31,388 research outputs found
Computer game technology, collaborative software environments and participatory design
This paper presents a project that explores the possibilities for the use of computer game technologies in the participatory design process. Interactive 3D environments designed with the Virtools development environment were used in a Home Zone consultation process, which allowed participants to navigate, explore and contribute to proposed developments to their residential environment. These technologies were observed to benefit the participatory design process in some areas, namely the visualization and contextualizing of the developments, but also presented traditional technological barriers in others. While these barriers did not completely remove the participants from the process, they reduced the apparent level of engagement of these participants with the process. This paper concludes that the technology overall, is a positive addition to the participatory design process, and while there is still much research to be undertaken, it has many more potential applications in related areas
Piloting Multimodal Learning Analytics using Mobile Mixed Reality in Health Education
© 2019 IEEE. Mobile mixed reality has been shown to increase higher achievement and lower cognitive load within spatial disciplines. However, traditional methods of assessment restrict examiners ability to holistically assess spatial understanding. Multimodal learning analytics seeks to investigate how combinations of data types such as spatial data and traditional assessment can be combined to better understand both the learner and learning environment. This paper explores the pedagogical possibilities of a smartphone enabled mixed reality multimodal learning analytics case study for health education, focused on learning the anatomy of the heart. The context for this study is the first loop of a design based research study exploring the acquisition and retention of knowledge by piloting the proposed system with practicing health experts. Outcomes from the pilot study showed engagement and enthusiasm of the method among the experts, but also demonstrated problems to overcome in the pedagogical method before deployment with learners
Security, Privacy and Safety Risk Assessment for Virtual Reality Learning Environment Applications
Social Virtual Reality based Learning Environments (VRLEs) such as vSocial
render instructional content in a three-dimensional immersive computer
experience for training youth with learning impediments. There are limited
prior works that explored attack vulnerability in VR technology, and hence
there is a need for systematic frameworks to quantify risks corresponding to
security, privacy, and safety (SPS) threats. The SPS threats can adversely
impact the educational user experience and hinder delivery of VRLE content. In
this paper, we propose a novel risk assessment framework that utilizes attack
trees to calculate a risk score for varied VRLE threats with rate and duration
of threats as inputs. We compare the impact of a well-constructed attack tree
with an adhoc attack tree to study the trade-offs between overheads in managing
attack trees, and the cost of risk mitigation when vulnerabilities are
identified. We use a vSocial VRLE testbed in a case study to showcase the
effectiveness of our framework and demonstrate how a suitable attack tree
formalism can result in a more safer, privacy-preserving and secure VRLE
system.Comment: Tp appear in the CCNC 2019 Conferenc
Exploring the Use of Virtual Worlds as a Scientific Research Platform: The Meta-Institute for Computational Astrophysics (MICA)
We describe the Meta-Institute for Computational Astrophysics (MICA), the
first professional scientific organization based exclusively in virtual worlds
(VWs). The goals of MICA are to explore the utility of the emerging VR and VWs
technologies for scientific and scholarly work in general, and to facilitate
and accelerate their adoption by the scientific research community. MICA itself
is an experiment in academic and scientific practices enabled by the immersive
VR technologies. We describe the current and planned activities and research
directions of MICA, and offer some thoughts as to what the future developments
in this arena may be.Comment: 15 pages, to appear in the refereed proceedings of "Facets of Virtual
Environments" (FaVE 2009), eds. F. Lehmann-Grube, J. Sablating, et al., ICST
Lecture Notes Ser., Berlin: Springer Verlag (2009); version with full
resolution color figures is available at
http://www.mica-vw.org/wiki/index.php/Publication
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