game processes and out-game relationship.

  12. The interplay of physical and social wellbeing in older adults: investigating the relationship between physical training and social interactions with virtual social environments

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Iman Khaghani Far

    2015-11-01

    Full Text Available Background. Regular physical activity can substantially improve the physical wellbeing of older adults, preventing several chronic diseases and increasing cognitive performance and mood. However, research has shown that older adults are the most sedentary segment of society, spending much of their time seated or inactive. A variety of barriers make it difficult for older adults to maintain an active lifestyle, including logistical difficulties in going to a gym (for some adults, leaving home can be challenging, reduced functional abilities, and lack of motivation. In this paper, we report on the design and evaluation of Gymcentral. A training application running on tablet was designed to allow older adults to follow a personalized home-based exercise program while being remotely assisted by a coach. The objective of the study was to assess if a virtual gym that enables virtual presence and social interaction is more motivating for training than the same virtual gym without social interaction.Methods. A total of 37 adults aged between 65 and 87 years old (28 females and 9 males, mean age = 71, sd = 5.8 followed a personalized home-based strength and balance training plan for eight weeks. The participants performed the exercises autonomously at home using the Gymcentral application. Participants were assigned to two training groups: the Social group used an application with persuasive and social functionalities, while the Control group used a basic version of the service with no persuasive and social features. We further explored the effects of social facilitation, and in particular of virtual social presence, in user participation to training sessions. Outcome measures were adherence, persistence and co-presence rate.Results. Participants in the Social group attended significantly more exercise sessions than the Control group, providing evidence of a better engagement in the training program. Besides the focus on social persuasion measures, the

  13. Las redes sociales virtuales como espacios de ocio digital

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Viñals Blanco, Ana

    2013-06-01

    Full Text Available En español: Vivimos en una sociedad digital donde los hábitos y estilos de vida se han visto transformados debido al desarrollo de Internet y las nuevas Tecnologías de la Información y la Comunicación (TIC. El ocio, entendido en este artículo como experiencia de desarrollo humano (Cuenca, 2000 y ámbito vital, tampoco se ha resistido a la influencia de la tecnología y la esfera virtual, dando pié a la generación de nuevos ocios virtuales entre los que destaca el uso de las redes sociales. Son parte de las nuevas prácticas de ocio de los jóvenes españoles y los nuevos formatos de entretenimiento. Fundamentándonos en el modo de entender el ocio del Instituto de Estudios de Ocio de la Universidad de Deusto y en la dicotomía de ocio serio y ocio casual defendida por Stebbins (2008, pretendemos dar respuesta a los siguientes planteamientos: ¿de qué manera ha influido la revolución digital en el ámbito del ocio?, ¿nos encontramos ante nuevos formatos de entretenimiento de carácter consumista o bien ante prácticas de ocio digital que fomentan el desarrollo personal? Esto nos llevará a analizar los usos que los jóvenes pertenecientes a la generación digital hacen de las redes sociales virtuales. In english: We live in a digital society where habits and lifestyles have been transformed by the development of the Internet and New Technologies of Information and Communication (ICT. Leisure, understood in this article as an experience of human development (Cuenca, 2000 and vital area, neither has resisted the influence of technology and the virtual sphere, and that caused the generation of new virtual leisures, among which the most important is the use of social networks. They are part of the new leisure practices of Spanish young people and new entertainment formats. Based on the way of understanding the concept of leisure inherent to Institute of Leisure Studies of the University of Deusto and the dichotomy between of serious

  14. Mixed Methods for Mixed Reality: Understanding Users' Avatar Activities in Virtual Worlds

    Science.gov (United States)

    Feldon, David F.; Kafai, Yasmin B.

    2008-01-01

    This paper examines the use of mixed methods for analyzing users' avatar-related activities in a virtual world. Server logs recorded keystroke-level activity for 595 participants over a six-month period in Whyville.net, an informal science website. Participants also completed surveys and participated in interviews regarding their experiences.…

  15. Model to Implement Virtual Computing Labs via Cloud Computing Services

    OpenAIRE

    Washington Luna Encalada; José Luis Castillo Sequera

    2017-01-01

    In recent years, we have seen a significant number of new technological ideas appearing in literature discussing the future of education. For example, E-learning, cloud computing, social networking, virtual laboratories, virtual realities, virtual worlds, massive open online courses (MOOCs), and bring your own device (BYOD) are all new concepts of immersive and global education that have emerged in educational literature. One of the greatest challenges presented to e-learning solutions is the...

  16. Dutton, Davies, and Imaginative Virtual Worlds: The Current State of Evolutionary Aesthetics

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Joseph Carroll

    2013-12-01

    Full Text Available This paper is a commentary comparing the evolutionary perspectives of Denis Dutton’s The Art Instinct (2009 and Stephen Davies’s The Artful Species (2012. Their topics thus necessarily overlap, but their books have different purposes and a different feel. Davies’s book is an academic exercise. He has no real arguments or claims of his own. Dutton wishes to demonstrate that evolutionary psychology can provide a satisfying naturalistic explanation of aesthetic experience. Neither Davies nor Dutton fully succeeds in his ambition. Davies extends his scepticism well beyond a sensible account of the state of current knowledge about human evolution, and Dutton fails to recognize underlying theoretical differences in his main sources of theoretical inspiration. The limitations in these two works do not define the boundaries of current knowledge in evolutionary aesthetics. The most advanced and adequate concept in the evolutionary humanities is the idea that humans evolved the capacity to create imaginative virtual worlds and use those worlds to guide human behaviour. Both books being considered in this essay approach the idea of imaginative virtual worlds and almost grasp it. Before taking up that topic, the paper shall discuss two subsidiary issues: Dutton’s effort to incorporate sexual selection, and Davies’s sceptical negations about all evolutionary knowledge.

  17. Habilidades sociales en entornos virtuales de trabajo colaborativo

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Nallilda Villasana

    2007-12-01

    Full Text Available Este estudio se incluye dentro de la temática de investigación de las Tecnologías de la Información y la Comunicación, el diseño e implementación de metodologías de aprendizaje colaborativo y la promoción de habilidades sociales en estudiantes de nivel superior. El estudio fue de tipo exploratorio y se inserta dentro de los propósitos de la investigación preexperimental. Se administró un tratamiento al grupo y se midieron varias variables para observar el aprendizaje logrado a partir de la aplicación de una metodología de trabajo colaborativo basado en el Aprendizaje por Proyectos, la opinión de los estudiantes sobre la importancia del trabajo colaborativo y las habilidades sociales que evidenciaron a través del entorno virtual utilizado. Los resultados mostraron que una metodología de trabajo colaborativo basada en el aprendizaje por proyectos y mediada a través de un entorno virtual, promueve el desarrollo de habilidades sociales de conversación, y de aceptación y oposición asertiva en los estudiantes.

  18. Reduced activation in the mirror neuron system during a virtual social cognition task in euthymic bipolar disorder.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kim, Eosu; Jung, Young-Chul; Ku, Jeonghun; Kim, Jae-Jin; Lee, Hyeongrae; Kim, So Young; Kim, Sun I; Cho, Hyun-Sang

    2009-11-13

    Social cognition entails both cognitive and affective processing, and impairments in both have accounted for residual symptoms of bipolar disorder (BD). However, there has been a lack of studies identifying neural substrates responsible for social cognitive difficulties in BD patients. Fourteen euthymic BD patients and 14 healthy normal controls underwent functional MRI while performing a virtual reality social cognition task, which incorporated both cognitive and emotional dimensions, simulating real-world social situations. During the scanning, subjects tried to guess (attribute) possible reasons for expressed emotion of virtual humans (avatars) while viewing their facial expressions, just after observing their verbal and nonverbal (facial) expressions which were emotionally valenced (happy, angry and neutral). BD patients compared to normal controls showed delayed reaction times in emotional conditions, with comparable response accuracy. Healthy normal controls activated the right anterior cingulate cortex, inferior frontal, and insular cortex in emotional conditions contrasted with neutral control conditions, that is, the regions that have been related to empathic processes during viewing others' emotional expression. Relative to normal controls, BD patients showed reduced activations in the 'mirror neuron system', including the right inferior frontal cortex, premotor cortex, and insula, mainly in angry or happy condition. These results may suggest that, even during euthymic state, BD patients have difficulties in recruiting brain regions for the utilization of emotional cues as a means for understanding others. Clinical attention should be paid to emotion-related residual symptoms to help improve social outcomes in these patients.

  19. Peer mentoring – is a virtual form of support a viable alternative?

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Pat Gannon-Leary

    2011-12-01

    Full Text Available Support systems are vital for university entrants and one established means of support is peer mentoring, which has the potential to improve student engagement and retention. Peer mentoring models are generally based on face-to-face contact. However, given the increasing number of higher education institutions using social media, might online models be beneficial in a peer mentoring context? This article describes a literature review and case study that considers the advantages and disadvantages of three potential virtual models to facilitate a peer mentoring scheme. The case study, undertaken at Northumbria University, UK, involved an investigation of mentoring needs and current usage of electronic media where special attention is afforded to a diverse student body. The three models discussed are virtual learning environments (VLE, social networking sites and virtual worlds. We find that the VLE is established within institutions but lacks excitement; social networking is popular particularly with younger students but there may be resentment if this appears to be appropriated by the institution; whilst virtual worlds are unfamiliar to many students and require advanced skills to use successfully. Based on these findings the social networking model is now being run as a pilot study by business programmes at Northumbria University.

  20. Restructuring Searle's Making the Social World

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Hindriks, Frank

    Institutions are normative social structures that are collectively accepted. In his book Making the Social World, John R. Searle maintains that these social structures are created and maintained by Status Function Declarations. The article's author criticizes this claim and argues, first, that

  1. The Real World and Virtual Worlds.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Glaser, Stan

    1997-01-01

    Discusses some of the limitations of virtual reality (VR) with reference to socio-technical systems, i.e., the interaction of people with technology. Points to a significant opportunity for VR technology to be used in strategic partnership marketing and supply chain management. (Author/LRW)

  2. Teaching and Learning Logic Programming in Virtual Worlds Using Interactive Microworld Representations

    Science.gov (United States)

    Vosinakis, Spyros; Anastassakis, George; Koutsabasis, Panayiotis

    2018-01-01

    Logic Programming (LP) follows the declarative programming paradigm, which novice students often find hard to grasp. The limited availability of visual teaching aids for LP can lead to low motivation for learning. In this paper, we present a platform for teaching and learning Prolog in Virtual Worlds, which enables the visual interpretation and…

  3. Virtual Reality Social Cognition Training for Young Adults with High-Functioning Autism

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kandalaft, Michelle R.; Didehbani, Nyaz; Krawczyk, Daniel C.; Allen, Tandra T.; Chapman, Sandra B.

    2013-01-01

    Few evidence-based social interventions exist for young adults with high-functioning autism, many of whom encounter significant challenges during the transition into adulthood. The current study investigated the feasibility of an engaging Virtual Reality Social Cognition Training intervention focused on enhancing social skills, social cognition,…

  4. Using Virtual Pets to Increase Fruit and Vegetable Consumption in Children: A Technology-Assisted Social Cognitive Theory Approach.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ahn, Sun Joo Grace; Johnsen, Kyle; Moore, James; Brown, Scott; Biersmith, Melanie; Ball, Catherine

    2016-02-01

    A virtual pet in the form of a mid-sized dog was developed based on the framework of social cognitive theory and tested as a vehicle for promoting fruit and vegetable (F&V) consumption in children. Three groups of children (N = 68) between the ages of 7 and 13 years were studied: baseline (no treatment), computer only, and virtual dog. Children in the virtual dog condition interacted with the virtual dog for 3 days, setting F&V consumption goals and receiving evaluation and reinforcement based on whether they met their self-set goals. Children vicariously experienced future health outcomes of F&V consumption by seeing, hearing, and feeling their virtual dog's physical and mental health improve or deteriorate based on their F&V consumption in the physical world. Children in the computer only condition interacted with a computer system that presented equivalent features, but without the virtual dog. Children in the baseline condition did not receive any experimental treatment. Results indicated that children in the virtual dog condition chose to be served significantly more F&V than those in the computer only or baseline conditions did. However, children in the virtual dog condition were unable to consume significantly more F&V than those in the computer only condition, although children in those two conditions consumed more F&V than the baseline condition. Food preferences did not differ significantly across the three conditions before and after the experimental treatments. Theoretical and practical potentials of using a virtual pet to promote F&V consumption systematically in children are discussed.

  5. Virtual reality therapy versus cognitive behavior therapy for social phobia: a preliminary controlled study.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Klinger, E; Bouchard, S; Légeron, P; Roy, S; Lauer, F; Chemin, I; Nugues, P

    2005-02-01

    Social phobia is one of the most frequent mental disorders and is accessible to two forms of scientifically validated treatments: anti-depressant drugs and cognitive behavior therapies (CBT). In this last case, graded exposure to feared social situations is one of the fundamental therapeutic ingredients. Virtual reality technologies are an interesting alternative to the standard exposure in social phobia, especially since studies have shown its usefulness for the fear of public speaking. This paper reports a preliminary study in which a virtual reality therapy (VRT), based on exposure to virtual environments, was used to treat social phobia. The sample consisted of 36 participants diagnosed with social phobia assigned to either VRT or a group-CBT (control condition). The virtual environments used in the treatment recreate four situations dealing with social anxiety: performance, intimacy, scrutiny, and assertiveness. With the help of the therapist, the patient learns adapted cognitions and behaviors in order to reduce anxiety in the corresponding real situations. Both treatments lasted 12 weeks, and sessions were delivered according to a treatment manual. Results showed statistically and clinically significant improvement in both conditions. The effect-sizes comparing the efficacy of VRT to the control traditional group-CBT revealed that the differences between the two treatments are trivial.

  6. Autonomous social gaze model for an interactive virtual character in real-life settings

    OpenAIRE

    Yumak, Zerrin; van den Brink, Bram; Egges, Arjan

    2018-01-01

    This paper presents a gaze behavior model for an interactive virtual character situated in the real world. We are interested in estimating which user has an intention to interact, in other words which user is engaged with the virtual character. The model takes into account behavioral cues such as proximity, velocity, posture and sound, estimates an engagement score and drives the gaze behavior of the virtual character. Initially, we assign equal weights to these fea...

  7. Social environments and interpersonal distance regulation in psychosis : A virtual reality study

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Geraets, Chris N W; van Beilen, Marije; Pot-Kolder, Roos; Counotte, Jacqueline; van der Gaag, Mark; Veling, Wim

    BACKGROUND: Experimentally studying the influence of social environments on mental health and behavior is challenging, as social context is difficult to standardize in laboratory settings. Virtual Reality (VR) enables studying social interaction in terms of interpersonal distance in a more

  8. Investigating the effects of virtual social networks on entrepreneurial marketing

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Kambeiz Talebi

    2014-10-01

    Full Text Available This paper presents an empirical investigation to study the effects of virtual social networks on entrepreneurial marketing. The study designs a questionnaire in Likert scale based on a model originally developed by Morris et al. (2002 [Morris, M. H., Schindehutte, M., & LaForge, R. W. (2002. Entrepreneurial marketing: a construct for integrating emerging entrepreneurship and marketing perspectives. Journal of Marketing Theory and Practice, 10(4, 1-19.]. The study considers the effects of three components of virtual social network (VSN; namely structural VSN, interaction VSN and functional VSN on entrepreneurial marketing. Using structural equation modeling, the study has determined positive and meaningful effects of all three VSN components on entrepreneurial marketing.

  9. Professional Learning in Unlikely Spaces: Social Media and Virtual Communities as Professional Development

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Kathleen P. King

    2011-12-01

    Full Text Available In this case study, results demonstrate that an individual’s use of social media as professional learning spans understanding, networking, professional identity development, and transformative learning. Specifically, virtual online communities facilitated through social media provide professional networks, social relationships and learning beyond the scope of the individual’s usual experience. Case study method reveals strategies, extent, and impact of learning providing insight into this phenomenon. The significance of the research includes purposefully facilitating professional learning through informal learning contexts, including social media and online communities beyond technology-centric fields. Discussion and recommendations include using social media and virtual communities as instructional strategies for graduate studies and continued learning beyond formal education.

  10. Framework for Virtual Cognitive Experiment in Virtual Geographic Environments

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Fan Zhang

    2018-01-01

    Full Text Available Virtual Geographic Environment Cognition is the attempt to understand the human cognition of surface features, geographic processes, and human behaviour, as well as their relationships in the real world. From the perspective of human cognition behaviour analysis and simulation, previous work in Virtual Geographic Environments (VGEs has focused mostly on representing and simulating the real world to create an ‘interpretive’ virtual world and improve an individual’s active cognition. In terms of reactive cognition, building a user ‘evaluative’ environment in a complex virtual experiment is a necessary yet challenging task. This paper discusses the outlook of VGEs and proposes a framework for virtual cognitive experiments. The framework not only employs immersive virtual environment technology to create a realistic virtual world but also involves a responsive mechanism to record the user’s cognitive activities during the experiment. Based on the framework, this paper presents two potential implementation methods: first, training a deep learning model with several hundred thousand street view images scored by online volunteers, with further analysis of which visual factors produce a sense of safety for the individual, and second, creating an immersive virtual environment and Electroencephalogram (EEG-based experimental paradigm to both record and analyse the brain activity of a user and explore what type of virtual environment is more suitable and comfortable. Finally, we present some preliminary findings based on the first method.

  11. Feasibility of Virtual Reality Environments for Adolescent Social Anxiety Disorder

    Science.gov (United States)

    Parrish, Danielle E.; Oxhandler, Holly K.; Duron, Jacuelynn F.; Swank, Paul; Bordnick, Patrick

    2016-01-01

    Purpose: This study assessed the feasibility of virtual reality (VR) exposure as an assessment and treatment modality for youth with social anxiety disorder (SAD). Methods: Forty-one adolescents, 20 of which were identified as having SAD, were recruited from a community sample. Youth with and without SAD were exposed to two social virtual…

  12. Exploration of Social Capital and Knowledge Sharing: An Empirical Study on Student Virtual Teams

    Science.gov (United States)

    Liu, Ying Chieh; Li, FengChia

    2012-01-01

    Although research on virtual teams is becoming more popular, there is a gap in the understanding of how social capital affects knowledge sharing and creating, and their impacts on virtual team performance. To fill in this gap, this study establishes a framework by incorporating social capital with the SECI model and further examines it with an…

  13. Sobre objetos y experiencias virtuales

    OpenAIRE

    Pacho, Julián

    2009-01-01

    This paper analyses basic onto-epistemological properties of the virtual reality and suggests these theses. First, the virtual reality establishes a new nature; its essential feature is to be an organic world of emancipated techno-theories. Second, the virtual reality doesn’t substitutes the traditional book; it substitutes the world. Third, the experience of the world in the virtual reality excludes the natural world experience. Fourth, the ontology of virtual reality is build without an act...

  14. Academic Library Services in Virtual Worlds: An Examination of the Potential for Library Services in Immersive Environments

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ryan, Jenna; Porter, Marjorie; Miller, Rebecca

    2010-01-01

    Current literature on libraries is abundant with articles about the uses and the potential of new interactive communication technology, including Web 2.0 tools. Recently, the advent and use of virtual worlds have received top billing in these works. Many library institutions are exploring these virtual environments; this exploration and the…

  15. VISUALIZATION OF VGI DATA THROUGH THE NEW NASA WEB WORLD WIND VIRTUAL GLOBE

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    M. A. Brovelli

    2016-06-01

    Full Text Available GeoWeb 2.0, laying the foundations of Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI systems, has led to platforms where users can contribute to the geographic knowledge that is open to access. Moreover, as a result of the advancements in 3D visualization, virtual globes able to visualize geographic data even on browsers emerged. However the integration of VGI systems and virtual globes has not been fully realized. The study presented aims to visualize volunteered data in 3D, considering also the ease of use aspects for general public, using Free and Open Source Software (FOSS. The new Application Programming Interface (API of NASA, Web World Wind, written in JavaScript and based on Web Graphics Library (WebGL is cross-platform and cross-browser, so that the virtual globe created using this API can be accessible through any WebGL supported browser on different operating systems and devices, as a result not requiring any installation or configuration on the client-side, making the collected data more usable to users, which is not the case with the World Wind for Java as installation and configuration of the Java Virtual Machine (JVM is required. Furthermore, the data collected through various VGI platforms might be in different formats, stored in a traditional relational database or in a NoSQL database. The project developed aims to visualize and query data collected through Open Data Kit (ODK platform and a cross-platform application, where data is stored in a relational PostgreSQL and NoSQL CouchDB databases respectively.

  16. Visualization of Vgi Data Through the New NASA Web World Wind Virtual Globe

    Science.gov (United States)

    Brovelli, M. A.; Kilsedar, C. E.; Zamboni, G.

    2016-06-01

    GeoWeb 2.0, laying the foundations of Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI) systems, has led to platforms where users can contribute to the geographic knowledge that is open to access. Moreover, as a result of the advancements in 3D visualization, virtual globes able to visualize geographic data even on browsers emerged. However the integration of VGI systems and virtual globes has not been fully realized. The study presented aims to visualize volunteered data in 3D, considering also the ease of use aspects for general public, using Free and Open Source Software (FOSS). The new Application Programming Interface (API) of NASA, Web World Wind, written in JavaScript and based on Web Graphics Library (WebGL) is cross-platform and cross-browser, so that the virtual globe created using this API can be accessible through any WebGL supported browser on different operating systems and devices, as a result not requiring any installation or configuration on the client-side, making the collected data more usable to users, which is not the case with the World Wind for Java as installation and configuration of the Java Virtual Machine (JVM) is required. Furthermore, the data collected through various VGI platforms might be in different formats, stored in a traditional relational database or in a NoSQL database. The project developed aims to visualize and query data collected through Open Data Kit (ODK) platform and a cross-platform application, where data is stored in a relational PostgreSQL and NoSQL CouchDB databases respectively.

  17. Social Skills Deficits in a Virtual Environment Among Spanish Children With ADHD.

    Science.gov (United States)

    García-Castellar, Rosa; Jara-Jiménez, Pilar; Sánchez-Chiva, Desirée; Mikami, Amori Y

    2018-06-01

    Research assessing the social skills of children with ADHD has predominantly relied upon North American samples. In addition, most existing work has been conducted using methodology that fails to use a controlled peer stimulus; such methods may be more vulnerable to cultural influence. We examined the social skills of 52 Spanish children (ages 8-12) with and without ADHD using a controlled Chat Room Task, which simulates a virtual social environment where peers' responses are held constant, so that participants' social skills may be assessed. After statistical control of typing and reading comprehension skills, Spanish children with ADHD gave fewer prosocial comments and had greater difficulty remembering central details from the conversation between the peers, relative to comparison children. The virtual Chat Room Task may be useful to assess social skills deficits using a controlled paradigm, resulting in the identification of common social deficiencies cross-culturally.

