Extended-XRI Body Interfaces for Hyper-Connected Metaverse Environments

Hybrid mixed-reality (XR) internet-of-things (IoT) research, here called XRI, aims at a strong integration between physical and virtual objects, environments, and agents wherein IoT-enabled edge devices are deployed for sensing, context understanding, networked communication and control of device actuators. Likewise, as augmented reality systems provide an immersive overlay on the environments, and virtual reality provides fully immersive environments, the merger of these domains leads to immersive smart spaces that are hyper-connected, adaptive and dynamic components that anchor the metaverse to real-world constructs. Enabling the human-in-the-loop to remain engaged and connected across these virtual-physical hybrid environments requires advances in user interaction that are multi-dimensional. This work investigates the potential to transition the user interface to the human body as an extended-reality avatar with hybrid extended-body interfaces that can interact both with the physical and virtual sides of the metaverse. It contributes: i) an overview of metaverses, XRI, and avatarization concepts, ii) a taxonomy landscape for extended XRI body interfaces, iii) an architecture and potential interactions for XRI body designs, iv) a prototype XRI body implementation based on the architecture, v) a design-science evaluation, toward enabling future design research directions

Community building and virtual teamwork in an online learning environment

In the world of OTIS, an online Internet School for occupational therapists, students from four European countries were encouraged to work collaboratively through problem based learning by interacting with each other in a virtual semi-immersive environment. This paper aims to explore the issues that there was little interaction between students from different tutorial groups and virtual teamwork developed in each of the cross cultural tutorial groups. Synchronous data from European students was captured during tutorial sessions and peer booked meetings and evidence suggests that communities of interest were established. It is possible to conclude that collaborative systems can be designed, which encourage students to build trust and teamwork in a cross cultural online learning environment. </p

Collaboration and teamwork: immersion and presence in an online learning environment

In the world of OTIS, an online Internet School for occupational therapists, students from four European countries were encouraged to work collaboratively through problem-based learning by interacting with each other in a virtual semi-immersive environment. This paper describes, often in their own words, the experience of European occupational therapy students working together across national and cultural boundaries. Collaboration and teamwork were facilitated exclusively through an online environment, since the students never met each other physically during the OTIS pilot course. The aim of the paper is to explore the observations that here was little interaction between students from different tutorial groups and virtual teamwork developed in each of the cross-cultural tutorial groups. Synchronous data from the students was captured during tutorial sessions and peer-booked meetings and analysed using the qualitative constructs of ‘immersion’, ‘presence’ and ‘reflection in learning’. The findings indicate that ‘immersion’ was experienced only to a certain extent. However, both ‘presence’ and shared presence were found by the students, within their tutorial groups, to help collaboration and teamwork. Other evidence suggests that communities of interest were established. Further study is proposed to support group work in an online learning environment. It is possible to conclude that collaborative systems can be designed, which encourage students to build trust and teamwork in a cross cultural online learning environment.</p

Analysis domain model for shared virtual environments

The field of shared virtual environments, which also encompasses online games and social 3D environments, has a system landscape consisting of multiple solutions that share great functional overlap. However, there is little system interoperability between the different solutions. A shared virtual environment has an associated problem domain that is highly complex raising difficult challenges to the development process, starting with the architectural design of the underlying system. This paper has two main contributions. The first contribution is a broad domain analysis of shared virtual environments, which enables developers to have a better understanding of the whole rather than the part(s). The second contribution is a reference domain model for discussing and describing solutions - the Analysis Domain Model

The evolving landscape of learning technology

This paper provides an overview of the current and emerging issues in learning technology research, concentrating on structural issues such as infrastructure, policy and organizational context. It updates the vision of technology outlined by Squires’ (1999) concept of peripatetic electronic teachers (PETs) where Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) provide an enabling medium to allow teachers to act as freelance agents in a virtual world and reflects to what extent this vision has been realized The paper begins with a survey of some of the key areas of ICT development and provides a contextualizing framework for the area in terms of external agendas and policy drivers. It then focuses upon learning technology developments which have occurred in the last five years in the UK and offers a number of alternative taxonomies to describe this. The paper concludes with a discussion of the issues which arise from this work

What would learning in an open world look like? A vision for the future

The pace of current technological advancement is phenomenal. In the last few years we have seen the emergence of ever more sophisticated gaming technologies, rich, immersive virtual worlds and new social networking services that enable learners and teachers to connect and communicate in new ways. The pace of change looks set to continue as annual Horizon reports testify (http://www.nmc.org/horizon). Clearly new technologies offer much in an educational context, with the promise of flexible, personalised and student-centred learning. Indeed research over the past few years, looking at learners' use of technologies, has given us a rich picture of how learners of all ages are appropriating new tools within their own context, mixing different applications for finding/managing information and for communicating with others (Sharpe and Beetham, forthcoming)

Quality assurance for digital learning object repositories: issues for the metadata creation process

Metadata enables users to find the resources they require, therefore it is an important component of any digital learning object repository. Much work has already been done within the learning technology community to assure metadata quality, focused on the development of metadata standards, specifications and vocabularies and their implementation within repositories. The metadata creation process has thus far been largely overlooked. There has been an assumption that metadata creation will be straightforward and that where machines cannot generate metadata effectively, authors of learning materials will be the most appropriate metadata creators. However, repositories are reporting difficulties in obtaining good quality metadata from their contributors, and it is becoming apparent that the issue of metadata creation warrants attention. This paper surveys the growing body of evidence, including three UK-based case studies, scopes the issues surrounding human-generated metadata creation and identifies questions for further investigation. Collaborative creation of metadata by resource authors and metadata specialists, and the design of tools and processes, are emerging as key areas for deeper research. Research is also needed into how end users will search learning object repositories