Disputation Mikhail Fominykh - Department of Computer and ...

Collaborative Work on 3D Educational Content
The exploration of learning communities support in 3D CVEs continued during the
second empirical study on educational visualizations. Possibilities of 3D CVEs for
creating a connection between education and research communities to the general
public by exhibiting and presenting research projects in the form of 3D
visualizations were explored. For these purposes, a new framework was developed
and evaluated. It was called Virtual Research Arena and designed for creating
awareness about educational and research activities, promoting cross-fertilization
between different environments, and engaging the general public. Based on this
framework, a prototype was developed and evaluated at the Norwegian Science
Week festival in 2010. Both the study and the new framework are presented in
Paper 6 of this thesis.
The second empirical study on educational visualizations included the first
International Summer School on Collaborative Technologies, Serious Games, and
Educational Visualizations, organized by the TARGET project. The summer school
was defined as a forum for the presentation of innovative approaches,
developments, and outcomes of research projects, facilitating the exchange of ideas
between students, researchers, and practitioners. The design of the summer school
activities was intended to facilitate reflective dialogue in communities.
Virtual campus of NTNU in Second Life was chosen as preliminary environment to
evaluate ideas and concepts within the TARGET project. The details of the summer
school are presented in Paper 8 of this thesis.
The exploration on the support of learning communities in 3D CVEs continued in
the third empirical study on educational visualizations, but at the time of writing
the thesis, the results of the study were not fully analysed. However, the details of
this study are presented in Paper 9 of this thesis.
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