  18. Embodied social interaction constitutes social cognition in pairs of humans: a minimalist virtual reality experiment.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Froese, Tom; Iizuka, Hiroyuki; Ikegami, Takashi

    2014-01-14

    Scientists have traditionally limited the mechanisms of social cognition to one brain, but recent approaches claim that interaction also realizes cognitive work. Experiments under constrained virtual settings revealed that interaction dynamics implicitly guide social cognition. Here we show that embodied social interaction can be constitutive of agency detection and of experiencing another's presence. Pairs of participants moved their "avatars" along an invisible virtual line and could make haptic contact with three identical objects, two of which embodied the other's motions, but only one, the other's avatar, also embodied the other's contact sensor and thereby enabled responsive interaction. Co-regulated interactions were significantly correlated with identifications of the other's avatar and reports of the clearest awareness of the other's presence. These results challenge folk psychological notions about the boundaries of mind, but make sense from evolutionary and developmental perspectives: an extendible mind can offload cognitive work into its environment.

  19. Network worlds : from link analysis to virtual places.

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Joslyn, C. (Cliff)

    2002-01-01

    Significant progress is being made in knowledge systems through recent advances in the science of very large networks. Attention is now turning in many quarters to the potential impact on counter-terrorism methods. After reviewing some of these advances, we will discuss the difference between such 'network analytic' approaches, which focus on large, homogeneous graph strucures, and what we are calling 'link analytic' approaches, which focus on somewhat smaller graphs with heterogeneous link types. We use this venue to begin the process of rigorously defining link analysis methods, especially the concept of chaining of views of multidimensional databases. We conclude with some speculation on potential connections to virtual world architectures.

  20. The World of Virtual Exhibitions

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Irena Eiselt

    2013-09-01

    Full Text Available EXTENDED ABSTRACTSpecial collections of the National and University Library (NUK hide a lot of items of precious value. The Slovenian cultural heritage is stored on paper or on other media as a part of the library’s Manuscripts, Incunabula and Rare Books Collection, Old Prints Collection, Maps and Pictorial Collection, Music Collection, Ephemera Collection, Serials Collection, and Slovenian Diaspora Publications Collection. Only a small part of the treasures is temporary revealed to the public on special exhibitions. The idea of virtual exhibitions of library treasures was born in 2005. The library aimed to exhibit precious items of special collections of high historical or artistic value. In 2008 the first two virtual exhibitions were created in-house offering access to the rich collections of old postcards of Ljubljana at the beginning of 20th century kept in the Maps and Pictorial Collection of NUK. They were soon followed by other virtual exhibitions. At the beginning they were organised in the same way as physical exhibitions, afterwards different programs were used for creation of special effects (for ex. 3D wall. About two years ago it was decided that the creation of virtual exhibitions will be simplified. Files of digitised and borndigital library materials in jpg format are imported to MS PowerPoint 2010. Each jpg file is now formatted by adding a frame, a description … to the slides which are saved as jpg files. The last step is the import of jpg files into Cooliris application used for NUK web exhibitions. In the paper the virtual exhibition design and creation, the technical point of view and criteria for the selection of exhibition content are explained following the example of the virtual exhibitions the Old Postcards of Ljubljana, Photo Ateliers in Slovenia, a collection of photographs Four Seasons by Fran Krašovec and photos of Post-Earthquake Ljubljana in 1895.

  1. A virtual therapeutic environment with user projective agents.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ookita, S Y; Tokuda, H

    2001-02-01

    Today, we see the Internet as more than just an information infrastructure, but a socializing place and a safe outlet of inner feelings. Many personalities develop aside from real world life due to its anonymous environment. Virtual world interactions are bringing about new psychological illnesses ranging from netaddiction to technostress, as well as online personality disorders and conflicts in multiple identities that exist in the virtual world. Presently, there are no standard therapy models for the virtual environment. There are very few therapeutic environments, or tools especially made for virtual therapeutic environments. The goal of our research is to provide the therapy model and middleware tools for psychologists to use in virtual therapeutic environments. We propose the Cyber Therapy Model, and Projective Agents, a tool used in the therapeutic environment. To evaluate the effectiveness of the tool, we created a prototype system, called the Virtual Group Counseling System, which is a therapeutic environment that allows the user to participate in group counseling through the eyes of their Projective Agent. Projective Agents inherit the user's personality traits. During the virtual group counseling, the user's Projective Agent interacts and collaborates to recover and increase their psychological growth. The prototype system provides a simulation environment where psychologists can adjust the parameters and customize their own simulation environment. The model and tool is a first attempt toward simulating online personalities that may exist only online, and provide data for observation.

  2. Scientific Habits of Mind in Virtual Worlds

    Science.gov (United States)

    Steinkuehler, Constance; Duncan, Sean

    2008-12-01

    In today's increasingly "flat" world of globalization (Friedman 2005), the need for a scientifically literate citizenry has grown more urgent. Yet, by some measures, we have done a poor job at fostering scientific habits of mind in schools. Recent research on informal games-based learning indicates that such technologies and the communities they evoke may be one viable alternative—not as a substitute for teachers and classrooms, but as an alternative to textbooks and science labs. This paper presents empirical evidence about the potential of games for fostering scientific habits of mind. In particular, we examine the scientific habits of mind and dispositions that characterize online discussion forums of the massively multiplayer online game World of Warcraft. Eighty-six percent of the forum discussions were posts engaged in "social knowledge construction" rather than social banter. Over half of the posts evidenced systems based reasoning, one in ten evidenced model-based reasoning, and 65% displayed an evaluative epistemology in which knowledge is treated as an open-ended process of evaluation and argument.

  3. Virtual reality exposure therapy for social anxiety disorder: a randomized controlled trial.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Anderson, Page L; Price, Matthew; Edwards, Shannan M; Obasaju, Mayowa A; Schmertz, Stefan K; Zimand, Elana; Calamaras, Martha R

    2013-10-01

    This is the first randomized trial comparing virtual reality exposure therapy to in vivo exposure for social anxiety disorder. Participants with a principal diagnosis of social anxiety disorder who identified public speaking as their primary fear (N = 97) were recruited from the community, resulting in an ethnically diverse sample (M age = 39 years) of mostly women (62%). Participants were randomly assigned to and completed 8 sessions of manualized virtual reality exposure therapy, exposure group therapy, or wait list. Standardized self-report measures were collected at pretreatment, posttreatment, and 12-month follow-up, and process measures were collected during treatment. A standardized speech task was delivered at pre- and posttreatment, and diagnostic status was reassessed at 3-month follow-up. Analysis of covariance showed that, relative to wait list, people completing either active treatment significantly improved on all but one measure (length of speech for exposure group therapy and self-reported fear of negative evaluation for virtual reality exposure therapy). At 12-month follow-up, people showed significant improvement from pretreatment on all measures. There were no differences between the active treatments on any process or outcome measure at any time, nor differences on achieving partial or full remission. Virtual reality exposure therapy is effective for treating social fears, and improvement is maintained for 1 year. Virtual reality exposure therapy is equally effective as exposure group therapy; further research with a larger sample is needed, however, to better control and statistically test differences between the treatments.

  4. Social facilitation in virtual reality-enhanced exercise: competitiveness moderates exercise effort of older adults

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Anderson-Hanley C

    2011-10-01

    Full Text Available Cay Anderson-Hanley1,2, Amanda L Snyder1, Joseph P Nimon1, Paul J Arciero1,21Healthy Aging and Neuropsychology Lab, Department of Psychology, Union College, Schenectady, NY, USA; 2Health and Exercise Sciences Department, Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, NY, USAAbstract: This study examined the effect of virtual social facilitation and competitiveness on exercise effort in exergaming older adults. Fourteen exergaming older adults participated. Competitiveness was assessed prior to the start of exercise. Participants were trained to ride a “cybercycle;” a virtual reality-enhanced stationary bike with interactive competition. After establishing a cybercycling baseline, competitive avatars were introduced. Pedaling effort (watts was assessed. Repeated measures ANOVA revealed a significant group (high vs low competitiveness X time (pre- to post-avatar interaction (F[1,12] = 13.1, P = 0.003. Virtual social facilitation increased exercise effort among more competitive exercisers. Exercise programs that match competitiveness may maximize exercise effort.Keywords: exercise, aging, virtual reality, competitiveness, social facilitation, exercise intensity

  5. Virtual reality as a way to good business

    OpenAIRE

    Mošorinski Predrag

    2016-01-01

    A virtual economy is the emergent property of the interaction between participants in a virtual world. As businesses compete in the real world, they also compete in virtual worlds. Many companies now incorporate virtual world as a new form of advertising. There are many advantages to using these methods of commercialization. The use of advertising within virtual world is a relatively new idea, due to Virtual World as a relatively new technology. According to trade media company Virtual Worlds...

  6. Social Q&A’s Enlightenment to the Library Virtual Reference Service

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Yang Yukun

    2017-10-01

    Full Text Available [Purpose/significance] Under the circumstance of Web2.0, the social Q&As, possessing the similar functions of the library virtual reference services, emerge consequently and enjoy tremendous prosperity. Thus, conducting the research of its success could shed light on the sustainable development of the library’s virtual reference services. [Method/process] According to the present-day situation that Social Q&A’s prosperity challenged the library virtual reference service, a literature review of domestic and foreign relevant research was completed. On the base of this review, typical Internet Q&A websites such as Baidu Knows and Yahoo Answers, social network-oriented Q&A websites such as Zhihu and Quora, were selected as the research objects. Then, the paper analyzed the traits of four representative SQA platforms from the perspectives of the Internet interlocution mode, the information organization mode and the user interaction and management mode. In addition, an experiment between SQAs and VRS was conducted as empirical research. [Result/conclusion] Finally, on the base of the research status, the platform investigation and experimental outcomes, the improvement suggestions for library VRS are proposed.

  7. Fish in the Matrix: motor learning in a virtual world

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Florian eEngert

    2013-01-01

    Full Text Available One of the large remaining challenges in the field of zebrafish neuroscience is the establishment of techniques and preparations that permit the recording and perturbation of neural activity in animals that can interact meaningfully with the environment. Since it is very difficult to do this in freely behaving zebrafish, I describe here two alternative approaches that meet this goal via tethered preparations. The first uses head-fixation in agarose in combination with online imaging and analysis of tail-motion. In the second method, paralyzed fish are suspended with suction pipettes in mid-water and nerve root recordings serve as indicators for intended locomotion. In both cases fish can be immersed into a virtual environment and allowed to interact with this virtual world via real or fictive tail motions. The specific examples given in this review focus primarily on the role of visual feedback– but the general principles certainly extend to other modalities, including proprioception, hearing, balance and somatosensation.

  8. Virtual Water and Food Security in Tunisia | IDRC - International ...

    International Development Research Centre (IDRC) Digital Library (Canada)

    ... on the world grain market has social implications for Tunisia's small farmers and ... Thus, when a country exports an agricultural product, in effect it also exports ... Tunisia that incorporates the virtual water concept in a food security strategy.

  9. Redes sociales virtuales, ¿de qué depende su uso en españa?

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Carlota Lorenzo-Romero

    2011-09-01

    Full Text Available La reciente aparición de las redes sociales virtuales, tales como Facebook, tuenti, etc., ha revolucionado la comunicación e integración tanto para los individuos como para las empresas, permitiendo mantener contactos ya existentes o formar nuevas conexiones. el objetivo principal del presente trabajo consiste en desarrollar un modelo de relaciones causales que explique las variables que influyen o predicen el uso de las redes sociales virtuales a través de la contrastación de un modelo de aceptación de la tecnología (tam. Para ello se realizó una encuesta online a un panel de usuarios de redes sociales virtuales, a nivel nacional. esta investigación permitió profundizar en el conocimiento de los beneficios y utilidades que, sobre el tejido empresarial, aporta el uso de este tipo de herramientas sociales por parte del usuario.

  10. iSocial: delivering the Social Competence Intervention for Adolescents (SCI-A) in a 3D virtual learning environment for youth with high functioning autism.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Stichter, Janine P; Laffey, James; Galyen, Krista; Herzog, Melissa

    2014-02-01

    One consistent area of need for students with autism spectrum disorders is in the area of social competence. However, the increasing need to provide qualified teachers to deliver evidence-based practices in areas like social competence leave schools, such as those found in rural areas, in need of support. Distance education and in particular, 3D Virtual Learning, holds great promise for supporting schools and youth to gain social competence through knowledge and social practice in context. iSocial, a distance education, 3D virtual learning environment implemented the 31-lesson social competence intervention for adolescents across three small cohorts totaling 11 students over a period of 4 months. Results demonstrated that the social competence curriculum was delivered with fidelity in the 3D virtual learning environment. Moreover, learning outcomes suggest that the iSocial approach shows promise for social competence benefits for youth.

  11. Semantic web for robots : applying semantic web technologies for interoperability between virtual worlds and real robots

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Juarez Cordova, A.G.

    2012-01-01

    The topic of this PhD project is in the context of cross-reality, a term that de??nes mixed reality environments that tunnel dense real-world data acquired through the use of sensor/actuator device networks into virtual worlds. It is part of the ongoing academia and industry e??orts to achieve

  12. Analysing the Suitability of Virtual Worlds for Direct Instruction and Individual Learning Activities

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zarraonandia, Telmo; Francese, Rita; Passero, Ignazio; Diaz, Paloma; Tortora, Genoveffa

    2014-01-01

    Despite several researchers reporting evidence that 3D Virtual Worlds can be used to effectively support educational processes in recent years, the integration of this technology in real learning processes is not as commonplace as in other educational technologies. Instructional designers have to balance the cost associated with the development of…

  13. Treatment of social anxiety disorder using online virtual environments in second life.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Yuen, Erica K; Herbert, James D; Forman, Evan M; Goetter, Elizabeth M; Comer, Ronald; Bradley, Jean-Claude

    2013-03-01

    Over 80% of people with social anxiety disorder (SAD) do not receive any type of treatment, despite the existence of effective evidence-based treatments. Barriers to treatment include lack of trained therapists (particularly in nonmetropolitan areas), logistical difficulties (e.g., cost, time, transportation), concerns regarding social stigma, and fear of negative evaluation from health care providers. Interventions conducted through electronic communication media, such as the Internet, have the potential to reach individuals who otherwise would not have access to evidence-based treatments. Second Life is an online virtual world that holds great promise in the widespread delivery of evidence-based treatments. We assessed the feasibility, acceptability, and initial efficacy of an acceptance-based behavior therapy in Second Life to treat adults with generalized SAD. Participants (n=14) received 12 sessions of weekly therapy and were assessed at pretreatment, midtreatment, posttreatment, and follow-up. Participants and therapists rated the treatment program as acceptable and feasible, despite frequently encountered technical difficulties. Analyses showed significant pretreatment to follow-up improvements in social anxiety symptoms, depression, disability, and quality of life, with effect sizes comparable to previously published results of studies delivering in-person cognitive behavior therapy for SAD. Implications and future directions are discussed. Copyright © 2012. Published by Elsevier Ltd.

  14. Virtual Worlds as a Context Suited for Information Systems Education: Discussion of Pedagogical Experience and Curriculum Design with Reference to Second Life

    Science.gov (United States)

    Dreher, Carl; Reiners, Torsten; Dreher, Naomi; Dreher, Heinz

    2009-01-01

    The context of Information Communication Technology (ICT) is changing dramatically. Today, Web 2.0 applications such as Facebook and MySpace are used ubiquitously in the general population, and Virtual Worlds are becoming increasingly popular in business, for example via simulations in Second Life. However the capacity of Virtual Worlds is…

  15. Real behavior in virtual environments: psychology experiments in a simple virtual-reality paradigm using video games.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kozlov, Michail D; Johansen, Mark K

    2010-12-01

    The purpose of this research was to illustrate the broad usefulness of simple video-game-based virtual environments (VEs) for psychological research on real-world behavior. To this end, this research explored several high-level social phenomena in a simple, inexpensive computer-game environment: the reduced likelihood of helping under time pressure and the bystander effect, which is reduced helping in the presence of bystanders. In the first experiment, participants had to find the exit in a virtual labyrinth under either high or low time pressure. They encountered rooms with and without virtual bystanders, and in each room, a virtual person requested assistance. Participants helped significantly less frequently under time pressure but the presence/absence of a small number of bystanders did not significantly moderate helping. The second experiment increased the number of virtual bystanders, and participants were instructed to imagine that these were real people. Participants helped significantly less in rooms with large numbers of bystanders compared to rooms with no bystanders, thus demonstrating a bystander effect. These results indicate that even sophisticated high-level social behaviors can be observed and experimentally manipulated in simple VEs, thus implying the broad usefulness of this paradigm in psychological research as a good compromise between experimental control and ecological validity.

  16. [Virtual reality in neurosurgery].

    Science.gov (United States)

    Tronnier, V M; Staubert, A; Bonsanto, M M; Wirtz, C R; Kunze, S

    2000-03-01

    Virtual reality enables users to immerse themselves in a virtual three-dimensional world and to interact in this world. The simulation is different from the kind in computer games, in which the viewer is active but acts in a nonrealistic world, or on the TV screen, where we are passively driven in an active world. In virtual reality elements look realistic, they change their characteristics and have almost real-world unpredictability. Virtual reality is not only implemented in gambling dens and the entertainment industry but also in manufacturing processes (cars, furniture etc.), military applications and medicine. Especially the last two areas are strongly correlated, because telemedicine or telesurgery was originated for military reasons to operate on war victims from a secure distance or to perform surgery on astronauts in an orbiting space station. In medicine and especially neurosurgery virtual-reality methods are used for education, surgical planning and simulation on a virtual patient.

  17. Integrating semantics and procedural generation: key enabling factors for declarative modeling of virtual worlds

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Bidarra, R.; Kraker, K.J. de; Smelik, R.M.; Tutenel, T.

    2010-01-01

    Manual content creation for virtual worlds can no longer satisfy the increasing demand arising from areas as entertainment and serious games, simulations, movies, etc. Furthermore, currently deployed modeling tools basically do not scale up: while they become more and more specialized and complex,

  18. Identifying Anxiety Through Tracked Head Movements in a Virtual Classroom.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Won, Andrea Stevenson; Perone, Brian; Friend, Michelle; Bailenson, Jeremy N

    2016-06-01

    Virtual reality allows the controlled simulation of complex social settings, such as classrooms, and thus provides an opportunity to test a range of theories in the social sciences in a way that is both naturalistic and controlled. Importantly, virtual environments also allow the body movements of participants in the virtual world to be tracked and recorded. In the following article, we discuss how tracked head movements were correlated with participants' reports of anxiety in a simulation of a classroom. Participants who reported a high sense of awareness of and concern about the other virtual people in the room showed different patterns of head movement (more lateral head movement, indicating scanning behavior) from those who reported a low level of concern. We discuss the implications of this research for understanding nonverbal behavior associated with anxiety and for the design of online educational systems.

  19. Social software in global software development

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Giuffrida, Rosalba; Dittrich, Yvonne

    2010-01-01

    variety of tools such as: instant messaging, internet forums, mailing lists, blogs, wikis, social network sites, social bookmarking, social libraries, virtual worlds. Though normally rather belonging to the private realm, the use of social software in corporate context has been reported, e.g. as a way...

  20. A case study comparing children???s motivation using a virtual world,video and print material to learn global citizenship.

    OpenAIRE

    O'Tuathail, Padraic

    2011-01-01

    non-peer-reviewed The last decade has seen an enormous surge in the use of virtual worlds by both adults and children. Educators are keen to discover how this technology can be transferred to the classroom to facilitate effective learning. The aim of this study was to compare children???s motivation with three media components: a virtual world, video and print materials. The intervention involved 27 children in first class in a primary school using components of the Panwapa website over...

  1. CYBERBULLYING: STUDENT’S BEHAVIOR IN VIRTUAL WORLDS

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Muhammad Nur Wangid

    2016-06-01

    Full Text Available Abstract: Concerning about student’s negative behaviors in using of the internet encouraged the survey to describe the behavior of students in the virtual world. The sample consisted of 497 students, consisting of 336 women and 161 men, taken by proportional random sampling. Instruments of data collection using questionnaire. The results showed that mobile phones become the primary tool in the move to the internet is more widely used to send the message. Using internet lasting for more two hours per day, and carried anywhere. Activities at home is higher than the on-campus in the surf. Most students use the internet to find the source of the task, followed by activities on facebook. Three major forms of cyberbullying behaviors students were outing, flaming and harassment. While experience as a victim of cyberbullying was in the form of flaming, harassment, and cyber-stalking.Keywords: cyberbullying; students behavior

  2. Collaborative virtual environments art exhibition

    Science.gov (United States)

    Dolinsky, Margaret; Anstey, Josephine; Pape, Dave E.; Aguilera, Julieta C.; Kostis, Helen-Nicole; Tsoupikova, Daria

    2005-03-01

    This panel presentation will exhibit artwork developed in CAVEs and discuss how art methodologies enhance the science of VR through collaboration, interaction and aesthetics. Artists and scientists work alongside one another to expand scientific research and artistic expression and are motivated by exhibiting collaborative virtual environments. Looking towards the arts, such as painting and sculpture, computer graphics captures a visual tradition. Virtual reality expands this tradition to not only what we face, but to what surrounds us and even what responds to our body and its gestures. Art making that once was isolated to the static frame and an optimal point of view is now out and about, in fully immersive mode within CAVEs. Art knowledge is a guide to how the aesthetics of 2D and 3D worlds affect, transform, and influence the social, intellectual and physical condition of the human body through attention to psychology, spiritual thinking, education, and cognition. The psychological interacts with the physical in the virtual in such a way that each facilitates, enhances and extends the other, culminating in a "go together" world. Attention to sharing art experience across high-speed networks introduces a dimension of liveliness and aliveness when we "become virtual" in real time with others.

