Smart Education Environment System

This paper proposes a Smart Education Environment System (SEES) framework that upgrades the traditional, book-based library to meet the interests of an emerging IT-aware generation. The library will remain as the information center of the university but will also become the base for knowledge exchange using cutting-edge technology. As described in the paper, high-bandwidth wireless technology, social networks, and integrated databases can all facilitate the role of the library, which is to act as a centralized resource in support of research and learning. The framework consists of three sub-systems: electronic bookshelves (for ease of access and management of the book stock); virtual white space (for discussion of information found within the library and, by extension to the whole of the academic environment); and a social network with an integrated innovation database (to disseminate new ideas). The paper shows how these sub-systems can be arranged to support the SEES

A Social Network Approach for Investigating Social Influences on Effective Use: Demonstration in Virtual Reality Collaboration

Merely using new collaboration technologies does not necessarily result in the desired benefits, which is why it is important to understand what constitutes effective use behavior. In information systems research, the affordance network approach has been developed as a methodological approach to investigate effective use behavior. The approach has already been applied to understand the effective use of electronic medical record systems and fitness wearables; however, it neglects how social influences foster or hinder effective use behavior in collaborative settings. Therefore, we supplemented the affordance network approach for collaborative contexts by using social network methods. We demonstrate our approach based on two university courses in which students carried out group work within the collaborative VR application Spatial. Thereby, we contribute a methodological approach that enables researchers to identify influential users who encourage their team members to actualize affordances leading to goal achievement

A Multi-User 3-D Virtual Environment with Interactive Collaboration and Shared Whiteboard Technologies

A multi-user 3-D virtual environment allows remote participants to have a transparent communication as if they are communicating face-to-face. The sense of presence in such an environment can be established by representing each participant with a vivid human-like character called an avatar. We review several immersive technologies, including directional sound, eye gaze, hand gestures, lip synchronization and facial expressions, that facilitates multimodal interaction among participants in the virtual environment using speech processing and animation techniques. Interactive collaboration can be further encouraged with the ability to share and manipulate 3-D objects in the virtual environment. A shared whiteboard makes it easy for participants in the virtual environment to convey their ideas graphically. We survey various kinds of capture devices used for providing the input for the shared whiteboard. Efficient storage of the whiteboard session and precise archival at a later time bring up interesting research topics in information retrieval