Disputation Mikhail Fominykh - Department of Computer and ...

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Collaborative Work on 3D Educational Content 3D CVEs need to be distinguished from the other virtual reality technologies. There exist fully immersive, augmented or mixed, and desktop virtual realities, which are different in their interfaces, types of immersion, required resources, and possibilities (Pana, Cheokb, Yanga, Zhua, & Shia, 2006). Although, all these technologies are used for educational purposes (Hai-Jew, 2010), the research work presented in this thesis is focused on exploring one particular type of virtual reality technologies – desktop virtual reality (Ausburn & Ausburn, 2004; Tait, 1992). 2.2.1 Overview of 3D collaborative virtual environments Formal definitions are rare in the area of 3D CVEs, since it is relatively new and complex (Bell, 2008; Schmeil & Eppler, 2009). The technology appeared on the interception between virtual reality and networked computers. There exist few terms to call the technology itself. These terms have overlapping meanings and are often used to describe the same phenomenon. Most commonly used terms include 3D collaborative virtual environments (CVEs), Multi-user Virtual Environments (MUVEs), and Virtual Worlds (VW). Collaborative work on 3D content is one of the major activities explored in this thesis, and therefore, I use the most suitable term – 3D Collaborative Virtual Environments or 3D CVEs. Based on several sources, 3D Collaborative Virtual Environments can be defined as three dimensional, multiuser, synchronous, persistent environments, facilitated by networked computers (Bell, 2008; de Freitas, 2008b; Schmeil & Eppler, 2009). In such environments, users are represented by animated avatars and can interact using text-based chat, voice chat, and gestures. In addition, 3D CVEs allow interaction with various types of objects, including 3D objects and other media, such as text, graphics, sound, and video. There are many application domains of 3D CVEs, and their use has been growing rapidly in the first decade of the 21 st century. Although entertainment remains one of the most successful application domains, many other CVEs are created to be used for ‘serious’ purposes (de Freitas, 2008a; Messinger, Stroulia, & Lyons, 2008; Wrzesien & Raya, 2010). Education is often considered to be the main serious use of 3D CVEs (de Freitas, 2008b). However, there are many others, such as training, research, commerce, and socialization. Developing quality specialized 3D CVEs is expensive, but there are examples in the military and health care training. More often, regions of large social virtual worlds are adapted for serious purposes (Hendaoui, Limayem, & Thompson, 2008). In this research work, I have been deriving platform-independent implications. However, two social virtual worlds (Active Worlds and Second Life) can be briefly presented here as examples. Many theoretical propositions in this research work have been made based on the results of several related studies, conducted in Active Worlds. Another platform – Second Life – has been used for conducting three explorative studies, included in this thesis. 12
Background Active Worlds 1 (AW) offers “a comprehensive platform for efficiently delivering real-time interactive 3D content over the web”. Active Worlds includes a predefined library of building blocks that can be extended by objects designed with third party tools and added to the ‘object path’ by the administrator (after conversion into the AW-compatible format). The platform provides a list of standard avatars and a list of gestures. Users can communicate by a text chat and instant messages. Active Worlds platform had been widely used for experimental learning in the beginning of the first decade of the 21 st century (Prasolova-Førland, 2007). Second Life 2 (SL) is defined by its developers as “a free online virtual world imagined and created by its residents”. The platform has an “open-ended architecture and collaborative, user-driven character” (Helmer, 2007). Second Life supports various types of content and media, such as text in a form of ‘notecards’, graphics, primitive and mesh-based 3D objects, streaming sound, video and web. Moreover, it allows creating constructions combining different types of content, programming animations and behaviour through scripts written in Linden Scripting Language and performing complex interactions using avatars. Users can communicate by text and voice chat, as well as custom animations and gestures. This platform has become the most popular 3D CVE for educational projects, however, the interest has been reducing in the second decade of the XXI century (Salmon, 2009). 2.2.2 Educational use of 3D collaborative virtual environments Virtual environments have been attracting attention of educators and researchers since their appearance. This technology provides a unique set of features that can be used for educational purposes, such as low cost and high safety, threedimensional representation of learners and objects, interaction in simulated contexts with high immersion (Cram, 2011) and a sense of presence (Dede, 2009; Mckerlich, Riis, Anderson, & Eastman, 2011). Possibilities for synchronous communication and interaction allow using 3D CVEs by various collaborative learning approaches (Lee, 2009). In addition, possibilities for simulating environments on demand and for active collaborative work on the content allow applying situated learning (Hayes, 2006) and project-based learning (Jarmon, Traphagan, & Mayrath, 2008) approaches. Constructivist approaches, such as problem-based learning, are also popular among the adopters of 3D CVEs (Bignell & Parson, 2010). Social constructivism is often called an ideal approach for learning in a 3D virtual environment, as the technology also allows learners to construct their understanding collaboratively (Coffman & Klinger, 2007; Huang, Rauch, & Liaw, 2010; Molka-Danielsen, 2009). 1 http://activeworlds.com/ 2 http://secondlife.com/ 13
Page 1 and 2: Mikhail Fominykh Collaborative Work
Page 3 and 4: Abstract The use of three-dimension
Page 5: Preface This thesis is submitted to
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Collaborative Work on 3D Educationa
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Part II Papers
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Paper 1 Authors: Title: Published i
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VIRTUAL CITY AS A PLACE FOR EDUCATI
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Journal of Interactive Learning Res
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Virtual Campus in the Context of an
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Paper 3 Authors: Ekaterina Prasolov
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projects (Hawkey, 2004). As emphasi
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Group 2 developed a presentation of
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almost equally supported. Realistic
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prospective students and so on. In
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Proceedings of the 13 th IASTED Int
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space. Furthermore, constructing in
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3.1 Visual Shells By visual shell i
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Available resources for user traini
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The virtual world Second Life is on
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exploring a number of projects (Fig
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Figure 4. BP Solar Energy project:
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• Provide tutorials introducing t
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Fominykh, M., Prasolova-Førland, E
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This is a preprint of the paper pub
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2.2 Settings of the case studies an
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For us, the other projects on NTNU
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Aesthetics of a shell plays an impo
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Park, S., Hwang, H. S. and Choi, M.
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CSCL at Work Collaborative Virtual
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CSCL at Work Threshold concepts The
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CSCL at Work where new or less expe
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CSCL at Work A central part of Summ
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CSCL at Work as a virtual workplace
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CSCL at Work connections across com
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CSCL at Work Also, communities cann
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CSCL at Work Karlsen, J. T. (2011).
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Constructing a 3D Collaborative Vir
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of the individual knowledge systems
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Pedagogical model “Designing e-le
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Design In this sub-section, we pres
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spring 2012. The result of these st
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Disputation Mikhail Fominykh - Department of Computer and ...

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