  3. Virtual Bystanders in a Language Lesson: Examining the Effect of Social Evaluation, Vicarious Experience, Cognitive Consistency and Praising on Students' Beliefs, Self-Efficacy and Anxiety in a Virtual Reality Environment

    Science.gov (United States)

    Qu, Chao; Ling, Yun; Heynderickx, Ingrid; Brinkman, Willem-Paul

    2015-01-01

    Bystanders in a real world's social setting have the ability to influence people’s beliefs and behavior. This study examines whether this effect can be recreated in a virtual environment, by exposing people to virtual bystanders in a classroom setting. Participants (n = 26) first witnessed virtual students answering questions from an English teacher, after which they were also asked to answer questions from the teacher as part of a simulated training for spoken English. During the experiment the attitudes of the other virtual students in the classroom was manipulated; they could whisper either positive or negative remarks to each other when a virtual student was talking or when a participant was talking. The results show that the expressed attitude of virtual bystanders towards the participants affected their self-efficacy, and their avoidance behavior. Furthermore, the experience of witnessing bystanders commenting negatively on the performance of other students raised the participants’ heart rate when it was their turn to speak. Two-way interaction effects were also found on self-reported anxiety and self-efficacy. After witnessing bystanders’ positive attitude towards peer students, participants’ self-efficacy when answering questions received a boost when bystanders were also positive towards them, and a blow when bystanders reversed their attitude by being negative towards them. Still, inconsistency, instead of consistency, between the bystanders’ attitudes towards virtual peers and the participants was not found to result in a larger change in the participants’ beliefs. Finally the results also reveal that virtual flattering or destructive criticizing affected the participants’ beliefs not only about the virtual bystanders, but also about the neutral teacher. Together these findings show that virtual bystanders in a classroom can affect people’s beliefs, anxiety and behavior. PMID:25884211

  4. Virtual bystanders in a language lesson: examining the effect of social evaluation, vicarious experience, cognitive consistency and praising on students' beliefs, self-efficacy and anxiety in a virtual reality environment.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Qu, Chao; Ling, Yun; Heynderickx, Ingrid; Brinkman, Willem-Paul

    2015-01-01

    Bystanders in a real world's social setting have the ability to influence people's beliefs and behavior. This study examines whether this effect can be recreated in a virtual environment, by exposing people to virtual bystanders in a classroom setting. Participants (n = 26) first witnessed virtual students answering questions from an English teacher, after which they were also asked to answer questions from the teacher as part of a simulated training for spoken English. During the experiment the attitudes of the other virtual students in the classroom was manipulated; they could whisper either positive or negative remarks to each other when a virtual student was talking or when a participant was talking. The results show that the expressed attitude of virtual bystanders towards the participants affected their self-efficacy, and their avoidance behavior. Furthermore, the experience of witnessing bystanders commenting negatively on the performance of other students raised the participants' heart rate when it was their turn to speak. Two-way interaction effects were also found on self-reported anxiety and self-efficacy. After witnessing bystanders' positive attitude towards peer students, participants' self-efficacy when answering questions received a boost when bystanders were also positive towards them, and a blow when bystanders reversed their attitude by being negative towards them. Still, inconsistency, instead of consistency, between the bystanders' attitudes towards virtual peers and the participants was not found to result in a larger change in the participants' beliefs. Finally the results also reveal that virtual flattering or destructive criticizing affected the participants' beliefs not only about the virtual bystanders, but also about the neutral teacher. Together these findings show that virtual bystanders in a classroom can affect people's beliefs, anxiety and behavior.

  5. Virtual bystanders in a language lesson: examining the effect of social evaluation, vicarious experience, cognitive consistency and praising on students' beliefs, self-efficacy and anxiety in a virtual reality environment.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Chao Qu

    Full Text Available Bystanders in a real world's social setting have the ability to influence people's beliefs and behavior. This study examines whether this effect can be recreated in a virtual environment, by exposing people to virtual bystanders in a classroom setting. Participants (n = 26 first witnessed virtual students answering questions from an English teacher, after which they were also asked to answer questions from the teacher as part of a simulated training for spoken English. During the experiment the attitudes of the other virtual students in the classroom was manipulated; they could whisper either positive or negative remarks to each other when a virtual student was talking or when a participant was talking. The results show that the expressed attitude of virtual bystanders towards the participants affected their self-efficacy, and their avoidance behavior. Furthermore, the experience of witnessing bystanders commenting negatively on the performance of other students raised the participants' heart rate when it was their turn to speak. Two-way interaction effects were also found on self-reported anxiety and self-efficacy. After witnessing bystanders' positive attitude towards peer students, participants' self-efficacy when answering questions received a boost when bystanders were also positive towards them, and a blow when bystanders reversed their attitude by being negative towards them. Still, inconsistency, instead of consistency, between the bystanders' attitudes towards virtual peers and the participants was not found to result in a larger change in the participants' beliefs. Finally the results also reveal that virtual flattering or destructive criticizing affected the participants' beliefs not only about the virtual bystanders, but also about the neutral teacher. Together these findings show that virtual bystanders in a classroom can affect people's beliefs, anxiety and behavior.

  6. Uncanny spaces for higher education: teaching and learning in virtual worlds

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Siân Bayne

    2008-12-01

    Full Text Available This paper brings together the theory of the uncanny as it emerges in cultural theory, with an understanding of the uncanniness and troublesomeness seen to be inherent in certain understandings of teaching and learning in higher education. Drawing on research into students' experiences of learning in virtual worlds, it explores the sense in which teaching in such spaces materialises and extends the positive aspects of uncertainty, strangeness, disquietude and troublesomeness in online higher education.

  7. A pilot test of the GoWoman weight management intervention for women with mobility impairments in the online virtual world of Second Life®.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Nosek, Margaret A; Robinson-Whelen, Susan; Ledoux, Tracey A; Hughes, Rosemary B; O'Connor, Daniel P; Lee, Rebecca E; Goe, Rebecca; Silveira, Stephanie L; Markley, Rachel; Nosek, Thomas M

    2018-06-11

    Pilot test GoWoman, a small-group weight management intervention for mobility impaired women that was a disability- and gender-responsive adaptation of the Diabetes Prevention Program delivered in the online virtual world of Second Life ® . Objectives were to (1) examine pre-/post-intervention differences in weight, waist circumference, diet, physical activity, self-efficacy for diet and physical activity, nutrition knowledge and social support for weight management, (2) determine intervention feasibility (fidelity, attrition, engagement, acceptability). Single-group modified interrupted time series quasi-experimental design whereby participants served as their own controls. Thirteen women attended ≥8 of 16 GoWoman weekly sessions and lost an average of 5.97 pounds (2.71 kg) (3.31%) body weight (Cohen's d = 0.74) and 1.44 inches (3.66 cm) (3.58%) waist circumference (Cohen's d = 0.83). There were significant improvements in physical activity, diet and self-efficacy for diet and physical activity. All benchmarks for feasibility were met. Ratings of intervention content, group interactions and support and virtual world experiences were highly positive. Findings suggest that a disability- and gender-responsive weight management intervention with peer group support delivered in an online virtual world is feasible, meaningful and may assist with weight management for mobility impaired women. Implications for Rehabilitation This study addresses a gap in the general and rehabilitation research literature by addressing the disproportionately high rates of obesity among women with mobility impairments, who are generally excluded from tests of weight management interventions if they have limited ability to engage in vigorous physical activity. The GoWoman program is an adaptation of the Diabetes Prevention Program Lifestyle Change curriculum that is tailored to meet the unique weight management needs of women with mobility impairments, and was created to

  8. Social facilitation in virtual reality-enhanced exercise: competitiveness moderates exercise effort of older adults.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Anderson-Hanley, Cay; Snyder, Amanda L; Nimon, Joseph P; Arciero, Paul J

    2011-01-01

    This study examined the effect of virtual social facilitation and competitiveness on exercise effort in exergaming older adults. Fourteen exergaming older adults participated. Competitiveness was assessed prior to the start of exercise. Participants were trained to ride a "cybercycle;" a virtual reality-enhanced stationary bike with interactive competition. After establishing a cybercycling baseline, competitive avatars were introduced. Pedaling effort (watts) was assessed. Repeated measures ANOVA revealed a significant group (high vs low competitiveness) × time (pre- to post-avatar) interaction (F[1,12] = 13.1, P = 0.003). Virtual social facilitation increased exercise effort among more competitive exercisers. Exercise programs that match competitiveness may maximize exercise effort.

  9. Social pressure-induced craving in patients with alcohol dependence: application of virtual reality to coping skill training.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lee, Jung Suk; Namkoong, Kee; Ku, Jeonghun; Cho, Sangwoo; Park, Ji Yeon; Choi, You Kyong; Kim, Jae-Jin; Kim, In Young; Kim, Sun I; Jung, Young-Chul

    2008-12-01

    This study was conducted to assess the interaction between alcohol cues and social pressure in the induction of alcohol craving. Fourteen male patients with alcohol dependence and 14 age-matched social drinkers completed a virtual reality coping skill training program composed of four blocks according to the presence of alcohol cues (x2) and social pressure (x2). Before and after each block, the craving levels were measured using a visual analogue scale. Patients with alcohol dependence reported extremely high levels of craving immediately upon exposure to a virtual environment with alcohol cues, regardless of social pressure. In contrast, the craving levels of social drinkers were influenced by social pressure from virtual avatars. Our findings imply that an alcohol cue-laden environment should interfere with the ability to use coping skills against social pressure in real-life situations.

  10. Using serious games and virtual worlds in pesticides transport teaching

    Science.gov (United States)

    Payraudeau, Sylvain; Alvarez-Zaldivar, Pablo; van Dijk, Paul; Imfeld, Gwenaël

    2017-04-01

    Teaching environmental scenarios, such as the availability and transport of pesticides in catchments, may fail with traditional lectures and tutorials due to the complex and synergic interplay of soil, landuse, compounds properties, hydroclimatic forcing and biogeochemical processes. To tackle and pedagogically enter into this complexity, virtual worlds (i.e. computer-based simulated environment) and serious games (i.e. applied games with added pedagogical value) can efficiently improve knowledge and know-how of the future water management stakeholders and scientists. We have developed an e-learning teaching unit using virtual catchments and serious games by gradually adapting the level of complexity depending of the targeted public. The first targeted group is farmers in continuing education centers. We developed a distributed pesticide transport tool in a virtual agricultural catchment to highlight the specific risks of off-site pesticide transport along crop growing season. Students of this first group can interactively define and combine climatic, land-use and soil type scenarios with different pesticides to experiment the components of worst-case situations and to propose best-management practices depending of the involved environmental compartments, i.e. atmosphere, soil, surface water or groundwater. For Master's degree students, we added a level of complexity by adding a specific module focusing on pesticide degradation using cutting-edge approaches. With the compound-specific isotope analysis (CSIA) module students are able to link the 13C/12C signature of pesticides to the ongoing dissipation processes within the catchment. By using and interpreting CSIA data, students can thus efficiently understand the difference between non-destructive (e.g. sorption) and destructive (e.g. bio and abiotic degradation) processes occurring in a catchment. This CSIA tool applied to a virtual agricultural catchment will also allow to distinguish the dilution effect from

  11. Virtual reality as a way to good business

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Mošorinski Predrag

    2016-01-01

    Full Text Available A virtual economy is the emergent property of the interaction between participants in a virtual world. As businesses compete in the real world, they also compete in virtual worlds. Many companies now incorporate virtual world as a new form of advertising. There are many advantages to using these methods of commercialization. The use of advertising within virtual world is a relatively new idea, due to Virtual World as a relatively new technology. According to trade media company Virtual Worlds Management, commercial investments in the virtual sector were in excess of USD 425 million in 2007, and USD 594 million in 2008. During the last year, investments made were approximately 1 billion US $. Investment in marketing and virtual commercials, in Republic of Serbia was about 840 million euros during the last few years.

  12. Childhood trauma, psychosis liability and social stress reactivity : a virtual reality study

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Veling, W.; Counotte, J.; Pot-Kolder, R.; van Os, J.; van der Gaag, M.

    2016-01-01

    Background. Childhood trauma is associated with higher risk for mental disorders, including psychosis. Heightened sensitivity to social stress may be a mechanism. This virtual reality study tested the effect of childhood trauma on level of paranoid ideations and distress in response to social

  13. Childhood trauma and social stress reactivity in psychosis : A virtual reality study

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Veling, Wim; Counotte, Jacqueline; Pot-Kolder, Roos; Van Os, Jim; Van Der Gaag, Mark

    2016-01-01

    Introduction: Childhood trauma may be related to risk for psychosis by the mechanism of sensitization to social stress. Virtual Reality (VR) provides the opportunity to test this mechanism by controlled experimental exposure to different social environments. Methods: Fifty-five patients with recent

  14. Learning to Teach in Second Life: A Novice Adventure in Virtual Reality

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ellis, Maureen; Anderson, Patricia

    2011-01-01

    Second Life (SL) is a social virtual world, which emphasizes the general use of immersive worlds for supporting a variety of human activities and interactions, presenting a plethora of new opportunities and challenges for enriching how we learn, work and play (Boulos, Hetherington & Wheeler, 2007; Prasolova-Førland, Sourin & Sourina,…

  15. References in the Digital Age: Marketing and Services in Virtual Worlds

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Octavia-Luciana Porumbeanu

    2008-01-01

    Full Text Available The digital age has brought major changes at the level of the reference services offered by libraries. The emergence of competition, represented by numerous organizations that also provide information services, has necessitated the reorganization of reference services so that they function according to the market laws. In this context marketing has become an essential tool for libraries. They must develop strategies to make sure that users will continue to ask for their services. The number of those attracted to online information services is growing and many traditional users of libraries may be encountered at present in virtual environments where the possibilities for communication and interaction, for sharing information and generating knowledge are clearly better. Many libraries have already taken the step towards the virtual world and offer now assistance and information services in environments such as Second Life where there are possible both games and educational activities.

  16. Virtual worlds and team training.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Dev, Parvati; Youngblood, Patricia; Heinrichs, W Leroy; Kusumoto, Laura

    2007-06-01

    An important component of all emergency medicine residency programs is managing trauma effectively as a member of an emergency medicine team, but practice on live patients is often impractical and mannequin-based simulators are expensive and require all trainees to be physically present at the same location. This article describes a project to develop and evaluate a computer-based simulator (the Virtual Emergency Department) for distance training in teamwork and leadership in trauma management. The virtual environment provides repeated practice opportunities with life-threatening trauma cases in a safe and reproducible setting.

  17. Constructed Virtual Identity of Muslim Women in Social Media

    OpenAIRE

    Syariati, Dian

    2016-01-01

    The phenomenon and the development of new media introduce a new communication’s form of social media that requires an individual to have a virtual identity. This identity is an outstanding image of self-presentation that is built up deliberately by an individual in cyberspace. Through social networks, e.g., Facebook, a person acts as producer and simultaneously as gatekeeper of a message who can express a thought without any restrain. Basically, this study aimed to investigate how Muslim wome...

  18. Virtual Environments Using Video Capture for Social Phobia with Psychosis

    Science.gov (United States)

    White, Richard; Clarke, Timothy; Turner, Ruth; Fowler, David

    2013-01-01

    Abstract A novel virtual environment (VE) system was developed and used as an adjunct to cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) with six socially anxious patients recovering from psychosis. The novel aspect of the VE system is that it uses video capture so the patients can see a life-size projection of themselves interacting with a specially scripted and digitally edited filmed environment played in real time on a screen in front of them. Within-session process outcomes (subjective units of distress and belief ratings on individual behavioral experiments), as well as patient feedback, generated the hypothesis that this type of virtual environment can potentially add value to CBT by helping patients understand the role of avoidance and safety behaviors in the maintenance of social anxiety and paranoia and by boosting their confidence to carry out “real-life” behavioral experiments. PMID:23659722

  19. Analysis of the social network development of a virtual community for Australian intensive care professionals.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Rolls, Kaye Denise; Hansen, Margaret; Jackson, Debra; Elliott, Doug

    2014-11-01

    Social media platforms can create virtual communities, enabling healthcare professionals to network with a broad range of colleagues and facilitate knowledge exchange. In 2003, an Australian state health department established an intensive care mailing list to address the professional isolation experienced by senior intensive care nurses. This article describes the social network created within this virtual community by examining how the membership profile evolved from 2003 to 2009. A retrospective descriptive design was used. The data source was a deidentified member database. Since 2003, 1340 healthcare professionals subscribed to the virtual community with 78% of these (n = 1042) still members at the end of 2009. The membership profile has evolved from a single-state nurse-specific network to an Australia-wide multidisciplinary and multiorganizational intensive care network. The uptake and retention of membership by intensive care clinicians indicated that they appeared to value involvement in this virtual community. For healthcare organizations, a virtual community may be a communications option for minimizing professional and organizational barriers and promoting knowledge flow. Further research is, however, required to demonstrate a link between these broader social networks, enabling the exchange of knowledge and improved patient outcomes.

  20. CYBERBULLYING: STUDENT’S BEHAVIOR IN VIRTUAL WORLDS

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Muhammad Nur Wangid

    2016-06-01

    Full Text Available Abstract: Concerning about student’s negative behaviors in using of the internet encouraged the survey to describe the behavior of students in the virtual world. The sample consisted of 497 students, consisting of 336 women and 161 men, taken by proportional random sampling. Instruments of data collection using questionnaire. The results showed that mobile phones become the primary tool in the move to the internet is more widely used to send the message. Using internet lasting for more  two hours per day, and carried anywhere. Activities at home is higher than the on-campus in the surf. Most students use the internet to find the source of the task, followed by activities on facebook. Three major forms of cyberbullying behaviors students were  outing, flaming and harassment. While experience as a victim of cyberbullying was in the form of flaming, harassment, and cyber-stalking. Keywords: cyberbullying; students behavior

  1. Virtual Reflexes

    OpenAIRE

    Jonker, Catholijn; Broekens, Joost; Plaat, Aske

    2014-01-01

    Virtual Reality is used successfully to treat people for regular phobias. A new challenge is to develop Virtual Reality Exposure Training for social skills. Virtual actors in such systems have to show appropriate social behavior including emotions, gaze, and keeping distance. The behavior must be realistic and real-time. Current approaches consist of four steps: 1) trainee social signal detection, 2) cognitive-affective interpretation, 3) determination of the appropriate bodily responses, and...

  2. Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation Training by Avatars: A Qualitative Study of Medical Students' Experiences Using a Multiplayer Virtual World.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Creutzfeldt, Johan; Hedman, Leif; Felländer-Tsai, Li

    2016-12-16

    Emergency medical practices are often team efforts. Training for various tasks and collaborations may be carried out in virtual environments. Although promising results exist from studies of serious games, little is known about the subjective reactions of learners when using multiplayer virtual world (MVW) training in medicine. The objective of this study was to reach a better understanding of the learners' reactions and experiences when using an MVW for team training of cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR). Twelve Swedish medical students participated in semistructured focus group discussions after CPR training in an MVW with partially preset options. The students' perceptions and feelings related to use of this educational tool were investigated. Using qualitative methodology, discussions were analyzed by a phenomenological data-driven approach. Quality measures included negotiations, back-and-forth reading, triangulation, and validation with the informants. Four categories characterizing the students' experiences could be defined: (1) Focused Mental Training, (2) Interface Diverting Focus From Training, (3) Benefits of Practicing in a Group, and (4) Easy Loss of Focus When Passive. We interpreted the results, compared them to findings of others, and propose advantages and risks of using virtual worlds for learning. Beneficial aspects of learning CPR in a virtual world were confirmed. To achieve high participant engagement and create good conditions for training, well-established procedures should be practiced. Furthermore, students should be kept in an active mode and frequent feedback should be utilized. It cannot be completely ruled out that the use of virtual training may contribute to erroneous self-beliefs that can affect later clinical performance. ©Johan Creutzfeldt, Leif Hedman, Li Felländer-Tsai. Originally published in JMIR Serious Games (http://games.jmir.org), 16.12.2016.

  3. Positive Relationship Between Individuality and Social Identity in Virtual Communities: Self-Categorization and Social Identification as Distinct Forms of Social Identity.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Guo, Tian-Chao; Li, Xuemei

    2016-11-01

    Previous studies have reported conflicting results regarding the relationship between individuality and social identity, indicating this area requires further examination. This study constructed a research model to help understand the positive role of individualized behavior and social identity in virtual communities. The results of an online survey conducted to assess our theoretical research model indicated that social identity can be expressed in two ways: self-categorization and social identification. Furthermore, we found individualized behavior was positively related to social identification, while self-categorization was directly derived from social identification.

  4. Characteristics of social perception assessed in schizophrenia using virtual reality.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kim, Kwanguk; Kim, Jae-Jin; Kim, Jaehun; Park, Da-Eun; Jang, Hee Jeong; Ku, Jeonghun; Kim, Chan-Hyung; Kim, In Young; Kim, Sun I

    2007-04-01

    Impairment in social skills is one of the few criteria that all individuals diagnosed with schizophrenia must meet. Successful social skills require the coordination of many abilities, including social perception, which involves the decoding and interpretation of social cues from others. In this study, we examined the potential for virtual reality (VR) in social skill training. We attempted to determine if VR can be used to measure social skills and social perception, and to determine which VR parameters are related to schizophrenic symptoms. Some of these results have clear clinical relevance, while other observations need further study. The VR system appears to be useful in assessing the social perception of schizophrenics and normal people, and could be more widely used in the future for social training and in the assessment of social problem-solving abilities, assertiveness skills, and general social skills.

  5. On New Means or New Forms of Investigation. A Methodological Proposal for Online Social Investigation through a Virtual Forum

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Rubén Arriazu Muñoz

    2007-09-01

    Full Text Available Processes and instruments of communication have constituted an important object for Internet researchers, and have been investigated using qualitative methodologies in social research. The most common strategy has been to adapt orthodox instruments and procedures to the virtual context. In this paper I address the following questions in order to develop a framework for virtual research. Using a virtual forum as starting point, I ask: Is virtual research a new taxonomy or an extension of conventional social research techniques? Is virtual research located at the same level as face-to-face research? Is it a new communicational research form? This paper presents a methodological approach using virtual forums as tools where asynchronous communication flows. I analyze the use of virtual forums in interaction with the social context, and articulate the method that emerges from this fieldwork situation. URN: urn:nbn:de:0114-fqs0703374

  6. Exploring Virtual Worlds With Head-Mounted Displays

    Science.gov (United States)

    Chung, James C.; Harris, Mark R.; Brooks, Frederick P.; Fuchs, Henry; Kelley, Michael T.; Hughes, John W.; Ouh-Young, Ming; Cheung, Clement; Holloway, Richard L.; Pique, Michael

    1989-09-01

    For nearly a decade the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has been conducting research in the use of simple head-mounted displays in "real-world" applications. Such units provide the user with non-holographic true three-dimensional information, since the kinetic depth effect, stereoscopy, and other visual cues combine to immerse the user in a "virtual world" which behaves like the real world in some respects. UNC's head-mounted display was built inexpensively from commercially available off-the-shelf components. Tracking of the the user's head position and orientation is performed by a Polhemus Navigation Sciences' 3SPACE* tracker. The host computer uses the tracking information to generate updated images corresponding to the user's new left eye and right eye views. The images are broadcast to two liquid crystal television screens (220x320 pixels) mounted on a horizontal shelf at the user's forehead. The user views these color screens through half-silvered mirrors, enabling the computer-generated image to be superimposed upon the user's real physical environment. The head-mounted display has been incorporated into existing molecular modeling and architectural applications being developed at UNC. In molecular structure studies, chemists are presented with a room-sized molecule with which they can interact in a manner more intuitive than that provided by conventional two-dimensional displays and dial boxes. Walking around and through the large molecule may provide quicker understanding of its structure, and such problems as drug-enzyme docking may be approached with greater insight. In architecture, the head-mounted display enables clients to better appreciate three-dimensional designs, which may be misinterpreted in their conventional two-dimensional form by untrained eyes. The addition of a treadmill to the system provides additional kinesthetic input into the understanding of building size and scale.

