The potential for virtual worlds in Higher Education: A short literature review

Technology is changing the way University courses are taught; the use of virtual worlds such as Linden Labs Second Life are providing a novel approach to teaching students in a range of disciplines. While few studies are available that assess the quality of learning which takes place in these environments, the potential for this technology is significant. An overview of the current status of the use of virtual worlds in academia is presented, together with examples of studies where pedagogical evaluation supports the use of virtual worlds

Computational Properties of Fiction Writing and Collaborative Work

12th International Symposium, IDA 2013, London, UK, October 17-19, 2013, Proceedings. From the earliest days of computing, there have been tools to help shape narrative. Spell-checking, word counts, and readability analysis, give today's novelist tools that Dickens, Austen, and Shakespeare could only have dreamt of. However, such tools have focused on the word, or phrase levels. In the last decade, research focus has shifted to support for collaborative editing of documents. This work considers more sophisticated attempts to visualise the semantics, pace and rhythm within a narrative through data mining. We describe real life applications in two related domains