  7. Cybersafe protecting and empowering kids in the digital world of texting, gaming, and social media

    CERN Document Server

    O'Keeffe, Gwenn

    2014-01-01

    Children today are growing up in a world far different from the one in which their parents were raised. Between the Internet, gaming systems, mp3 players, and cell phones, today's kids are nearly always connected to something digital. And, because it's developing so fast, it's hard for parents to stay on top of the technology—and even harder to figure out how to help their kids make good decisions when it comes to these things. This informative book will guide parents through the landscape of the digital world, helping them better understand things like: • The history and the future of the Internet • Cyberbullying (and how to help kids deal with it if it happens to them) • Social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace • Gaming and virtual worlds • Parental control systems that allow parents to monitor kids' online activities • Digital footprints (and how kids can make sure theirs is a good one) Beyond informing readers on the latest trends in technology, Dr. Gwenn gives provides the tools parents n...

  8. Predicting invasive fungal pathogens using invasive pest assemblages: testing model predictions in a virtual world.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Dean R Paini

    Full Text Available Predicting future species invasions presents significant challenges to researchers and government agencies. Simply considering the vast number of potential species that could invade an area can be insurmountable. One method, recently suggested, which can analyse large datasets of invasive species simultaneously is that of a self organising map (SOM, a form of artificial neural network which can rank species by establishment likelihood. We used this method to analyse the worldwide distribution of 486 fungal pathogens and then validated the method by creating a virtual world of invasive species in which to test the SOM. This novel validation method allowed us to test SOM's ability to rank those species that can establish above those that can't. Overall, we found the SOM highly effective, having on average, a 96-98% success rate (depending on the virtual world parameters. We also found that regions with fewer species present (i.e. 1-10 species were more difficult for the SOM to generate an accurately ranked list, with success rates varying from 100% correct down to 0% correct. However, we were able to combine the numbers of species present in a region with clustering patterns in the SOM, to further refine confidence in lists generated from these sparsely populated regions. We then used the results from the virtual world to determine confidences for lists generated from the fungal pathogen dataset. Specifically, for lists generated for Australia and its states and territories, the reliability scores were between 84-98%. We conclude that a SOM analysis is a reliable method for analysing a large dataset of potential invasive species and could be used by biosecurity agencies around the world resulting in a better overall assessment of invasion risk.

  9. Predicting invasive fungal pathogens using invasive pest assemblages: testing model predictions in a virtual world.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Paini, Dean R; Bianchi, Felix J J A; Northfield, Tobin D; De Barro, Paul J

    2011-01-01

    Predicting future species invasions presents significant challenges to researchers and government agencies. Simply considering the vast number of potential species that could invade an area can be insurmountable. One method, recently suggested, which can analyse large datasets of invasive species simultaneously is that of a self organising map (SOM), a form of artificial neural network which can rank species by establishment likelihood. We used this method to analyse the worldwide distribution of 486 fungal pathogens and then validated the method by creating a virtual world of invasive species in which to test the SOM. This novel validation method allowed us to test SOM's ability to rank those species that can establish above those that can't. Overall, we found the SOM highly effective, having on average, a 96-98% success rate (depending on the virtual world parameters). We also found that regions with fewer species present (i.e. 1-10 species) were more difficult for the SOM to generate an accurately ranked list, with success rates varying from 100% correct down to 0% correct. However, we were able to combine the numbers of species present in a region with clustering patterns in the SOM, to further refine confidence in lists generated from these sparsely populated regions. We then used the results from the virtual world to determine confidences for lists generated from the fungal pathogen dataset. Specifically, for lists generated for Australia and its states and territories, the reliability scores were between 84-98%. We conclude that a SOM analysis is a reliable method for analysing a large dataset of potential invasive species and could be used by biosecurity agencies around the world resulting in a better overall assessment of invasion risk.

  10. Making Choices in the Virtual World: The New Model at United Technologies Information Network.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Gulliford, Bradley

    1998-01-01

    Describes changes in services of the United Technologies Corporation Information Network from a traditional library system to a virtual system of World Wide Web sites, a document-delivery unit, telephone and e-mail reference, and desktop technical support to provide remote access. Staff time, security, and licensing issues are addressed.…

  11. Situated, Embodied and Social Problem-Solving in Virtual Worlds

    Science.gov (United States)

    Cram, Andrew; Hedberg, John G.; Gosper, Maree; Dick, Geoff

    2011-01-01

    Contemporary theories of problem-solving highlight that expertise is domain specific, contingent on the social context and available resources, and involves knowledge, skills, attitudes, emotions and values. Developing educational activities that incorporate all of these elements is a challenge. Through case studies, this paper outlines how…

  12. Measuring Social Capital in Virtual Social Networks; Introducing Workable Indices

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Hamid Abdollahian

    2013-12-01

    Full Text Available This paper will attempt to offer a set of indicators that together construct a model which will help to measure social capital among users of social networks. The world is now experiencing some new changes that are affecting conceptual equations in social sciences, two of which are of our concern here: 1- the concept of social capital that has opened its way into epistemological basis of social sciences, and; 2- the world has welcomed the birth and development of social networks in our daily life, affecting many aspects of social actions. There is Facebook from among a handful of social networks that has reached the threshold of international networking capacity with roughly one billion users. We will use Robert Putnam's theory of social capital alongside Frank's methodological innovation regarding measuring tools of social capital in order to create a marriage between these two as well as to address a yet more problematizing issue, i.e., how to measure social capital of the Facebook users. Accordingly the paper will focus on Facebook as the field of research and will introduce triangulation approach that we used in order to come up with the set of indicators. Participatory observation and online survey were used as constructing elements of triangulation approach so to generate the necessary data for the above purpose. At first, we used participatory observation through which 14 targeted samples were selected and whatever they had in their profile in Facebook were collected and analyzed. This analysis helped us to construct our questionnaire which was launched through Google docs. In the end, some 218 respondent returned their completed questionnaires. The final stage of analysis consisted of finding out how we can use the results to offer a new tool for measuring social capital of Facebook users. The research findings indicated that there are 10 indicators which should be put together if social capital is to be properly measured.

  13. La dimensión social del aprendizaje colaborativo virtual

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Maria Pérez-Mateo Subirà

    2007-01-01

    Full Text Available El objetivo de este artículo es analizar la dimensión social de los grupos colaborativos virtuales. Aunque, a menudo, estos aspectos de carácter informal o afectivo se infravaloran o separan de los propios del aprendizaje, son muy numerosos los estudios en ambientes educativos que muestran cómo la dimensión social se articula como la pieza básica y necesaria para el éxito de los grupos, teniendo en cuenta que es la responsable del clima creado, del sentimiento de comunidad percibido y del aprendizaje realizado. A partir de un proceso etnográfico desarrollado en 4 equipos de una asignatura de la Universidad Abierta de Cataluña1, el estudio se centra en la definición de unas categorías de análisis de la dimensión social de los grupos colaborativos virtuales, enfocadas, a grandes rasgos, a los aspectos formales, por una parte y, por otra, a la construcción de relaciones. El artículo también analiza el uso y evolución de las categorías obtenidas en las diferentes etapas de la vida de un equipo. En general, se constata que en las etapas inicial y final los recursos personales o informales son los más frecuentes, mientras que en la de desarrollo los elementos sociales se vinculan en mayor medida al trabajo a realizar.

  14. Unwritten rules: virtual bargaining underpins social interaction, culture, and society

    OpenAIRE

    Misyak, Jennifer B.; Melkonyan, Tigran; Zeitoun, Hossam; Chater, Nick

    2014-01-01

    Many social interactions require humans to coordinate their behavior across a range of scales. However, aspects of intentional coordination remain puzzling from within several approaches in cognitive science. Sketching a new perspective, we propose that the complex behavioral patterns – or 'unwritten rules' – governing such coordination emerge from an ongoing process of 'virtual bargaining'. Social participants behave on the basis of what they would agree to do if they were explicitly to barg...

  15. Estimating the gaze of a virtuality human.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Roberts, David J; Rae, John; Duckworth, Tobias W; Moore, Carl M; Aspin, Rob

    2013-04-01

    The aim of our experiment is to determine if eye-gaze can be estimated from a virtuality human: to within the accuracies that underpin social interaction; and reliably across gaze poses and camera arrangements likely in every day settings. The scene is set by explaining why Immersive Virtuality Telepresence has the potential to meet the grand challenge of faithfully communicating both the appearance and the focus of attention of a remote human participant within a shared 3D computer-supported context. Within the experiment n=22 participants rotated static 3D virtuality humans, reconstructed from surround images, until they felt most looked at. The dependent variable was absolute angular error, which was compared to that underpinning social gaze behaviour in the natural world. Independent variables were 1) relative orientations of eye, head and body of captured subject; and 2) subset of cameras used to texture the form. Analysis looked for statistical and practical significance and qualitative corroborating evidence. The analysed results tell us much about the importance and detail of the relationship between gaze pose, method of video based reconstruction, and camera arrangement. They tell us that virtuality can reproduce gaze to an accuracy useful in social interaction, but with the adopted method of Video Based Reconstruction, this is highly dependent on combination of gaze pose and camera arrangement. This suggests changes in the VBR approach in order to allow more flexible camera arrangements. The work is of interest to those wanting to support expressive meetings that are both socially and spatially situated, and particular those using or building Immersive Virtuality Telepresence to accomplish this. It is also of relevance to the use of virtuality humans in applications ranging from the study of human interactions to gaming and the crossing of the stage line in films and TV.

  16. A Connective Ethnography of Peer Knowledge Sharing and Diffusion in a Tween Virtual World

    Science.gov (United States)

    Fields, Deborah A.; Kafai, Yasmin B.

    2009-01-01

    Prior studies have shown how knowledge diffusion occurs in classrooms and structured small groups around assigned tasks yet have not begun to account for widespread knowledge sharing in more native, unstructured group settings found in online games and virtual worlds. In this paper, we describe and analyze how an insider gaming practice spread…

  17. How Health Care Professionals Use Social Media to Create Virtual Communities: An Integrative Review.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Rolls, Kaye; Hansen, Margaret; Jackson, Debra; Elliott, Doug

    2016-06-16

    Prevailing health care structures and cultures restrict intraprofessional communication, inhibiting knowledge dissemination and impacting the translation of research into practice. Virtual communities may facilitate professional networking and knowledge sharing in and between health care disciplines. This study aimed to review the literature on the use of social media by health care professionals in developing virtual communities that facilitate professional networking, knowledge sharing, and evidence-informed practice. An integrative literature review was conducted to identify research published between 1990 and 2015. Search strategies sourced electronic databases (PubMed, CINAHL), snowball references, and tables of contents of 3 journals. Papers that evaluated social media use by health care professionals (unless within an education framework) using any research design (except for research protocols or narrative reviews) were included. Standardized data extraction and quality assessment tools were used. Overall, 72 studies were included: 44 qualitative (including 2 ethnographies, 26 qualitative descriptive, and 1 Q-sort) and 20 mixed-methods studies, and 8 literature reviews. The most common methods of data collection were Web-based observation (n=39), surveys (n=23), interviews (n=11), focus groups (n=2), and diaries (n=1). Study quality was mixed. Social media studied included Listservs (n=22), Twitter (n=18), general social media (n=17), discussion forums (n=7), Web 2.0 (n=3), virtual community of practice (n=3), wiki (n=1), and Facebook (n=1). A range of health care professionals were sampled in the studies, including physicians (n=24), nurses (n=15), allied health professionals (n=14), followed by health care professionals in general (n=8), a multidisciplinary clinical specialty area (n=9), and midwives (n=2). Of 36 virtual communities, 31 were monodiscipline for a discrete clinical specialty. Population uptake by the target group ranged from 1.6% to 29% (n

  18. Las redes sociales virtuales como espacios de ocio digital

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Ana VIÑALS BLANCO

    2014-10-01

    Full Text Available Vivimos en una sociedad digital donde los hábitos y estilos de vida se han visto transformados debido al desarrollo de Internet y las nuevas Tecnologías de la Información y la Comunicación (TIC. El ocio, entendido en este artículo como experiencia de desarrollo humano (Cuenca, 2000 y ámbito vital, tampoco se ha resistido a la influencia de la tecnología y la esfera virtual, dando pie a la generación de nuevos ocios virtuales entre los que destaca el uso de las redes sociales. Son parte de las nuevas prácticas de ocio de los jóvenes españoles y los nuevos formatos de entretenimiento. Fundamentándonos en el modo de entender el ocio del Instituto de Estudios de ocio de la Universidad de Deusto y en la dicotomía de ocio serio y ocio casual defendida por Stebbins (2008, pretendemos dar respuesta a los siguientes planteamientos: ¿de qué manera ha influido la revolución digital en el ámbito del ocio?, ¿nos encontramos ante nuevos formatos de entretenimiento de carácter consumista o bien ante prácticas de ocio digital que fomentan el desarrollo personal? Esto nos llevará a analizar los usos que los jóvenes pertenecientes a la generación digital hacen de las redes sociales virtuales.

  19. Virtual worlds are an innovative tool for medical device training in a simulated environment.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Patel, Vishal; Lee, Henry; Taylor, Dave; Aggarwal, Rajesh; Kinross, James; Darzi, Ara

    2012-01-01

    Medical infusion devices are an integral component within the delivery of healthcare management. The aim of this study was to develop a training simulation in the virtual world of Second Life for the management of adverse events associated with infusion devices. Forty nurses were subsequently recruited to participate within the simulation and assess its feasibility.

  20. A virtual nuclear world?

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Salve, R.

    1998-01-01

    The way in which virtual reality technology has so dramatically developed over the last few years has opened up the possibility of its application to various industrial processes. This article describes the possible uses of such a technique in nuclear power plants in various phases such as design, construction, operation or dismantling. (Author)

  1. A Theoretical Cybernetic Macro-Script to Articulate Collaborative Interactions of Cyber Entities in Virtual Worlds

    Science.gov (United States)

    Pellas, Nikolaos

    2014-01-01

    Nowadays, the dissemination and exploitation of three-dimensional (3D) multi-user virtual worlds in higher education have been disclosed from their widespread acceptance as candidate learning platforms. However, it is still lacking a theoretical cybernetic macro-script to elaborate the coordination of multiple complex interactions among…

  2. Game Channels for Trustless Off-Chain Interactions in Decentralized Virtual Worlds

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Daniel Kraft

    2016-12-01

    Full Text Available Blockchains can be used to build multi-player online games and virtual worlds that require no central server. This concept is pioneered by Huntercoin, but it leads to large growth of the blockchain and heavy resource requirements. In this paper, we present a new protocol inspired by payment channels and sidechains that allows for trustless off-chain interactions of players in private turn-based games. They are usually performed without requiring space in the public blockchain, but if a dispute arises, the public network can be used to resolve the conflict. We also analyze the resulting security guarantees and describe possible extensions to games with shared turns and for near real-time interaction. Our proposed concept can be used to scale Huntercoin to very large or even infinite worlds and to enable almost real-time interactions between players.

  3. Human Activity Behavior and Gesture Generation in Virtual Worlds for Long- Duration Space Missions. Chapter 8

    Science.gov (United States)

    Sierhuis, Maarten; Clancey, William J.; Damer, Bruce; Brodsky, Boris; vanHoff, Ron

    2007-01-01

    A virtual worlds presentation technique with embodied, intelligent agents is being developed as an instructional medium suitable to present in situ training on long term space flight. The system combines a behavioral element based on finite state automata, a behavior based reactive architecture also described as subsumption architecture, and a belief-desire-intention agent structure. These three features are being integrated to describe a Brahms virtual environment model of extravehicular crew activity which could become a basis for procedure training during extended space flight.

  4. Social Interaction Behavior in ADHD in Adults in a Virtual Trust Game.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lis, Stefanie; Baer, Nina; Franzen, Nele; Hagenhoff, Meike; Gerlach, Maika; Koppe, Georgia; Sammer, Gebhard; Gallhofer, Bernd; Kirsch, Peter

    2016-04-01

    Social cognitive functions in adults with ADHD were investigated in a virtual social exchange game. The sample consisted of 40 participants (20 adult ADHD participants, 20 healthy controls). Participants played a multiround trust game with virtual trustees who differed in regard to fairness and presence of emotional facial cues. Investments were higher in ADHD participants than in healthy participants except for partners who played fair with constant neutral expressions. ADHD patients did not adapt their behavior to the fairness of the trustee. In the presence of emotional facial cues, ADHD and healthy participants transferred more monetary units to happy rather than angry-looking trustees. Differences in investment behavior were not linked to deficits in emotion-recognition abilities or cognitive dysfunctions. Alterations in interaction behavior and in the formation of a general attitude toward social partners could be shown in adults with ADHD. © The Author(s) 2013.

  5. Developing Adolescents' Resistance to Sexual Coercion through Role-Playing Activities in a Virtual World

    Science.gov (United States)

    McGinn, Marion; Arnedillo-Sánchez, Inmaculada

    2015-01-01

    This paper explores the use of a three dimensional virtual world (3-DVW) to delivery assertiveness training to young adolescents. The case study aims to understand how a sense of presence in VWs facilitates and affect the performance of students role-playing activities to enhance their ability to resist sexual coercion. The results indicate that a…

  6. The Convergence of Virtual Reality and Social Networks: Threats to Privacy and Autonomy.

    Science.gov (United States)

    O'Brolcháin, Fiachra; Jacquemard, Tim; Monaghan, David; O'Connor, Noel; Novitzky, Peter; Gordijn, Bert

    2016-02-01

    The rapid evolution of information, communication and entertainment technologies will transform the lives of citizens and ultimately transform society. This paper focuses on ethical issues associated with the likely convergence of virtual realities (VR) and social networks (SNs), hereafter VRSNs. We examine a scenario in which a significant segment of the world's population has a presence in a VRSN. Given the pace of technological development and the popularity of these new forms of social interaction, this scenario is plausible. However, it brings with it ethical problems. Two central ethical issues are addressed: those of privacy and those of autonomy. VRSNs pose threats to both privacy and autonomy. The threats to privacy can be broadly categorized as threats to informational privacy, threats to physical privacy, and threats to associational privacy. Each of these threats is further subdivided. The threats to autonomy can be broadly categorized as threats to freedom, to knowledge and to authenticity. Again, these three threats are divided into subcategories. Having categorized the main threats posed by VRSNs, a number of recommendations are provided so that policy-makers, developers, and users can make the best possible use of VRSNs.

  7. Students' meaning making in science: solving energy resource problems in virtual worlds combined with spreadsheets to develop graphs

    Science.gov (United States)

    Krange, Ingeborg; Arnseth, Hans Christian

    2012-09-01

    The aim of this study is to scrutinize the characteristics of conceptual meaning making when students engage with virtual worlds in combination with a spreadsheet with the aim to develop graphs. We study how these tools and the representations they contain or enable students to construct serve to influence their understanding of energy resource consumption. The data were gathered in 1st grade upper-secondary science classes and they constitute the basis for the interaction analysis of students' meaning making with representations. Our analyses demonstrate the difficulties involved in developing students' orientation toward more conceptual orientations to representations of the knowledge domain. Virtual worlds do not in themselves represent a solution to this problem.

  8. Communication and Education in a Virtual World: Avatar-Mediated Teaching and Learning in Second Life

    Science.gov (United States)

    Mon, Lorri

    2010-01-01

    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…

  9. Virtual reality and hallucination: a technoetic perspective

    Science.gov (United States)

    Slattery, Diana R.

    2008-02-01

    Virtual Reality (VR), especially in a technologically focused discourse, is defined by a class of hardware and software, among them head-mounted displays (HMDs), navigation and pointing devices; and stereoscopic imaging. This presentation examines the experiential aspect of VR. Putting "virtual" in front of "reality" modifies the ontological status of a class of experience-that of "reality." Reality has also been modified [by artists, new media theorists, technologists and philosophers] as augmented, mixed, simulated, artificial, layered, and enhanced. Modifications of reality are closely tied to modifications of perception. Media theorist Roy Ascott creates a model of three "VR's": Verifiable Reality, Virtual Reality, and Vegetal (entheogenically induced) Reality. The ways in which we shift our perceptual assumptions, create and verify illusions, and enter "the willing suspension of disbelief" that allows us entry into imaginal worlds is central to the experience of VR worlds, whether those worlds are explicitly representational (robotic manipulations by VR) or explicitly imaginal (VR artistic creations). The early rhetoric surrounding VR was interwoven with psychedelics, a perception amplified by Timothy Leary's presence on the historic SIGGRAPH panel, and the Wall Street Journal's tag of VR as "electronic LSD." This paper discusses the connections-philosophical, social-historical, and psychological-perceptual between these two domains.

  10. Developing multimedia software and virtual reality worlds and their use in rehabilitation and psychology.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Sik Lányi, Cecília; Laky, Viktória; Tilinger, Adám; Pataky, Ilona; Simon, Lajos; Kiss, Bernadett; Simon, Viktória; Szabó, Júlianna; Páll, Attila

    2004-01-01

    The multimedia and virtual reality projects performed at our laboratory during the last ten years can be grouped into the following groups: 1) tutorial and entertainment programs for handicapped children, 2) rehabilitation programs for stroke patients and patients with phobias. We have developed multimedia software for handicapped children with various impairments: partial vision, hearing difficulties, locomotive difficulties, mental retardation, dyslexia etc. In the present paper we show the advantages of using multimedia software to develop mental skills in handicapped people and deal with the special needs of handicapped children. For the rehabilitation of stroke patients we have developed a computer-controlled method, which enables - contrary to methods used internationally - not only the establishment of a diagnosis, but also measurement of therapy effectiveness: 1) it enables us to produce a database of patients, which contains not only their personal data but also test results, their drawings and audio recordings, 2) it is in itself an intensive therapeutic test and contains tutorial programs. We are currently collecting test results. We have also developed some virtual worlds for treating phobias: a virtual balcony and a ten-story building with an external glass elevator as well as an internal glass elevator in the virtual Atrium Hyatt hotel. We have developed a virtual environment for treating claustrophobia too: a closed lift and a room where the walls can move. For specific phobias (fear of travelling) we have modelled the underground railway system in Budapest. For autistic children, we have developed virtual shopping software too. In this paper we present the advantages of virtual reality in the investigation, evaluation and treatment of perception, behaviour and neuropsychological disorders.

  11. A synthetic computational environment: To control the spread of respiratory infections in a virtual university

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ge, Yuanzheng; Chen, Bin; liu, Liang; Qiu, Xiaogang; Song, Hongbin; Wang, Yong

    2018-02-01

    Individual-based computational environment provides an effective solution to study complex social events by reconstructing scenarios. Challenges remain in reconstructing the virtual scenarios and reproducing the complex evolution. In this paper, we propose a framework to reconstruct a synthetic computational environment, reproduce the epidemic outbreak, and evaluate management interventions in a virtual university. The reconstructed computational environment includes 4 fundamental components: the synthetic population, behavior algorithms, multiple social networks, and geographic campus environment. In the virtual university, influenza H1N1 transmission experiments are conducted, and gradually enhanced interventions are evaluated and compared quantitatively. The experiment results indicate that the reconstructed virtual environment provides a solution to reproduce complex emergencies and evaluate policies to be executed in the real world.

  12. Virtual reality technology and applications

    CERN Document Server

    Mihelj, Matjaž; Beguš, Samo

    2014-01-01

    As virtual reality expands from the imaginary worlds of science fiction and pervades every corner of everyday life, it is becoming increasingly important for students and professionals alike to understand the diverse aspects of this technology. This book aims to provide a comprehensive guide to the theoretical and practical elements of virtual reality, from the mathematical and technological foundations of virtual worlds to the human factors and the applications that enrich our lives: in the fields of medicine, entertainment, education and others. After providing a brief introduction to the topic, the book describes the kinematic and dynamic mathematical models of virtual worlds. It explores the many ways a computer can track and interpret human movement, then progresses through the modalities that make up a virtual world: visual, acoustic and haptic. It explores the interaction between the actual and virtual environments, as well as design principles of the latter. The book closes with an examination of diff...

  13. EEG analysis in a telemedical virtual world

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Jovanov, E.; Starcevic, D.; Samardzic, A.; Marsh, A.; Obrenovic, Z.

    1999-01-01

    Telemedicine creates virtual medical collaborative environments. We propose here a novel concept of virtual medical devices (VMD) for telemedical applications. VMDs provide different views on biomedical recordings and efficient signal analysis. In this paper we present a telemedical EEG analysis

  14. How Health Care Professionals Use Social Media to Create Virtual Communities: An Integrative Review

    Science.gov (United States)

    2016-01-01

    Background Prevailing health care structures and cultures restrict intraprofessional communication, inhibiting knowledge dissemination and impacting the translation of research into practice. Virtual communities may facilitate professional networking and knowledge sharing in and between health care disciplines. Objectives This study aimed to review the literature on the use of social media by health care professionals in developing virtual communities that facilitate professional networking, knowledge sharing, and evidence-informed practice. Methods An integrative literature review was conducted to identify research published between 1990 and 2015. Search strategies sourced electronic databases (PubMed, CINAHL), snowball references, and tables of contents of 3 journals. Papers that evaluated social media use by health care professionals (unless within an education framework) using any research design (except for research protocols or narrative reviews) were included. Standardized data extraction and quality assessment tools were used. Results Overall, 72 studies were included: 44 qualitative (including 2 ethnographies, 26 qualitative descriptive, and 1 Q-sort) and 20 mixed-methods studies, and 8 literature reviews. The most common methods of data collection were Web-based observation (n=39), surveys (n=23), interviews (n=11), focus groups (n=2), and diaries (n=1). Study quality was mixed. Social media studied included Listservs (n=22), Twitter (n=18), general social media (n=17), discussion forums (n=7), Web 2.0 (n=3), virtual community of practice (n=3), wiki (n=1), and Facebook (n=1). A range of health care professionals were sampled in the studies, including physicians (n=24), nurses (n=15), allied health professionals (n=14), followed by health care professionals in general (n=8), a multidisciplinary clinical specialty area (n=9), and midwives (n=2). Of 36 virtual communities, 31 were monodiscipline for a discrete clinical specialty. Population uptake by the

  15. The Real Virtual World: Connectivity and Techno-Mediation in the Lives of College Students

    Science.gov (United States)

    Standlee, Alecea

    2012-01-01

    This dissertation examines the way in which techno-mediated communication technologies, such as social media, text messaging, and virtual communities are used to negotiate, establish and maintain interpersonal relationships among college students. Using in-depth interview and online participant observation, I explore the relationship between…

  16. MUNDOS VIRTUAIS E EDUCAÇÃO: DESAFIOS E POSSIBILIDADES. VIRTUAL WORLDS AND EDUCATION: CHALLENGES AND POSSIBILITIES

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Aristóteles da Silva Oliveira

    2013-11-01

    Full Text Available Este artigo apresenta uma análise dos mundos virtuais com foco no estudo de novas metodologias para o ensino superior. Durante a pesquisa, numa abordagem webgráfica e analítica, foram analisados quatro mundos virtuais a partir de suas características, confrontando com a teoria do conectivismo e tendo como aporte teórico as indicações da necessidade de se buscar novas metodologias que atendam a realidade da sociedade em rede, a partir do estudo de teóricos como Moita (2012, Mattar e Valente (2007, Alves (2008 e Mauri e Onrubia (2010. Os resultados apontam as possibilidades de interação e de uso para fins educacionais específicos, como no caso de engenharia ou arquitetura. Faz-se necessária a realização de pesquisas empíricas que usem os mundos virtuais no cotidiano do ensino superior, com foco na aplicação dos estudos realizados nesta etapa formativa. O currículo dos cursos de formação de professores deve ser revisto, buscando-se uma adequação para que professores sejam formados a partir de competências que atendam a esta realidade da sociedade. This paper presents an analysis of virtual worlds focused on the study of new methods for higher education. During the research, based on a webgraphic and analytical approach, we analyzed the characteristics of four virtual worlds, comparing them with the theory of connectivism and having as theoretical guides indications of the need for new methodologies that address the reality of the network society, from the study of Moita (2012, Mattar and Valente (2007, Alves (2008 and Mouri and Onrubia (2010. Results show that some virtual worlds allow more interaction than others, but also the possibility of use for specific educational purposes, such as engineering or architecture. Thus, the more interaction provided, the more learning. However, it is necessary to carry out other empirical studies using virtual worlds in everyday higher education, focusing on application of studies in this

  17. Can Virtual Schools Thrive in the Real World?

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wang, Yinying; Decker, Janet R.

    2014-01-01

    Despite the relatively large number of students enrolled in Ohio's virtual schools, it is unclear how virtual schools compare to their traditional school counterparts on measures of student achievement. To provide some insight, we compared the school performance from 2007-2011 at Ohio's virtual and traditional schools. The results suggest that…

  18. Virtual Presence and the Mind's Eye in 3-D Online Communities

    Science.gov (United States)

    Beacham, R. C.; Denard, H.; Baker, D.

    2011-09-01

    Digital technologies have introduced fundamental changes in the forms, content, and media of communication. Indeed, some have suggested we are in the early stages of a seismic shift comparable to that in antiquity with the transition from a primarily oral culture to one based upon writing. The digital transformation is rapidly displacing the long-standing hegemony of text, and restoring in part social, bodily, oral and spatial elements, but in radically reconfigured forms and formats. Contributing to and drawing upon such changes and possibilities, scholars and those responsible for sites preserving or displaying cultural heritage, have undertaken projects to explore the properties and potential of the online communities enabled by "Virtual Worlds" and related platforms for teaching, collaboration, publication, and new modes of disciplinary research. Others, keenly observing and evaluating such work, are poised to contribute to it. It is crucial that leadership be provided to ensure that serious and sustained investigation be undertaken by scholars who have experience, and achievements, in more traditional forms of research, and who perceive the emerging potential of Virtual World work to advance their investigations. The Virtual Museums Transnational Network will seek to engage such scholars and provide leadership in this emerging and immensely attractive new area of cultural heritage exploration and experience. This presentation reviews examples of the current "state of the art" in heritage based Virtual World initiatives, looking at the new modes of social interaction and experience enabled by such online communities, and some of the achievements and future aspirations of this work.

  19. Three Dimensional Virtual Environments as a Tool for Development of Personal Learning Networks

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Aggeliki Nikolaou

    2013-01-01

    Full Text Available Technological advances have altered how, where, when, and what information is created, presented and diffused in working and social environments as well as how learners interact with that information. Virtual worlds constitute an emerging realm for collaborative play, learning and work. This paper describes how virtual worlds provide a mechanism to facilitate the creation and development of Personal Learning Networks. This qualitative investigation focuses on the role of three-dimensional virtual environments (3DVEs in the creation and development of Personal Learning Networks (PLNs. More specifically, this work investigates the reasons that drive members of Education Orientated Groups (hereafter “Groups” in Second Life (SL, to adopt a technological innovation as a milieu of learning, the ways they use it and the types of learning that are occurring in it. The authors also discuss the collaborative and social characteristics of these environments which, provide access to excellence of a specific area of interest and promote innovative ideas on a global scale, through sharing educational resources and developing good educational practices without spatial and temporal constraints.

  20. Learning Ethics through Virtual Fieldtrips: Teaching Ethical Theories through Virtual Experiences

    Science.gov (United States)

    Houser, Rick; Thoma, Steve; Coppock, Amanda; Mazer, Matthew; Midkiff, Lewis; Younanian, Marisa; Young, Sarah

    2011-01-01

    Teaching ethical reasoning is considered an important component of the undergraduate learning experience. A recent approach to teaching using experiential learning is through virtual worlds such as Second Life. We discuss how ethics may be taught using experiential learning in the virtual world of Second Life. Participants in the class in this…

  1. Consuming Social Networks: A Study on BeeTalk Network

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Jamal Mohammadi

    Full Text Available BeeTalk is one of the most common social networks that have attracted many users during these years. As a whole, social networks are parts of everyday life nowadays and, especially among the new generation, have caused some basic alterations in the field of identity-formation, sense-making and the form and content of communication. This article is a research about BeeTalk users, their virtual interactions and experiences, and the feelings, pleasures, meanings and attitudes that they obtain through participating in the virtual world. This is a qualitative research. The sample is selected by way of theoretical sampling among the students of University of Kurdistan. Direct observation and semistructured interviews are used to gathering data, which are interpreted through grounded theory. The findings show that some contexts like “searching real interests in a non-real world” and “the representation of users’ voices in virtual space” have provided the space for participating in BeeTalk, and an intervening factor called “instant availability” has intensified this participation. Users’ participation in this social network has changed their social interaction in the real world and formed some new types of communication among them such as “representation of faked identities”, “experiencing ceremonial space” and “artificial literacy”. Moreover, this participation has some consequences like “virtual addiction” and “virtual collectivism” in users’ everyday life that effects their ways of providing meaning and identity in their social lives. It can be said that the result of user’s activity in this network is to begin a kind of simulated relation that has basic differences with relations in the real world. The experience of relation in this network lacks nobility, enrichment and animation, rather it is instant, artificial and without any potential to vitalization.

  2. Professional Learning in Unlikely Spaces: Social Media and Virtual Communities as Professional Development

    OpenAIRE

    Kathleen P. King

    2011-01-01

    In this case study, results demonstrate that an individual’s use of social media as professional learning spans understanding, networking, professional identity development, and transformative learning. Specifically, virtual online communities facilitated through social media provide professional networks, social relationships and learning beyond the scope of the individual’s usual experience. Case study method reveals strategies, extent, and impact of learning providing insight into this phe...

  3. Aversive eye gaze during a speech in virtual environment in patients with social anxiety disorder.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kim, Haena; Shin, Jung Eun; Hong, Yeon-Ju; Shin, Yu-Bin; Shin, Young Seok; Han, Kiwan; Kim, Jae-Jin; Choi, Soo-Hee

    2018-03-01

    One of the main characteristics of social anxiety disorder is excessive fear of social evaluation. In such situations, anxiety can influence gaze behaviour. Thus, the current study adopted virtual reality to examine eye gaze pattern of social anxiety disorder patients while presenting different types of speeches. A total of 79 social anxiety disorder patients and 51 healthy controls presented prepared speeches on general topics and impromptu speeches on self-related topics to a virtual audience while their eye gaze was recorded. Their presentation performance was also evaluated. Overall, social anxiety disorder patients showed less eye gaze towards the audience than healthy controls. Types of speech did not influence social anxiety disorder patients' gaze allocation towards the audience. However, patients with social anxiety disorder showed significant correlations between the amount of eye gaze towards the audience while presenting self-related speeches and social anxiety cognitions. The current study confirms that eye gaze behaviour of social anxiety disorder patients is aversive and that their anxiety symptoms are more dependent on the nature of topic.

  4. [Social media, children and pediatricians].

    Science.gov (United States)

    Le Heuzey, M-F

    2012-01-01

    Using social media web sites is a common activity for children, and any site that allows social interaction (social network, games, virtual worlds...) is a social media site. Pediatricians are in a position to help families understand the benefits and the risks of these sites, and to diagnose problems in children and adolescents as cyberbullying, depression, and post traumatic disorder. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.

  5. Virtual Character Personality Influences Participant Attitudes and Behavior - An Interview with a Virtual Human Character about Her Social Anxiety

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Xueni ePan

    2015-02-01

    Full Text Available We introduce a novel technique for the study of human-virtual character interaction in immersive virtual reality. The human participants verbally administered a standard questionnaire about social anxiety to a virtual female character, that responded to each question through speech and body movements. The purpose was to study the extent to which participants responded differently to characters that exhibited different personalities, even though the verbal content of their answers was always the same. A separate online study provided evidence that our intention to create two different personality types had been successful. In the main between-groups experiment that utilized a Cave system there were 24 male participants, where 12 interacted with a female virtual character portrayed to exhibit shyness and the remaining 12 with an identical but more confident virtual character. Our results indicate that although the content of the verbal responses of both virtual characters was the same, participants showed different subjective and behavioral responses to the two different personalities. In particular participants evaluated the shy character more positively, for example, expressing willingness to spend more time with her. Participants evaluated the confident character more negatively and waited for a significantly longer time to call her back after she had left the scene in order to answer a telephone call. The method whereby participants interviewed the virtual character allowed naturalistic conversation while avoiding the necessity of speech processing and generation, and natural language understanding. It is therefore a useful method for the study of the impact of virtual character personality on participant responses.

  6. Virtual water: Virtuous impact? : the unsteady state of virtual water

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Roth, D.; Warner, J.F.

    2008-01-01

    “Virtual water,” water needed for crop production, is now being mainstreamed in the water policy world. Relying on virtual water in the form of food imports is increasingly recommended as good policy for water-scarce areas. Virtual water globalizes discussions on water scarcity, ecological

  7. Virtual reality experiments linking social environment and psychosis: A pilot study

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Veling, W.; Brinkman, W.P.; Dorrestijn, E.; van der Gaag, M.

    2014-01-01

    Initial studies with healthy subjects and individuals with high risk for psychosis have suggested that virtual reality (VR) environments may be used to investigate social and psychological mechanisms of psychosis. One small study reported that VR can safely be used in individuals with current

  8. Leadership in MMOGs: A Field of Research on Virtual Teams

    Science.gov (United States)

    Mysirlaki, Sofia; Paraskeva, Fotini

    2012-01-01

    As our need for collaboration constantly grows, new tools have emerged to connect us in social networks, supporting the development of online communities, such as online games and virtual worlds. MMOGs (Massively Multiplayer Online Games) and MMORPGs (Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games) are complex systems, in which players are…

  9. Towards augmented reality: The dialectics of physical and virtual space

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Guga Jelena

    2015-01-01

    Full Text Available Spaces generated by new media technologies, no matter how abstract they may be, represent a qualitatively new form of the media environment. Moreover, they are integrated into everyday life in a way that they have become the constituents of social reality. Based on dualistic Cartesian understanding of real and virtual space, virtuality still carries a connotation of 'other' world, which is ontologically and phenomenologically different from 'reality'. However, virtuality as a characteristic of new media technologies should neither be equated with illusion, deception or fiction nor set in opposition to reality, given that it embodies real interactions. Instead, we could say that there are different types or levels of reality and that the virtual exists as reality qualitatively different from that of physical reality. Today, when every place on the planet, as well as social, political, and cultural activities, have their digital manifestations, can we still talk about virtual space as an isolated phenomenon? The ubiquitous use of new media technologies such as smartphones or wearables has profoundly transformed the experience of modern man. It is more and more determined by technologically mediated reality, i.e. augmented reality. In this regard, the key issues that will be addressed in this article are the ways technologically mediated spaces redefine not only the social relationships, but also the notions of identity, embodiment, and the self.

  10. Economic and social effects of novel supply chain concepts and virtual enterprises

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    György Kovács

    2017-05-01

    Full Text Available Growing market globalization, increasing global competition, more complex products results in application of new technologies, methods and business processes – due to the abovementioned tendencies novel supply chain strategies (Lean, Agile and Leagile Supply Chains are established. In this study these supply chain concepts are being described and compared. Virtual enterprise is a temporary alliance of enterprises that come together to share their skills, core competencies, costs and resources in order to better respond to rapidly changing market environment and dynamic customer demands. Economic and social benefits and effects of virtual enterprises for customers and production companies and service providers are also described. Optimization software has been developed for optimal formation of virtual enterprise networks and is also introduced in this study. The aim of this software application is to define virtual enterprise as the optimal combination of supply chain members.

  11. Supporting Distributed Team Working in 3D Virtual Worlds: A Case Study in Second Life

    Science.gov (United States)

    Minocha, Shailey; Morse, David R.

    2010-01-01

    Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to report on a study into how a three-dimensional (3D) virtual world (Second Life) can facilitate socialisation and team working among students working on a team project at a distance. This models the situation in many commercial sectors where work is increasingly being conducted across time zones and between…

  12. Teaching an Aerospace Engineering Design Course via Virtual Worlds: A Comparative Assessment of Learning Outcomes

    Science.gov (United States)

    Okutsu, Masataka; DeLaurentis, Daniel; Brophy, Sean; Lambert, Jason

    2013-01-01

    To test the concept of multiuser 3D virtual environments as media to teach semester-long courses, we developed a software prototype called Aeroquest. An aerospace design course--offered to 135 second-year students for university credits in Fall 2009--was divided into two groups: the real-world group attending lectures, physically, in a campus hall…

  13. The Use of Virtual Worlds in Management Education: An Investigation of Current Practices in Second Life

    Science.gov (United States)

    Klein, Amarolinda Zanela; Freitas, Angilberto; Machado, Lisiane; da Silva Freitas, José Carlos, Jr.; Graziola, Paulo Gaspar; Schlemmer, Eliane

    2014-01-01

    Frequently, research on management education does not take into account the role of Information Technology as a key resource to support teaching and learning processes. In this article, the authors explore the current applications of Three Dimensional Virtual Worlds (3DVW) for Management education. The authors researched the educational…

  14. Simulating Social Situations in Immersive Virtual Reality - A Study of Bystander Responses to Violent Emergencies

    OpenAIRE

    Rovira i Pérez, A.

    2016-01-01

    The goal of this research is to show how immersive virtual reality (IVR) can be used to study human responses to extreme emergencies in social situations. Participants interact realistically with animated virtual humans. We show this through experimental studies of bystander responses to a violent confrontation, and find that there are conditions under which people intervene to help virtual characters that are threatened. We go on to show that a reinforcement learning (RL) method can capture ...

  15. Technophiles to Newbies: The Challenge of Supporting Distributed Teams to Maintain Engagement in Virtual Worlds

    Science.gov (United States)

    Griffith, Karen

    2011-01-01

    The purpose of this paper is to look for links in a virtual trainee's interest and self-efficacy in a simulated event as it relates to their previous self-reported technical skill level. Ultimately, the idea would be to provide the right amount of support at the right place at the right time to set the conditions for maximum transfer of the skill sets to the work place. An anecdotal recap of a recent experiment of a medium-scale training event produced in a virtual world will provide examples for discussion. In July 2010, a virtual training event was produced for the Air Force Research Lab's Games for Team Training (GaMeTT) at the Patriot Exercise at Volk Field in Wisconsin. There were 29 EMEDS participants who completed the simulated OCO event using the OLIVE gaming engine. Approximately 25 avatars were present at any given time; including role players, observers, coordinators and participants.

  16. Improving social awareness through thought bubbles and flashbacks of virtual characters

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Linssen, Johannes Maria; Theune, Mariet; de Groot, Thomas; Brinkman, Willem-Paul; Broekens, Joost; Heylen, Dirk K.J.

    We present two prototypes of a serious game which is a aimed at raising police officers’ awareness of social stance during street interventions by letting them interact with virtual characters. We discuss the design, implementation and evaluation of a method of feedback on the police officers’ game

  17. Looking Similar Promotes Group Stability in a Game-Based Virtual Community.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lortie, Catherine L; Guitton, Matthieu J

    2012-08-01

    Online support groups are popular Web-based resources that provide tailored information and peer support through virtual communities and fulfill the users' needs for empowerment and belonging. However, the therapeutic potential of online support groups is at present limited by the lack of systematic research on the cognitive mechanisms underlying social group cohesion in virtual communities. We might increase the benefits of participation in online support groups if we gain more insight into the factors that promote long-term commitment to peer support. One approach to foster the therapeutic potential of online support groups could be to increase social selection based on visual similarity. We performed a case study using the popular virtual setting of "World of Warcraft" (Blizzard Entertainment, Irvine, CA). We monitored the social dynamics of a virtual community composed of avatars whose appearance was identical during a period of 3 months, biweekly, for a total of 24 measures. We observed that this homogeneous community displayed a very high level of group stability over time in terms of the total number of members, the number of members that stayed the same, and the number of arrivals and departures, despite the fact that belonging to a heterogeneous group typically favors the success of the group with respect to game progression. Our results confirm that appearance can trigger social selection in online virtual communities. Displaying a similar appearance could be one way to strengthen social bonds among peers who share various health and well-being issues. Thus, the therapeutic potential of online support groups could be promoted through visual cohesion.

  18. Online Social Support for Patients with Multiple Sclerosis: A Thematic Analysis of Messages Posted to a Virtual Support Community

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Masoumeh Abbasi Shavazi

    2016-07-01

    Full Text Available Background: Currently with the emergence of the Internet, patients have an opportunity to exchange social support online. However, little attention has been devoted to different dimensions of online social support exchanged in virtual support communities for patients with multiple sclerosis (MS. Methods: To provide a rich insight, the aim of this qualitative study was to explore and categorize different dimensions of online social support in messages exchanged in a virtual support community for patients with MS. A total of 548 posted messages created during one year period were selected using purposive sampling to consider the maximum variation sampling. Prior-research-driven thematic analysis was then conducted. In this regard, we used the Cutruna and Suhr’s coding system. The messages that could not be categorized with the used coding system were thematically analyzed to explore new additional social support themes. Results: The results showed that various forms of social support including informational, emotional, network, esteem and tangible support were exchanged. Moreover, new additional social support themes including sharing personal experiences, sharing coping strategies and spiritual support emerged in this virtual support community. Conclusion: The wide range of online social support exchanged in the virtual support community can be regarded as a supplementary source of social support for patients with MS. Future researches can examine online social support more comprehensively considering additional social support themes emerging in the present study.

  19. Social conditioning and extinction paradigm: A translational study in virtual reality

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Youssef eShiban

    2015-04-01

    Full Text Available In human beings, experiments investigating fear conditioning with social stimuli are rare. The current study aims at translating an animal model for social fear conditioning (SFC to a human sample using an operant SFC paradigm in virtual reality (VR. Forty participants actively (using a joystick approached virtual male agents that served as conditioned stimuli (CS. During the acquisition phase, unconditioned stimuli (US, a combination of an air blast (5 bar, 10 ms and a female scream (95 dB, 40 ms, were presented when participants reached a defined proximity to the agent with a contingency of 75% for CS+ agents and never for CS- agents. During the extinction and the test phases, no US was delivered. Outcome variables were pleasantness ratings and physiological reactions in heart rate and fear-potentiated startle. Additionally, the influence of social anxiety, which was measured with the Social Phobia Inventory scale, was evaluated. As expected after the acquisition phase the CS+ was rated clearly less pleasant than the CS-. This difference vanished during extinction. Furthermore, the HR remained high for the CS+, while the HR for the CS- was clearly lower after than before the acquisition. Furthermore, a clear difference between CS+ and CS- after the acquisition indicated successful conditioning on this translational measure. Contrariwise extinction was not observed on the physiological variables. Importantly, at the generalization test, higher socially fearful participants rated pleasantness of all agents as low whereas the lower socially fearful participants rated pleasantness as low only for the CS+. SFC was successfully induced and extinguished confirming operant conditioning in this SFC paradigm. These findings suggest that the paradigm is suitable to expand the knowledge about the learning and unlearning of social fears. Further studies should investigate the operant mechanisms of development and treatment of social anxiety disorder.

  20. Social conditioning and extinction paradigm: a translational study in virtual reality.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Shiban, Youssef; Reichenberger, Jonas; Neumann, Inga D; Mühlberger, Andreas

    2015-01-01

    In human beings, experiments investigating fear conditioning with social stimuli are rare. The current study aims at translating an animal model for social fear conditioning (SFC) to a human sample using an operant SFC paradigm in virtual reality. Forty participants actively (using a joystick) approached virtual male agents that served as conditioned stimuli (CS). During the acquisition phase, unconditioned stimuli (US), a combination of an air blast (5 bar, 10 ms) and a female scream (95 dB, 40 ms), were presented when participants reached a defined proximity to the agent with a contingency of 75% for CS+ agents and never for CS- agents. During the extinction and the test phases, no US was delivered. Outcome variables were pleasantness ratings and physiological reactions in heart rate (HR) and fear-potentiated startle. Additionally, the influence of social anxiety, which was measured with the Social Phobia Inventory scale, was evaluated. As expected after the acquisition phase the CS+ was rated clearly less pleasant than the CS-. This difference vanished during extinction. Furthermore, the HR remained high for the CS+, while the HR for the CS- was clearly lower after than before the acquisition. Furthermore, a clear difference between CS+ and CS- after the acquisition indicated successful conditioning on this translational measure. Contrariwise no CS+/CS- differences were observed in the physiological variables during extinction. Importantly, at the generalization test, higher socially fearful participants rated pleasantness of all agents as low whereas the lower socially fearful participants rated pleasantness as low only for the CS+. SFC was successfully induced and extinguished confirming operant conditioning in this SFC paradigm. These findings suggest that the paradigm is suitable to expand the knowledge about the learning and unlearning of social fears. Further studies should investigate the operant mechanisms of development and treatment of social anxiety

  1. Augmented Reality Platforms for Virtual Fitting Rooms

    OpenAIRE

    Ioannis Pachoulakis; Kostas Kapetanakis

    2012-01-01

    Multi-sensor body scanners combined with new algorithms and social media technologies have started a revolutionary shift away from the classic desktop paradigm and into the direction of intuitive, “natural interaction” where people interface with the technological world through hand gestures, speech and body language. This article reviews recent examples of Virtual Fitting Rooms (VFRs) and supporting technologies which facilitate the shopping experience by letting customers to try...

  2. Development of a virtual speaking simulator using Image Based Rendering.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lee, J M; Kim, H; Oh, M J; Ku, J H; Jang, D P; Kim, I Y; Kim, S I

    2002-01-01

    The fear of speaking is often cited as the world's most common social phobia. The rapid growth of computer technology has enabled the use of virtual reality (VR) for the treatment of the fear of public speaking. There are two techniques for building virtual environments for the treatment of this fear: a model-based and a movie-based method. Both methods have the weakness that they are unrealistic and not controllable individually. To understand these disadvantages, this paper presents a virtual environment produced with Image Based Rendering (IBR) and a chroma-key simultaneously. IBR enables the creation of realistic virtual environments where the images are stitched panoramically with the photos taken from a digital camera. And the use of chroma-keys puts virtual audience members under individual control in the environment. In addition, real time capture technique is used in constructing the virtual environments enabling spoken interaction between the subject and a therapist or another subject.

  3. Virtual Reality: immersed in the structural world

    OpenAIRE

    McCabe, Aimee; McPolin, Daniel

    2015-01-01

    Virtual reality is a rapidly emerging technology, driven by the computer gaming industry. The maturity of the concept, combined with modern hardware, is delivering an experience which offers a useful commercial tool for industry and educators. This article discusses the uses of virtual reality within structural engineering and provides an understanding of how it can be incorporated easily and efficiently for design purposes and beyond.

  4. Surgery applications of virtual reality

    Science.gov (United States)

    Rosen, Joseph

    1994-01-01

    Virtual reality is a computer-generated technology which allows information to be displayed in a simulated, bus lifelike, environment. In this simulated 'world', users can move and interact as if they were actually a part of that world. This new technology will be useful in many different fields, including the field of surgery. Virtual reality systems can be used to teach surgical anatomy, diagnose surgical problems, plan operations, simulate and perform surgical procedures (telesurgery), and predict the outcomes of surgery. The authors of this paper describe the basic components of a virtual reality surgical system. These components include: the virtual world, the virtual tools, the anatomical model, the software platform, the host computer, the interface, and the head-coupled display. In the chapter they also review the progress towards using virtual reality for surgical training, planning, telesurgery, and predicting outcomes. Finally, the authors present a training system being developed for the practice of new procedures in abdominal surgery.

  5. Virtual Doppelgangers: Psychological Effects of Avatars Who Ignore Their Owners

    Science.gov (United States)

    Bailenson, Jeremy N.; Segovia, Kathryn Y.

    For a decade, the Virtual Human Interaction Lab has been creating doppelgangers, virtual versions of the self, for research purposes. This chapter considers how humans may be affected by confrontation with virtual versions of themselves, on the basis of well-established psychological theories, including social cognitive theory (social learning theory), media richness theory (information richness theory), and self-perception theory. Experiments carried out in the Lab, and informed by these theories, have explored such notable topics as health communication, marketing, and false memories. The findings of one series of studies suggest that doppelgangerscan show the rewards of exercise and proper eating habits, changing people's health-related behavior as a result. Other studies showed that doppelgangers are powerful marketing agents and can be used in advertisements to create favorable brand impressions among consumers. Other research documented that children have difficulty in distinguishing between an actual memory elicited by a physical world event and a false memory elicited by mental image or doppelganger.

  6. Measuring Co-Presence and Social Presence in Virtual Environments - Psychometric Construction of a German Scale for a Fear of Public Speaking Scenario.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Poeschl, Sandra; Doering, Nicola

    2015-01-01

    Virtual reality exposure therapy (VRET) applications use high levels of fidelity in order to produce high levels of presence and thereby elicit an emotional response for the user (like fear for phobia treatment). State of research shows mixed results for the correlation between anxiety and presence in virtual reality exposure, with differing results depending on specific anxiety disorders. A positive correlation for anxiety and presence for social anxiety disorder is not proven up to now. One reason might be that plausibility of the simulation, namely including key triggers for social anxiety (for example verbal and non-verbal behavior of virtual agents that reflects potentially negative human evaluation) might not be acknowledged in current presence questionnaires. A German scale for measuring co-presence and social presence for virtual reality (VR) fear of public speaking scenarios was developed based on a translation and adaption of existing co-presence and social presence questionnaires. A sample of N = 151 students rated co-presence and social presence after using a fear of public speaking application. Four correlated factors were derived by item- and principle axis factor analysis (Promax rotation), representing the presenter's reaction to virtual agents, the reactions of the virtual agents as perceived by the presenter, impression of interaction possibilities, and (co-)presence of other people in the virtual environment. The scale developed can be used as a starting point for future research and test construction for VR applications with a social context.

  7. Social Live Streaming tools for the development of Virtual Workshops

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    C. García-García

    2017-04-01

    This paper proposes the use of Social Live Streaming Tools in mobile devices in order to facilitate the development of creative workshops, using the virtual territory as co-creation area with the aim of promoting one-to-many communications, so that a lecturer can perform a mass communication, in real time and delocalized, without losing the possibility of interact with the audience. These tools also allow the possibility for each member of a creative team to swap between different roles (viewer at some times or lecturer at others, thus stimulating the creative process through social participation.

  8. The role of social networking in the effectiveness of university ...

    African Journals Online (AJOL)

    The role of social networking in the effectiveness of university education: exploratory ... new facts came to light, as it made people communicate in a virtual world. ... Keywords: social networks; e-Learning; online learning; Facebook; Web 2.0; ...

  9. Experimental studies of the interaction between people and virtual humans with a focus on social anxiety

    OpenAIRE

    Pan, X.

    2010-01-01

    Psychotherapy has been one of the major applications of Virtual Reality technology; examples include fear of flying, heights, spiders, and post‐traumatic stress disorder. Virtual reality has been shown to be useful, in the context of exposure therapy for the treatment of social anxiety, such as fear of public speaking, where the clients learn how to conquer their anxiety through interactions with Virtual Characters (avatars). This thesis is concerned with the interaction between human p...

  10. 3D Virtual Reality for Teaching Astronomy

    Science.gov (United States)

    Speck, Angela; Ruzhitskaya, L.; Laffey, J.; Ding, N.

    2012-01-01

    We are developing 3D virtual learning environments (VLEs) as learning materials for an undergraduate astronomy course, in which will utilize advances both in technologies available and in our understanding of the social nature of learning. These learning materials will be used to test whether such VLEs can indeed augment science learning so that it is more engaging, active, visual and effective. Our project focuses on the challenges and requirements of introductory college astronomy classes. Here we present our virtual world of the Jupiter system and how we plan to implement it to allow students to learn course material - physical laws and concepts in astronomy - while engaging them into exploration of the Jupiter's system, encouraging their imagination, curiosity, and motivation. The VLE can allow students to work individually or collaboratively. The 3D world also provides an opportunity for research in astronomy education to investigate impact of social interaction, gaming features, and use of manipulatives offered by a learning tool on students’ motivation and learning outcomes. Use of this VLE is also a valuable source for exploration of how the learners’ spatial awareness can be enhanced by working in 3D environment. We will present the Jupiter-system environment along with a preliminary study of the efficacy and usability of our Jupiter 3D VLE.

  11. Age differences in virtual environment and real world path integration

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Diane E Adamo

    2012-09-01

    Full Text Available Accurate path integration requires the integration of visual, proprioceptive, and vestibular self-motion cues and age effects associated with alterations in processing information from these systems may contribute to declines in path integration abilities. The present study investigated age-related differences in path integration in conditions that varied as a function of available sources of sensory information. Twenty-two healthy, young (23.8 ± 3.0 yrs. and 16 older (70.1 ± 6.4 yrs. adults participated in distance reproduction and triangle completion tasks performed in a virtual environment and two real world conditions: guided walking and wheelchair propulsion. For walking and wheelchair propulsion conditions, participants wore a blindfold and wore noise-blocking headphones and were guided through the workspace by the experimenter. For the virtual environment (VE condition, participants viewed self-motion information on a computer monitor and used a joystick to navigate through the environment. For triangle completion tasks, older compared to younger individuals showed greater errors in rotation estimations performed in the wheelchair condition; and for rotation and distance estimations in the VE condition. Distance reproduction tasks, in contrast, did not show any age effects. These findings demonstrate that age differences in path integration vary as a function of the available sources of information and by the complexity of outbound pathway.

  12. 3D virtual world remote laboratory to assist in designing advanced user defined DAQ systems based on FlexRIO and EPICS

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Carpeño, A., E-mail: antonio.cruiz@upm.es [Universidad Politécnica de Madrid UPM, Madrid (Spain); Contreras, D.; López, S.; Ruiz, M.; Sanz, D.; Arcas, G. de; Esquembri, S. [Universidad Politécnica de Madrid UPM, Madrid (Spain); Vega, J.; Castro, R. [Laboratorio Nacional de Fusión CIEMAT, Madrid (Spain)

    2016-11-15

    Highlights: • Assist in the design of FPGA-based data acquisition systems using EPICS and FlexRIO. • Virtual Reality technologies are highly effective at creating rich training scenarios. • Virtual actions simulate the behavior of a real system to enhance the training process. • Virtual actions can make real changes remotely in the physical ITER’s Fast Controller. - Abstract: iRIO-3DLab is a platform devised to assist developers in the design and implementation of intelligent and reconfigurable FPGA-based data acquisition systems using EPICS and FlexRIO technologies. Although these architectures are very powerful in defining the behavior of DAQ systems, this advantage comes at the price of greater difficulty in understanding how the system works, and how it should be configured and built according to the hardware available and the processing demanded by the requirements of the diagnostics. In this regard, Virtual Reality technologies are highly effective at creating rich training scenarios due to their ability to provide immersive training experiences and collaborative environments. The designed remote laboratory is based on a 3D virtual world developed in Opensim, which is accessible through a standard free 3D viewer. Using a client-server architecture, the virtual world connects with a service running in a Linux-based computer executing EPICS. Through their avatars, users interact with virtual replicas of this equipment as they would in real-life situations. Some actions can be used to simulate the behavior of a real system to enhance the training process, while others can be used to make real changes remotely in the physical system.

  13. 3D virtual world remote laboratory to assist in designing advanced user defined DAQ systems based on FlexRIO and EPICS

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Carpeño, A.; Contreras, D.; López, S.; Ruiz, M.; Sanz, D.; Arcas, G. de; Esquembri, S.; Vega, J.; Castro, R.

    2016-01-01

    Highlights: • Assist in the design of FPGA-based data acquisition systems using EPICS and FlexRIO. • Virtual Reality technologies are highly effective at creating rich training scenarios. • Virtual actions simulate the behavior of a real system to enhance the training process. • Virtual actions can make real changes remotely in the physical ITER’s Fast Controller. - Abstract: iRIO-3DLab is a platform devised to assist developers in the design and implementation of intelligent and reconfigurable FPGA-based data acquisition systems using EPICS and FlexRIO technologies. Although these architectures are very powerful in defining the behavior of DAQ systems, this advantage comes at the price of greater difficulty in understanding how the system works, and how it should be configured and built according to the hardware available and the processing demanded by the requirements of the diagnostics. In this regard, Virtual Reality technologies are highly effective at creating rich training scenarios due to their ability to provide immersive training experiences and collaborative environments. The designed remote laboratory is based on a 3D virtual world developed in Opensim, which is accessible through a standard free 3D viewer. Using a client-server architecture, the virtual world connects with a service running in a Linux-based computer executing EPICS. Through their avatars, users interact with virtual replicas of this equipment as they would in real-life situations. Some actions can be used to simulate the behavior of a real system to enhance the training process, while others can be used to make real changes remotely in the physical system.

  14. A Social Network Analysis of Teaching and Research Collaboration in a Teachers' Virtual Learning Community

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lin, Xiaofan; Hu, Xiaoyong; Hu, Qintai; Liu, Zhichun

    2016-01-01

    Analysing the structure of a social network can help us understand the key factors influencing interaction and collaboration in a virtual learning community (VLC). Here, we describe the mechanisms used in social network analysis (SNA) to analyse the social network structure of a VLC for teachers and discuss the relationship between face-to-face…

  15. Research on Social Work Practice in Egypt and the Arab World

    Science.gov (United States)

    Megahead, Hamido A.

    2017-01-01

    This article aims at introducing the research on social work practice in Egypt and the Arab World as a thematic topic. It has started with the essence of the current Arab World and its definition. Social work practice and models of social work intervention in this specific region have been described in terms of its specific and topographic nature.…

  16. La confianza de los adolescentes escolarizados en las redes sociales virtuales

    OpenAIRE

    Angela Marcela Soler Fonseca

    2016-01-01

    Este artículo hace aproximación a la realidad de la confianza que se da en las relaciones generadas desde las redes sociales y aplicaciones virtuales más usadas por los adolescentes escolarizados, en los instituciones educativas de Tunja. El fortalecimiento de la confianza cumple una función dinamizadora de formación social y ciudadana en las relaciones escolares, y marcan un derrotero que da respuesta a las complejidades de la convivencia escolar, inclusive a aquellas de la virtualidad que t...

  17. Virtual Class Support at the Virtual Machine Level

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Nielsen, Anders Bach; Ernst, Erik

    2009-01-01

    This paper describes how virtual classes can be supported in a virtual machine.  Main-stream virtual machines such as the Java Virtual Machine and the .NET platform dominate the world today, and many languages are being executed on these virtual machines even though their embodied design choices...... conflict with the design choices of the virtual machine.  For instance, there is a non-trivial mismatch between the main-stream virtual machines mentioned above and dynamically typed languages.  One language concept that creates an even greater mismatch is virtual classes, in particular because fully...... general support for virtual classes requires generation of new classes at run-time by mixin composition.  Languages like CaesarJ and ObjectTeams can express virtual classes restricted to the subset that does not require run-time generation of classes, because of the restrictions imposed by the Java...

  18. Spinoff - Transferring Energy between Real and Virtual Worlds

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Groenegress, Christoph; Slater, Mel; Tamke, Martin

    2007-01-01

    There is a widening gap between interaction devices for Virtual Environments and other factors such as graphical realism, accessibility and complexity. To address this problem, we developed a Mixed Reality environment that allows participants to interact with virtual entities using an existing toy...

  19. Exploring virtual worlds for scenario-based repeated team training of cardiopulmonary resuscitation in medical students.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Creutzfeldt, Johan; Hedman, Leif; Medin, Christopher; Heinrichs, Wm LeRoy; Felländer-Tsai, Li

    2010-09-03

    Contemporary learning technologies, such as massively multiplayer virtual worlds (MMVW), create new means for teaching and training. However, knowledge about the effectiveness of such training is incomplete, and there are no data regarding how students experience it. Cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) is a field within medicine in high demand for new and effective training modalities. In addition to finding a feasible way to implement CPR training, our aim was to investigate how a serious game setting in a virtual world using avatars would influence medical students' subjective experiences as well as their retention of knowledge. An MMVW was refined and used in a study to train 12 medical students in CPR in 3-person teams in a repeated fashion 6 months apart. An exit questionnaire solicited reflections over their experiences. As the subjects trained in 4 CPR scenarios, measurements of self-efficacy, concentration, and mental strain were made in addition to measuring knowledge. Engagement modes and coping strategies were also studied. Parametric and nonparametric statistical analyses were carried out according to distribution of the data. The majority of the subjects reported that they had enjoyed the training, had found it to be suitable, and had learned something new, although several asked for more difficult and complex scenarios as well as a richer virtual environment. The mean values for knowledge dropped during the 6 months from 8.0/10 to 6.25/10 (P = .002). Self-efficacy increased from before to after each of the two training sessions, from 5.9/7 to 6.5/7 (P = .01) after the first and from 6.0/7 to 6.7/7 (P = .03) after the second. The mean perceived concentration value increased from 54.2/100 to 66.6/100 (P = .006), and in general the mental strain was found to be low to moderate (mean = 2.6/10). Using scenario-based virtual world team training with avatars to train medical students in multi-person CPR was feasible and showed promising results. Although we

  20. Virtual Reality: An Overview.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Franchi, Jorge

    1994-01-01

    Highlights of this overview of virtual reality include optics; interface devices; virtual worlds; potential applications, including medicine and archaeology; problems, including costs; current research and development; future possibilities; and a listing of vendors and suppliers of virtual reality products. (Contains 11 references.) (LRW)

  1. Digital Adultery, "Meta-Anon Widows," Real-World Divorce, and the Need for a Virtual Sexual Ethic

    Science.gov (United States)

    Spencer, William David

    Ethical issues that have emerged around relationships in virtual worlds can inform the way we approach the ethics of human/robot relationships. A workable ethic would be one that treats marriage as an enduring human institution and, while we value robots as worthy works of our hands, they are inappropriate partners for marital or sexual relationships.

  2. Fostering Verbal and Non-Verbal Social Interactions in a 3D Collaborative Virtual Learning Environment: A Case Study of Youth with Autism Spectrum Disorders Learning Social Competence in iSocial

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wang, Xianhui; Laffey, James; Xing, Wanli; Galyen, Krista; Stichter, Janine

    2017-01-01

    This case study describes the verbal and nonverbal social interaction of 11 youth with Autism Spectrum Disorders in a 3D Collaborative Virtual Learning Environment-iSocial. The youth were developing social competence through participation in a social competence intervention curriculum implemented online so as to provide access to high quality…

  3. Links between real and virtual networks: a comparative study of online communities in Japan and Korea.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ishii, Kenichi; Ogasahara, Morihiro

    2007-04-01

    The present study explores how online communities affect real-world personal relations based on a cross-cultural survey conducted in Japan and Korea. Findings indicate that the gratifications of online communities moderate the effects of online communities on social participation. Online communities are categorized into a real-group-based community and a virtual-network-based community. The membership of real-group-based online community is positively correlated with social bonding gratification and negatively correlated with information- seeking gratification. Japanese users prefer more virtual-network-based online communities, while their Korean counterparts prefer real-group-based online communities. Korean users are more active in online communities and seek a higher level of socializing gratifications, such as social bonding and making new friends, when compared with their Japanese counterparts. These results indicate that in Korea, personal relations via the online community are closely associated with the real-world personal relations, but this is not the case in Japan. This study suggests that the effects of the Internet are culture-specific and that the online community can serve a different function in different cultural environments.

  4. Binocular vision in a virtual world: visual deficits following the wearing of a head-mounted display.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Mon-Williams, M; Wann, J P; Rushton, S

    1993-10-01

    The short-term effects on binocular stability of wearing a conventional head-mounted display (HMD) to explore a virtual reality environment were examined. Twenty adult subjects (aged 19-29 years) wore a commercially available HMD for 10 min while cycling around a computer generated 3-D world. The twin screen presentations were set to suit the average interpupillary distance of our subject population, to mimic the conditions of public access virtual reality systems. Subjects were examined before and after exposure to the HMD and there were clear signs of induced binocular stress for a number of the subjects. The implications of introducing such HMDs into the workplace and entertainment environments are discussed.

  5. Art in virtual reality 2010

    Science.gov (United States)

    Chang, Ben

    2010-01-01

    For decades, virtual reality artwork has existed in a small but highly influential niche in the world of electronic and new media art. Since the early 1990's, virtual reality installations have come to define an extreme boundary point of both aesthetic experience and technological sophistication. Classic virtual reality artworks have an almost mythological stature - powerful, exotic, and often rarely exhibited. Today, art in virtual environments continues to evolve and mature, encompassing everything from fully immersive CAVE experiences to performance art in Second Life to the use of augmented and mixed reality in public space. Art in Virtual Reality 2010 is a public exhibition of new artwork that showcases the diverse ways that contemporary artists use virtual environments to explore new aesthetic ground and investigate the continually evolving relationship between our selves and our virtual worlds.

  6. INTERNET and information about nuclear sciences. The world wide web virtual library: nuclear sciences

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Kuruc, J.

    1999-01-01

    In this work author proposes to constitute new virtual library which should centralize the information from nuclear disciplines on the INTERNET, in order to them to give first and foremost the connection on the most important links in set nuclear sciences. The author has entitled this new virtual library The World Wide Web Library: Nuclear Sciences. By constitution of this virtual library next basic principles were chosen: home pages of international organizations important from point of view of nuclear disciplines; home pages of the National Nuclear Commissions and governments; home pages of nuclear scientific societies; web-pages specialized on nuclear problematic, in general; periodical tables of elements and isotopes; web-pages aimed on Chernobyl crash and consequences; web-pages with antinuclear aim. Now continue the links grouped on web-pages according to single nuclear areas: nuclear arsenals; nuclear astrophysics; nuclear aspects of biology (radiobiology); nuclear chemistry; nuclear company; nuclear data centres; nuclear energy; nuclear energy, environmental aspects of (radioecology); nuclear energy info centres; nuclear engineering; nuclear industries; nuclear magnetic resonance; nuclear material monitoring; nuclear medicine and radiology; nuclear physics; nuclear power (plants); nuclear reactors; nuclear risk; nuclear technologies and defence; nuclear testing; nuclear tourism; nuclear wastes; nuclear wastes. In these single groups web-links will be concentrated into following groups: virtual libraries and specialized servers; science; nuclear societies; nuclear departments of the academic institutes; nuclear research institutes and laboratories; centres, info links

  7. How the human brain goes virtual: distinct cortical regions of the person-processing network are involved in self-identification with virtual agents.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ganesh, Shanti; van Schie, Hein T; de Lange, Floris P; Thompson, Evan; Wigboldus, Daniël H J

    2012-07-01

    Millions of people worldwide engage in online role-playing with their avatar, a virtual agent that represents the self. Previous behavioral studies have indicated that many gamers identify more strongly with their avatar than with their biological self. Through their avatar, gamers develop social networks and learn new social-cognitive skills. The cognitive neurosciences have yet to identify the neural processes that underlie self-identification with these virtual agents. We applied functional neuroimaging to 22 long-term online gamers and 21 nongaming controls, while they rated personality traits of self, avatar, and familiar others. Strikingly, neuroimaging data revealed greater avatar-referential cortical activity in the left inferior parietal lobe, a region associated with self-identification from a third-person perspective. The magnitude of this brain activity correlated positively with the propensity to incorporate external body enhancements into one's bodily identity. Avatar-referencing furthermore recruited greater activity in the rostral anterior cingulate gyrus, suggesting relatively greater emotional self-involvement with one's avatar. Post-scanning behavioral data revealed superior recognition memory for avatar relative to others. Interestingly, memory for avatar positively covaried with play duration. These findings significantly advance our knowledge about the brain's plasticity to self-identify with virtual agents and the human cognitive-affective potential to live and learn in virtual worlds.

  8. Behavior believability in virtual worlds: agents acting when they need to.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Avradinis, Nikos; Panayiotopoulos, Themis; Anastassakis, George

    2013-12-01

    Believability has been a perennial goal for the intelligent virtual agent community. One important aspect of believability largely consists in demonstrating autonomous behavior, consistent with the agent's personality and motivational state, as well as the world conditions. Autonomy, on behalf of the agent, implies the existence of an internal structure and mechanism that allows the agent to have its own needs and interests, based on which the agent will dynamically select and generate goals that will in turn lead to self-determined behavior. Intrinsic motivation allows the agent to function and demonstrate behavior, even when no external stimulus is present, due to the constant change of its internal emotional and physiological state. The concept of motivation has already been investigated by research works on intelligent agents, trying to achieve autonomy. The current work presents an architecture and model to represent and manage internal driving factors in intelligent virtual agents, using the concept of motivations. Based on Maslow and Alderfer's bio-psychological needs theories, we present a motivational approach to represent human needs and produce emergent behavior through motivation synthesis. Particular attention is given to basic, physiological level needs, which are the basis of behavior and can produce tendency to action even when there is no other interaction with the environment.

  9. Virtual-Reality-Based Social Interaction Training for Children with High-Functioning Autism

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ke, Fengfeng; Im, Tami

    2013-01-01

    Employing the multiple-baseline across-subjects design, the authors examined the implementation and potential effect of a virtual-reality-based social interaction program on the interaction and communication performance of children with high functioning autism. The data were collected via behavior observation and analysis, questionnaires, and…

  10. Interactive Virtual Cinematography

    OpenAIRE

    Burelli, Paolo

    2012-01-01

    A virtual camera represents the point-of-view of the player through which sheperceives the game world and gets feedback on her actions. Thus, the virtualcamera plays a vital role in 3D computer games and aects player experienceand enjoyability in games. Interactive virtual cinematography is the process ofvisualising the content of a virtual environment by positioning and animatingthe virtual camera in the context of interactive applications such as a computergame.Camera placement and animatio...

  11. Social Engineering hits Social Commerce

    Science.gov (United States)

    Degenhardt, Werner; Wiele, Johannes

    Looking at social commerce, a bunch of bewildering phenomena attracts the attention of social psychologists. The way customers participate today shows attitudes and ethical behavior which cannot be explained from the inherent conditions of Web 2.0 environments alone. Fraud often succeeds, when you do not expect it, and honesty can be found under circumstances that do not support honesty at all. The current situation seems to result from customers assigning experience and ethics from real world business to virtual business environments. But there are indications that this situation may change. Social commerce could suffer as soon as customers would use its inherent weaknesses to their own advantage. The following article outlines first approaches to research into this topic.

  12. What makes virtual agents believable?

    Science.gov (United States)

    Bogdanovych, Anton; Trescak, Tomas; Simoff, Simeon

    2016-01-01

    In this paper we investigate the concept of believability and make an attempt to isolate individual characteristics (features) that contribute to making virtual characters believable. As the result of this investigation we have produced a formalisation of believability and based on this formalisation built a computational framework focused on simulation of believable virtual agents that possess the identified features. In order to test whether the identified features are, in fact, responsible for agents being perceived as more believable, we have conducted a user study. In this study we tested user reactions towards the virtual characters that were created for a simulation of aboriginal inhabitants of a particular area of Sydney, Australia in 1770 A.D. The participants of our user study were exposed to short simulated scenes, in which virtual agents performed some behaviour in two different ways (while possessing a certain aspect of believability vs. not possessing it). The results of the study indicate that virtual agents that appear resource bounded, are aware of their environment, own interaction capabilities and their state in the world, agents that can adapt to changes in the environment and exist in correct social context are those that are being perceived as more believable. Further in the paper we discuss these and other believability features and provide a quantitative analysis of the level of contribution for each such feature to the overall perceived believability of a virtual agent.

  13. Development of and feedback on a fully automated virtual reality system for online training in weight management skills.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Thomas, J Graham; Spitalnick, Josh S; Hadley, Wendy; Bond, Dale S; Wing, Rena R

    2015-01-01

    Virtual reality (VR) technology can provide a safe environment for observing, learning, and practicing use of behavioral weight management skills, which could be particularly useful in enhancing minimal contact online weight management programs. The Experience Success (ES) project developed a system for creating and deploying VR scenarios for online weight management skills training. Virtual environments populated with virtual actors allow users to experiment with implementing behavioral skills via a PC-based point and click interface. A culturally sensitive virtual coach guides the experience, including planning for real-world skill use. Thirty-seven overweight/obese women provided feedback on a test scenario focused on social eating situations. They reported that the scenario gave them greater skills, confidence, and commitment for controlling eating in social situations. © 2014 Diabetes Technology Society.

  14. Realidade virtual aplicada ao tratamento da ansiedade social

    OpenAIRE

    Pinheiro, Tânia Cristina Martins

    2012-01-01

    Trabalho de projecto de mestrado em Engenharia Informática (Engenharia de Software), apresentado à Universidade de Lisboa, através da Faculdade de Ciências, 2012 A ansiedade social é uma patologia debilitante que prejudica e diminui a qualidade de vida. O tratamento existe e ´e composto por várias terapias realizadas em simultâneo, sendo uma delas a terapia de exposição¸. Com a evolução tecnológica, surgiu a possibilidade de aplicar a Realidade Virtual `a terapia de exposição¸ (Terapia de ...

  15. SEMINAR ABOUT SERIOUS GAMES AND VIRTUAL WORLDS: An Experience of International Collaboration And Reflection

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Wolfram LAASER

    2011-08-01

    Full Text Available The educational possibilities of ICT, dizzying and exponentially growing every day, offer multiple alternatives of mediation for teaching, learning and communication.Thus, the inclusion of video games and virtual worlds into educational context represents a qualitative leap that claims to significantly boost ways of communication and knowledge representation of the scenarios involved. Aware of this reality, in the framework of the Master of Technology Enhanced Learning at the National University of Cordoba, Argentina, a virtual seminar was offered to students to address the issue on the basis of invited lectures of worldwide recognized experts. The format chosen for the seminar allowed the treatment of subjects not only through reading assignments and web quests to be discussed collaboratively but also included the state of the art experience of developers working in the field. The paper describes didactic design and technical solutions of the seminar format.

  16. Social dimensions of expertise in World of Warcraft players

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Mark Chen

    2009-03-01

    Full Text Available Expertise development in the massively multiplayer online game World of Warcraft (Blizzard Entertainment, 2004 depends greatly on a player's use of social skills to gain access to expert player groups and accrue social and cultural capital. Drawn from ethnographic research, this paper maps out various forms of expert practice and highlights the social aspects of game play that often eclipse the importance of game-mechanics knowledge. At the time of this research, playing World of Warcraft and developing expertise in the game happened roughly within a two-stage process: (1 leveling up, or advancing one's character or avatar while learning the mechanics of the game, and (2 drawing on social capital gained during the first stage to join a group of up to 40 players to partake in high-end or endgame content.

  17. Body Space in Social Interactions: A Comparison of Reaching and Comfort Distance in Immersive Virtual Reality

    Science.gov (United States)

    Iachini, Tina; Coello, Yann; Frassinetti, Francesca; Ruggiero, Gennaro

    2014-01-01

    Background Do peripersonal space for acting on objects and interpersonal space for interacting with con-specifics share common mechanisms and reflect the social valence of stimuli? To answer this question, we investigated whether these spaces refer to a similar or different physical distance. Methodology Participants provided reachability-distance (for potential action) and comfort-distance (for social processing) judgments towards human and non-human virtual stimuli while standing still (passive) or walking toward stimuli (active). Principal Findings Comfort-distance was larger than other conditions when participants were passive, but reachability and comfort distances were similar when participants were active. Both spaces were modulated by the social valence of stimuli (reduction with virtual females vs males, expansion with cylinder vs robot) and the gender of participants. Conclusions These findings reveal that peripersonal reaching and interpersonal comfort spaces share a common motor nature and are sensitive, at different degrees, to social modulation. Therefore, social processing seems embodied and grounded in the body acting in space. PMID:25405344

  18. Introducing Hyperworld(s: Language, Culture, and History in the Latin American world(s

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Paul Allatson

    2008-02-01

    may also evoke unresolved contradictions between discourses of technophobia and technophilia and, by extension, lead to dichotomized readings of the age in terms of the limits to, and capacities for, political resistance. In our conception, however, hyperworld(s is not contained by the term virtuality; it encompasses, exceeds, challenges, and devours it. The production of hyperworld(s, or hyperworldization, connotes acceleration and hyperactivity on social, economic and financial levels, the intensified commodification of human life, the time-space compression of communication and much cultural production, the re-ordering of social relations themselves over-determined by technology wedded to capitalist market values, and, as a result, the re-ordering of daily life, cultural expression, and political activism for individuals and communities across the planet. These processes and intensities mean that new modes of reading the interactive and contradictory discursive fragmentations of the current epoch are required. Thus, rather than regarding cyberspace simply as the technological hallmark or dominant trope of our epoch, we might make deeper sense of hyperworld(s—the bracketed plural implying myriad intersecting worlds within ‘the’ world—by identifying interactive entry points into contemporary lived historical-material and imagined complexities in the Latin American world(s. This article has been cited in the following: Duarte Alonso, Abel, and Yi Liu. “Changing Visitor Perceptions of a Capital City: The Case of Wellington, New Zealand.” City Tourism: National Capital Perspectives, ed. Robert Maitland and Brent W. Richie. Wallingford, UK: CABI, 2010, 110-24.

  19. High psychosis liability is associated with altered autonomic balance during exposure to Virtual Reality social stressors

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Counotte, Jacqueline; Pot-Kolder, Roos; van Roon, Arie M.; Hoskam, Olivier; van der Gaag, Mark; Veling, Wim

    Background: Social stressors are associated with an increased risk of psychosis. Stress sensitisation is thought to be an underlying mechanismand may be reflected in an altered autonomic stress response. Using an experimental Virtual Reality design, the autonomic stress response to social

  20. Virtual Worlds and Gamification to Increase Integration of International Students in Higher Education: An Inclusive Design Approach

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zhang, Bo; Robb, Nigel; Eyerman, Joe; Goodman, Lizbeth

    2017-01-01

    In response to the growing trend of internationalisation in education, it is important to consider approaches to help international students integrate in their new settings. One possible approach involves the use of e-Learning tools, such as virtual worlds and gamification. To maximise the potential effectiveness of such tools, it may be…

  1. On Being Bored and Lost (in Virtuality)

    Science.gov (United States)

    Moore, Kristen; Pflugfelder, Ehren Helmut

    2010-01-01

    Education in virtual worlds has the potential, it seems, for engaging students in innovative ways and for enabling new discourses on a host of issues. Virtual locations like "Second Life," "Kaneva," or "World of Warcraft," among other multi-user virtual environments (MUVEs), also come with unique challenges for educators as they consider the…

  2. Resources for Creating Another World: Financial Strategies of the World Social Forum

    OpenAIRE

    Liliana Diaz

    2006-01-01

    Liliana Diaz analyzes the financial structure and strategy of the World Social Forum (WSF). Considering the importance of the ‘participative budget’ as an initiative promoted by the Forum, she looks at this as a strategy to finance the WSF, and as a model by other social movements. Diaz examines six different funding arrangements in each of the Forums looking at the consequences of the financing arrangements for the sustainability of the Forum process. Development (2006) 49, 93–101. doi:10.10...

  3. Soft Where? Licensing Struggles in a Virtual World

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ramaswami, Rama

    2011-01-01

    As virtualization becomes commonplace in higher education, it is clear that the traditional licensing options for software are woefully inadequate. The definitions of who is licensed to use what--and where--are blurring, as users move from physical to virtual spaces and can access software from a variety of devices. In discussing the need for new…

  4. Human Pacman: A Mobile Augmented Reality Entertainment System Based on Physical, Social, and Ubiquitous Computing

    Science.gov (United States)

    Cheok, Adrian David

    This chapter details the Human Pacman system to illuminate entertainment computing which ventures to embed the natural physical world seamlessly with a fantasy virtual playground by capitalizing on infrastructure provided by mobile computing, wireless LAN, and ubiquitous computing. With Human Pacman, we have a physical role-playing computer fantasy together with real human-social and mobile-gaming that emphasizes on collaboration and competition between players in a wide outdoor physical area that allows natural wide-area human-physical movements. Pacmen and Ghosts are now real human players in the real world experiencing mixed computer graphics fantasy-reality provided by using the wearable computers on them. Virtual cookies and actual tangible physical objects are incorporated into the game play to provide novel experiences of seamless transitions between the real and virtual worlds. This is an example of a new form of gaming that anchors on physicality, mobility, social interaction, and ubiquitous computing.

  5. World war II veterans, social support, and veterans' associations.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hunt, N; Robbins, I

    2001-05-01

    People use many different coping strategies to deal with their traumatic recollections. Twenty-five British World War II veterans were interviewed regarding the ways they used social support both during the war and in the years afterwards. The findings demonstrate that social support is used in fundamentally different ways. During the war comradeship was particularly important and even fifty years after the war comrades are still a valuable resource for discussing war experiences, and dealing with the emotional content of traumatic recollections. Veterans rely on wives and families to help deal with the more physical and practical elements of coping, but tend not to discuss their traumatic memories with them. The findings show that social support is an important lifelong coping strategy for World War II veterans.

  6. The Implications of Virtual World Technology for K-12 Students in a Foreign Language Course of Study

    Science.gov (United States)

    Parrott, David L.

    2014-01-01

    The use of virtual world technology for language instruction is a recent development in education. The goal of this study was to provide a functioning 3D environment for German language students to experience as avatars. The student's impressions, attitudes, and perceptions of this learning activity would be recorded and analyzed to see if this…

  7. Virtual reality in education

    OpenAIRE

    Minocha, Shailey; Tudor, Ana-Despina

    2017-01-01

    In this workshop-presentation, we described the evolution of virtual reality technologies and our research from 3D virtual worlds, 3D virtual environments built in gaming environments such as Unity 3D, 360-degree videos, and mobile virtual reality via Google Expeditions. For each of these four technologies, we discussed the affordances of the technologies and how they contribute towards learning and teaching. We outlined the significance of students being aware of the different virtual realit...

  8. Virtual superheroes: using superpowers in virtual reality to encourage prosocial behavior.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Robin S Rosenberg

    Full Text Available BACKGROUND: Recent studies have shown that playing prosocial video games leads to greater subsequent prosocial behavior in the real world. However, immersive virtual reality allows people to occupy avatars that are different from them in a perceptually realistic manner. We examine how occupying an avatar with the superhero ability to fly increases helping behavior. PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Using a two-by-two design, participants were either given the power of flight (their arm movements were tracked to control their flight akin to Superman's flying ability or rode as a passenger in a helicopter, and were assigned one of two tasks, either to help find a missing diabetic child in need of insulin or to tour a virtual city. Participants in the "super-flight" conditions helped the experimenter pick up spilled pens after their virtual experience significantly more than those who were virtual passengers in a helicopter. CONCLUSION: The results indicate that having the "superpower" of flight leads to greater helping behavior in the real world, regardless of how participants used that power. A possible mechanism for this result is that having the power of flight primed concepts and prototypes associated with superheroes (e.g., Superman. This research illustrates the potential of using experiences in virtual reality technology to increase prosocial behavior in the physical world.

  9. Play with online virtual pets as a method to improve mirror neuron and real world functioning in autistic children.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Altschuler, Eric Lewin

    2008-01-01

    Autism is a severe disease with no known cause and no cure or treatment. Recently, ourselves and subsequently others found that so-called "mirror neurons" - neurons that respond not only when a person moves, but upon observation of movement in another - are dysfunctional in autistic children. Here I suggest an easy, simple, inexpensive and fun method to improve mirror neuron functioning in autistic children, increase appreciation in autistic children for the theory of mind and thinking of others, and most importantly hopefully to improve real world functioning: play with virtual online pets that are the "embodiment" of a stuffed animal the child has. Adoption and then care and play with online pets forces, in a fun way, one to think about the world through the eyes and needs of the pet. A simple method to test this play with online virtual pet therapy is described.

  10. The Effect of Social Network Diagrams on a Virtual Network of Practice: A Korean Case

    Science.gov (United States)

    Jo, Il-Hyun

    2009-01-01

    This study investigates the effect of the presentation of social network diagrams on virtual team members' interaction behavior via e-mail. E-mail transaction data from 22 software developers in a Korean IT company was analyzed and depicted as diagrams by social network analysis (SNA), and presented to the members as an intervention. Results…

  11. Virtual reality - aesthetic consequences

    OpenAIRE

    Benda, Lubor

    2014-01-01

    In the present work we study aesthetic consequences of virtual reality. Exploring the fringe between fictional and virtual is one of the key goals, that will be achieved through etymologic and technologic definition of both fiction and virtual reality, fictional and virtual worlds. Both fiction and virtual reality will be then studied from aesthetic distance and aesthetic pleasure point of view. At the end, we will see the main difference as well as an common grounds between fiction and virtu...

  12. Material and Virtuality

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Kruse Aagaard, Anders

    2015-01-01

    Through tangible experiments this paper discusses the dialogues between digital architectural drawing and the process of materialisation. The paper sets op the spans between virtual and actual and control and uncertainty making these oppositions a combined spaces where information between a digital...... world and a physical world can interchange. The paper suggest an approach where an overlapping of virtuality and the tangible material output from digital fabrication machines create a method of using materialisation tools as instruments to connect the reality of materials and to an exploring process...... through these experiments is both tangible and directly connected to real actions in digital drawing or material processing but also the base for theoretical contemplations of the relation between virtual and actual and control and uncertainty....

  13. Dots and dashes: art, virtual reality, and the telegraph

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ruzanka, Silvia; Chang, Ben

    2009-02-01

    Dots and Dashes is a virtual reality artwork that explores online romance over the telegraph, based on Ella Cheever Thayer's novel Wired Love - a Romance in Dots and Dashes (an Old Story Told in a New Way)1. The uncanny similarities between this story and the world of today's virtual environments provides the springboard for an exploration of a wealth of anxieties and dreams, including the construction of identities in an electronically mediated environment, the shifting boundaries between the natural and machine worlds, and the spiritual dimensions of science and technology. In this paper we examine the parallels between the telegraph networks and our current conceptions of cyberspace, as well as unique social and cultural impacts specific to the telegraph. These include the new opportunities and roles available to women in the telegraph industry and the connection between the telegraph and the Spiritualist movement. We discuss the development of the artwork, its structure and aesthetics, and the technical development of the work.

  14. Professional learning of pharmaceutical care in a virtual world

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Ana MARTÍN SUÁREZ

    2011-12-01

    Full Text Available 0 0 1 141 776 Instituto Universitario de Ciencias de la Educación 6 1 916 14.0 Normal 0 21 false false false ES JA X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Tabla normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0cm; mso-para-margin-right:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0cm; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-ansi-language:ES; mso-fareast-language:EN-US;} The learning of professional skills at University suffers from the drawback of how to reproduce a context similar to reality that with allow students to perform the tasks set them in a “living” way. Here we trained 54 students following the subject entitled Pharmaceutical Care of the Pharmacy degree in Second Life (an immersive virtual world in 3D, simulating common situations in the dispensation of anti-asthmatic agents in the context of a Community Pharmacy. The results of the study indicated that the students had no difficulty in adapting to the virtual platform and they reported a high degree of satisfaction (the mean score obtained was 2.36 on a scale of 0-3. The assessment of professional competencies revealed the high global performance of the group. The activity was hard for the professors, but they considered it an enrichening experience able to open new possibilities in teaching and research.

  15. Using the Virtual World of Second Life in Veterinary Medicine: Student and Faculty Perceptions.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Mauldin Pereira, Mary; Artemiou, Elpida; McGonigle, Dee; Conan, Anne; Sithole, Fortune; Yvorchuk-St Jean, Kathleen

    2018-01-01

    Virtual worlds are emerging technologies that can enhance student learning by encouraging active participation through simulation in immersive environments. At Ross University School of Veterinary Medicine (RUSVM), the virtual world of Second Life was piloted as an educational platform for first-semester students to practice clinical reasoning in a simulated veterinary clinical setting. Under the supervision of one facilitator, four groups of nine students met three times to process a clinical case using Second Life. In addition, three groups of four clinical faculty observed one Second Life meeting. Questionnaires using a 4-point Likert scale (1=strongly disagree to 4=strongly agree) and open-ended questions were used to assess student and clinical faculty perceptions of the Second Life platform. Perception scores of students (M=2.7, SD=0.7) and clinical faculty (M=2.7, SD=0.5) indicate that Second Life provides authentic and realistic learning experiences. In fact, students (M=3.4, SD=0.6) and clinical faculty (M=2.9, SD=1.0) indicate that Second Life should be offered to future students. Moreover, content analyses of open-ended responses from students and faculty support the use of Second Life based on reported advantages indicating that Second Life offers a novel and effective instructional method. Ultimately, results indicate that students and clinical faculty had positive educational experiences using Second Life, suggesting the need for further investigation into its application within the curriculum.

  16. Architecture and Design for Virtual Conferences: A Case Study

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Andrew Sempere

    2011-07-01

    Full Text Available This paper presents a case study of the design issues facing a large multi-format virtual conference. The conference took place twice in two different years, each time using an avatar-based 3D world with spatialized audio including keynote, poster and social sessions. Between year 1 and 2, major adjustments were made to the architecture and design of the space, leading to improvement in the nature of interaction between the participants. While virtual meetings will likely never supplant the effectiveness of face-to-face meetings, this paper seeks to outline a few design principles learned from this experience, which can be applied generally to make computer mediated collaboration more effective.

  17. Virtual customer service agents: using social presence and personalization to shape online service encounters

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Verhagen, T.; van Nes, J; Feldberg, F; van Dolen, W.

    2014-01-01

    By performing tasks traditionally fulfilled by service personnel and having a humanlike appearance, virtual customer service agents bring classical service elements to the web, which may positively influence customer satisfaction through eliciting social responses and feelings of personalization.

  18. Virtual Customer Service Agents: Using Social Presence and Personalization to Shape Online Service Encounters

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Verhagen, T.; van Nes, J.; Feldberg, J.F.M.; van Dolen, W.M.

    2014-01-01

    By performing tasks traditionally fulfilled by service personnel and having a humanlike appearance, virtual customer service agents bring classical service elements to the web, which may positively influence customer satisfaction through eliciting social responses and feelings of personalization.

  19. HIV-related stigma in social interactions: Approach and avoidance behaviour in a virtual environment

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Toppenberg, H.L.; Bos, A.E.R.; Ruiter, R.A.C.; Wigboldus, D.H.J.; Pryor, J.B.

    2015-01-01

    People living with HIV are a stigmatized group in our society, especially homosexual people living with HIV. One of the behavioural manifestations of stigmatization is an increased interpersonal distance kept during social interactions. Immersive virtual environment technology enables the

  20. Understanding the Dynamics of Learning across social worlds

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Mengiste, Shegaw Anagaw; Aanestad, Margunn

    2013-01-01

    participation, politics and learning in IS implementation and use. We consider learning to be an integral part of the social practice, and it occurs mainly through encounters and negotiations between actors from different social worlds who might have competing interests and values. The paper also analysed how......This paper adopts a novel learning perspective on information systems development. Building on the works of Anselm Strauss we conceptualize development processes as “negotiated orders” where members from different “social worlds” encounter and negotiate differences and tensions. We argue...

  1. Virtual worlds as a tool to facilitate weight management for young people.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Taylor, Michael; Taylor, Dave; Kulendran, Myutan; Gately, Paul; Darzi, Ara

    Childhood obesity is a serious problem in the UK, with around 20% of children aged 10-11 being overweight or obese. Lifestyle interventions can be effective, but there is limited evidence of their effectiveness in delivering sustained weight loss. The present research explored potential of web-based, 3-dimensional virtual worlds (VWs) for facilitation of weight-management, well-being and patient and public involvement (PPI) for young people. Attendees of a weight management camp took part in induction sessions for use of the VW of Second Life. All participants successfully learned how to interact with one another and navigate the virtual environment. Participant appraisals of Second Life were varied. Some found it complicated and difficult to use, and some found it fun and the majority stated that they would choose to use VWs again. There is considerable potential for use of VWs to promote weight management, and Second Life or a similar VW could be used to deliver this. Potential barriers include members of the target sample having limited access to computers with necessary system requirements for running VWs, and that some may find VW-based educational experiences unappealing or challenging to navigate. For some however, VWs may provide a useful mode for provision of education, PPI and support relating to weight management.

  2. Modeling behavior dynamics using computational psychometrics within virtual worlds.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Cipresso, Pietro

    2015-01-01

    In case of fire in a building, how will people behave in the crowd? The behavior of each individual affects the behavior of others and, conversely, each one behaves considering the crowd as a whole and the individual others. In this article, I propose a three-step method to explore a brand new way to study behavior dynamics. The first step relies on the creation of specific situations with standard techniques (such as mental imagery, text, video, and audio) and an advanced technique [Virtual Reality (VR)] to manipulate experimental settings. The second step concerns the measurement of behavior in one, two, or many individuals focusing on parameters extractions to provide information about the behavior dynamics. Finally, the third step, which uses the parameters collected and measured in the previous two steps in order to simulate possible scenarios to forecast through computational models, understand, and explain behavior dynamics at the social level. An experimental study was also included to demonstrate the three-step method and a possible scenario.

  3. What Happens in a Virtual World Has a Real-World Impact, a Scholar Finds

    Science.gov (United States)

    Foster, Andrea L.

    2008-01-01

    Forget the pills, hypnosis, and meditation. Losing weight or boosting self-confidence can be achieved by adopting an avatar and living in virtual reality, says Jeremy N. Bailenson, an assistant professor of communications at Stanford University. As the director of Stanford's Virtual Human Interaction Lab, Mr. Bailenson has explored ways that…

  4. Loneliness and Social Internet Use: Pathways to Reconnection in a Digital World?

    Science.gov (United States)

    Nowland, Rebecca; Necka, Elizabeth A; Cacioppo, John T

    2018-01-01

    With the rise of online social networking, social relationships are increasingly developed and maintained in a digital domain. Drawing conclusions about the impact of the digital world on loneliness is difficult because there are contradictory findings, and cross-sectional studies dominate the literature, making causation difficult to establish. In this review, we present our theoretical model and propose that there is a bidirectional and dynamic relationship between loneliness and social Internet use. When the Internet is used as a way station on the route to enhancing existing relationships and forging new social connections, it is a useful tool for reducing loneliness. But when social technologies are used to escape the social world and withdraw from the "social pain" of interaction, feelings of loneliness are increased. We propose that loneliness is also a determinant of how people interact with the digital world. Lonely people express a preference for using the Internet for social interaction and are more likely to use the Internet in a way that displaces time spent in offline social activities. This suggests that lonely people may need support with their social Internet use so that they employ it in a way that enhances existing friendships and/or to forge new ones.

  5. Drawing the Ideal World and Real World: A Study of Lesbian, Labour and Social Inclusion

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Henrique Luiz Caproni Neto

    2014-12-01

    Full Text Available In this paper, we analyze the experience of lesbian women in Juiz de Fora on the scope of work, society and the individual, from drawings made by them. Discussed the experience of sexuality and lesbophobia as aspects present in their lives and at work, considering that fall into a heteronormative context. So, we conducted a qualitative study with the preparation of drawings and interviews that allowed the construction of categories: being lesbian, inclusion and social integration, personal and professional development, and real world and the ideal world. These drawings are shown as a rich and interesting technique to provide access to their subjective and symbolic dimensions as to their social and work experiences. Finally, we advocate a reflective and humanistic stance both in society and in organizations about the socially constructed and valued patterns that can marginalize or stigmatize those fleeing them.

  6. Virtual Environments: Issues and Opportunities for Researching Inclusive Educational Practices

    Science.gov (United States)

    Sheehy, Kieron

    This chapter argues that virtual environments offer new research areas for those concerned with inclusive education. Further, it proposes that they also present opportunities for developing increasingly inclusive research processes. This chapter considers how researchers might approach researching some of these affordances. It discusses the relationship between specific features of inclusive pedagogy, derived from an international systematic literature review, and the affordances of different forms of virtual characters and environments. Examples are drawn from research in Second LifeTM (SL), virtual tutors and augmented reality. In doing this, the chapter challenges a simplistic notion of isolated physical and virtual worlds and, in the context of inclusion, between the practice of research and the research topic itself. There are a growing number of virtual worlds in which identified educational activities are taking place, or whose activities are being noted for their educational merit. These encompasses non-themed worlds such as SL and Active Worlds, game based worlds such as World of Warcraft and Runescape, and even Club Penguin, a themed virtual where younger players interact through a variety of Penguin themed environments and activities. It has been argued that these spaces, outside traditional education, are able to offer pedagogical insights (Twining 2009) i.e. that these global virtual communities have been identified as being useful as creative educational environments (Delwiche 2006; Sheehy 2009). This chapter will explore how researchers might use these spaces to investigative and create inclusive educational experiences for learners. In order to do this the chapter considers three interrelated issues: What is inclusive education?; How might inclusive education influence virtual world research? And, what might inclusive education look like in virtual worlds?

  7. The Use of Immersive Virtual Reality in the Learning Sciences: Digital Transformations of Teachers, Students, and Social Context

    Science.gov (United States)

    Bailenson, Jeremy N.; Yee, Nick; Blascovich, Jim; Beall, Andrew C.; Lundblad, Nicole; Jin, Michael

    2008-01-01

    This article illustrates the utility of using virtual environments to transform social interaction via behavior and context, with the goal of improving learning in digital environments. We first describe the technology and theories behind virtual environments and then report data from 4 empirical studies. In Experiment 1, we demonstrated that…

  8. Monster High as a Virtual Dollhouse: Tracking Play Practices across Converging Transmedia and Social Media

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wohlwend, Karen E.

    2017-01-01

    Background: Today, children play in transmedia franchises that bring together media characters, toys, and everyday consumer goods with games, apps, and websites in complex mergers of childhood cultures, digital literacies, consumer practices, and corporate agendas. Recent research on youth videogames and virtual worlds suggests the productive…

  9. VIRTUAL LEADERSHIP AT DISTANCE EDUCATION TEAMS

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Meltem KUSCU

    2016-07-01

    Full Text Available Globalization being one of the most popular terms of recent years is considered as a factor changing the operation styles of the companies. Companies and universities opened up to the world with the globalization and as a result of it, they had the opportunity of being a world brand. Now, some companies have affiliated companies in almost every country. Well, if we think about time and place difference how do these companies lead the affiliated companies in various locations of the world? This question resulted in the new leadership approach, virtual leadership. The process of distance learning beginning with newspaper advertisement appears as virtual learning now. A number of companies and universities provide distance learning classes and in-service training in virtual platform via Internet. These trainings provided independently from time and space are conducted in a country and worldwide sometimes. If we consider individuals in different time and environments as virtual teams, dealing with these virtual teams is the duty of virtual leader. The purpose of this study is to examine virtual leadership perception of distance learning teams. Three trivets are in question for distance learning teams. The first one is the academicians lecturing the second one is the students and the third one is coordinator and technical support team. Perceptions of virtual leader of the said three groups were examined individually in this study.

  10. Virtual Organizations: Beyond Network Organization

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Liviu Gabriel CRETU

    2006-01-01

    Full Text Available One of the most used buzz-words in (e-business literature of the last decade is virtual organization. The term "virtual" can be identified in all sorts of combinations regarding the business world. From virtual products to virtual processes or virtual teams, everything that is “touched” by the computer’s processing power instantly becomes virtual. Moreover, most of the literature treats virtual and network organizations as being synonyms. This paper aims to draw a much more distinctive line between the two concepts. Providing a more coherent description of what virtual organization might be is also one of our intentions.

  11. CORRELACIÓN ENTRE EL USO DE REDES SOCIALES VIRTUALES Y EL DESARROLLO DE LAS HABILIDADES SOCIALES EN LOS ESTUDIANTES DEL V CICLO DEL NIVEL PRIMARIO DE LAS INSTITUCIONES EDUCATIVAS PNP NEPTALÍ VALDERRAMA AMPUERO, FAP. RAÚL LEGUÍA DRAGO Y EL EJÉRCITO. AREQUIPA, 2014

    OpenAIRE

    BARRA PINTO, PAMELA ROCÍO

    2016-01-01

    LA COMUNICACIÓN LAS REDES SOCIALES VIRTUALES CARACTERÍSTICAS DE LA COMUNICACIÓN VIRTUAL TIPOS DE REDES SOCIALES VIRTUALES USO DE LAS REDES SOCIALES: FRECUENCIA CONTROL DE UNA PERSONA ADULTA DURANTE EL USO DE LAS REDES SOCIALES EL IMPACTO DE LAS REDES SOCIALES EN LA COMUNICACIÓN E INTERACCION SOCIAL LAS HABILIDADES SOCIALES TIPOS DE HABILIDADES SOCIALES VENTAJAS Y DESVENTAJAS DEL DESARROLLO DE LAS HABILIDADES SOCIALES TEORÍAS DE LAS HABILIDADES SOCIALES IMPACTO DEL USO DE LA REDES SOCIALES VIR...

  12. Virtual Reality as a Problem of the Electronic Economy.

    OpenAIRE

    Peter Koslowski

    2004-01-01

    Two concepts of virtual reality are competing in the cyber world, virtual reality as total adaptability and virtual reality as the simulation of possible worlds. Virtuality as adaptability in industrial production leads to a closer consideration of individual con-sumer demand and to de-massified production. It implies a stronger reference of pro-duction to the reality of consumer needs. The aesthetic concept of virtual reality as pos-sible words and fictional realities can imply a loss of rea...

  13. Going Social at Vancouver Public Library: What the Virtual Branch Did Next

    Science.gov (United States)

    Cahill, Kay

    2011-01-01

    Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to follow up on the 2009 publication "Building a virtual branch at Vancouver Public Library (VPL) using Web 2.0 tools" and to explore the work that VPL has been doing in the social media space over the past two years. Design/methodology/approach: Following the launch of its new web site in 2008,…

  14. Metàfores visuals en els mons virtuals. El cas de NANEC 2010-11 Visual Metaphors in Virtual Worlds. The Example of NANEC 2010-11 Metáforas visuales en mundos virtuales. El caso de NANEC 2010-11

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Dolors Capdet

    2011-06-01

    Full Text Available Abans de la invenció de la impremta la narració oral d'històries era la gran transmisora del coneixement. La impremta va atorgar velocitat i perennitat a la narració, ampliant el temps per a la seva reflexió. Amb Internet es fragmenta la seqü.ncialitat del missatge i és possible crear noves realitats que poden tenir o no el seu referent al món real. Els mons virtuals en són un clar exemple.Before the invention of printing, the storytelling was the great transmitter of knowledge. The print brings speed and continuity to narrative and extending the time for their reflection. With Internet is fragmented the message sequentiality and may be create new realities with referent in the real world or not. Virtual worlds are a clear example.Antes de la invención de la imprenta la narración oral de historias era la gran transmisora del conocimiento. La imprenta otorgó velocidad y perennidad a la narración, ampliando el tiempo para su reflexión. Con Internet se fragmenta la secuencialidad del mensaje y es posible crear nuevas realidades que pueden tener o no su referente en el mundo real. Los mundos virtuales son un claro ejemplo de ello. 

  15. 3D Virtual Worlds as Art Media and Exhibition Arenas: Students' Responses and Challenges in Contemporary Art Education

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lu, Lilly

    2013-01-01

    3D virtual worlds (3D VWs) are considered one of the emerging learning spaces of the 21st century; however, few empirical studies have investigated educational applications and student learning aspects in art education. This study focused on students' responses to and challenges with 3D VWs in both aspects. The findings show that most participants…

  16. How social opinion influences syntactic processing-An investigation using virtual reality.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Evelien Heyselaar

    Full Text Available The extent to which you adapt your grammatical choices to match that of your interlocutor's (structural priming can be influenced by the social opinion you have of your interlocutor. However, the direction and reliability of this effect is unclear as different studies have reported seemingly contradictory results. We have operationalized social perception as the ratings of strangeness for different avatars in a virtual reality study. The use of avatars ensured maximal control over the interlocutor's behaviour and a clear dimension along which to manipulate social perceptions toward this interlocutor. Our results suggest an inverted U-shaped curve in structural priming magnitude for passives as a function of strangeness: the participants showed the largest priming effects for the intermediately strange, with a decrease when interacting with the least- or most-strange avatars. The relationship between social perception and priming magnitude may thus be non-linear. There seems to be a 'happy medium' in strangeness, evoking the largest priming effect. We did not find a significant interaction of priming magnitude with any social perception.

  17. How social opinion influences syntactic processing-An investigation using virtual reality.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Heyselaar, Evelien; Hagoort, Peter; Segaert, Katrien

    2017-01-01

    The extent to which you adapt your grammatical choices to match that of your interlocutor's (structural priming) can be influenced by the social opinion you have of your interlocutor. However, the direction and reliability of this effect is unclear as different studies have reported seemingly contradictory results. We have operationalized social perception as the ratings of strangeness for different avatars in a virtual reality study. The use of avatars ensured maximal control over the interlocutor's behaviour and a clear dimension along which to manipulate social perceptions toward this interlocutor. Our results suggest an inverted U-shaped curve in structural priming magnitude for passives as a function of strangeness: the participants showed the largest priming effects for the intermediately strange, with a decrease when interacting with the least- or most-strange avatars. The relationship between social perception and priming magnitude may thus be non-linear. There seems to be a 'happy medium' in strangeness, evoking the largest priming effect. We did not find a significant interaction of priming magnitude with any social perception.

  18. Representation of intangible cultural heritage of Bangladesh through social media

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Khalid, Md. Saifuddin; Chowdhury, Md Saiful Alam

    2018-01-01

    with approximately 160 million people is experiencing an exponential growth of social media users. Towards the goal of strategically representing and diffusing ICH through social media, this study explores the current roles of social media in the transmission of ICH in the virtual world through content analysis....... The potential roles of social media in the process of preserving ICH offer a space for building awareness, creating knowledge, and diffusion of innovations....

  19. Virtual existence in contemporary Serbian novel

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Gordić-Petković Vladislava S.

    2017-01-01

    Full Text Available The paper sets out to explore the perspectives and strategies of virtual existence in contemporary Serbian novel in order to illustrate radical changes in the concept of reality and writers' concern with the fidelity to experience. A new surge of the so-called digital realism emerges simultaneously with the increase of awareness that the line between our digital selves and our real-world selves has become blurred and difficult to explain, while new technologies are required to go beyond what our human senses can encompass and deliver. The fictional realism of the digital age will also commit itself to young or middle-aged individuals that passionately attempt to define their aims and objectives so that they could fit into a newly constructed and acquired concept of reality. This is the case with the protagonists in the novels by Ivančica Đerić, Tamara Jecić and Aleksandar Ilić, all of them questioning both their offline and online identities. Their everyday life in a postmillennial world includes many intersecting empirical and virtual realities: love, career and sex take place in a dimension which ignores geography and physical distance and ultimately alters the concepts of time and space, as well the concepts of privacy and intimacy. The paper intends to examine the ways new digital technologies contribute to representations of reality in the novels of both accomplished and aspiring authors whose novels deal with ways of life amid social networks. The novels we analyzed show that the distinction between the virtual and the real world narrows, as the narratives range from intimate confession in letters and journals to tweets, notes and statuses, introducing verbal and structural experimental practices which involve shifting points of view.

  20. Does the mask govern the mind?: effects of arbitrary gender representation on quantitative task performance in avatar-represented virtual groups.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lee, Jong-Eun Roselyn; Nass, Clifford I; Bailenson, Jeremy N

    2014-04-01

    Virtual environments employing avatars for self-representation-including the opportunity to represent or misrepresent social categories-raise interesting and intriguing questions as to how one's avatar-based social category shapes social identity dynamics, particularly when stereotypes prevalent in the offline world apply to the social categories visually represented by avatars. The present experiment investigated how social category representation via avatars (i.e., graphical representations of people in computer-mediated environments) affects stereotype-relevant task performance. In particular, building on and extending the Proteus effect model, we explored whether and how stereotype lift (i.e., a performance boost caused by the awareness of a domain-specific negative stereotype associated with outgroup members) occurred in virtual group settings in which avatar-based gender representation was arbitrary. Female and male participants (N=120) were randomly assigned either a female avatar or a male avatar through a process masked as a random drawing. They were then placed in a numerical minority status with respect to virtual gender-as the only virtual female (male) in a computer-mediated triad with two opposite-gendered avatars-and performed a mental arithmetic task either competitively or cooperatively. The data revealed that participants who were arbitrarily represented by a male avatar and competed against two ostensible female avatars showed strongest performance compared to others on the arithmetic task. This pattern occurred regardless of participants' actual gender, pointing to a virtual stereotype lift effect. Additional mediation tests showed that task motivation partially mediated the effect. Theoretical and practical implications for social identity dynamics in avatar-based virtual environments are discussed.

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