Facilitating immersion, engagement and flow in multi-user virtual environments

Virtual worlds are providing myriad opportunities for the development of innovative curricula for tertiary educators. They provide a virtual meeting space for those students and lecturers who are geographically remote from one another, rendering distance irrelevant and facilitating the formation of community. This paper will look at those factors - physical, social, virtual and those related to pedagogy - which facilitate immersion in virtual worlds; that suspension of disbelief which generates the feeling of presence or 'being there', crucial to promoting student engagement and ultimately, flow

Serious gama for integration in higher education

Tese de mestrado integrado. Engenharia Informática e Computação. Universidade do Porto. Faculdade de Engenharia. 201

Swift vs. Objective-C: A New Programming Language

The appearance of a new programming language gives the necessity to contrast its contribution with the existing programming languages to evaluate the novelties and improvements that the new programming language offers for developers. These kind of studies can show us the efficiency, improvements and useful or uselessness of the new programming languages. Also these studies can show us the good or bad properties of the existing programming languages. For these reasons, these studies allow us to know if the new programming language is offering improvements or relapses. In this article, we compare the new programming language of Apple, Swift, with the main programming language of Apple before Swift, Objective-C. We are going to show the differences, characteristics and novelties to verify the words of Apple about Swift. With that we want to answer the next question: Is Swift a new programming language easier, more secure and quicker to develop than Objective-C

Collaborative learning in the virtual English class : a Hong Kong case study

Author name used in this publication: Dora Wong2011-2012 > Academic research: refereed > Chapter in an edited book (author)Version of RecordPublishe

Edutainment in electronic education

Доступност савремених информационо-комуникационих технологија знатно је утицала на процес учења и подучавања, као и на начин креирања стратегија образовања. Eлектронско образовање један је од доминантних праваца развоја процеса образовања у великом броју образовних институција и заједница. Имајући у виду да свака стратегија образовања са собом носи одређене ризике, неопходно је дизајнирати моделе електронског образовања како би се избегли потенцијални проблеми и максимизирале предности стратегије. Како би се повећала ефикасност учења и подучавања, образовни процес је неопходно обогатити атрактивним интерактивним садржајем, који студенте укључује у процес образовања као активне учеснике. Учење кроз игру представља једну од савремених метода образовног процеса која доприноси активноm учешћу студената у процесу образовања. Предмет истраживања докторске дисертације јесте развој модела учења кроз игру у електронском образовању. Главна хипотеза која је развијена и доказана у оквиру докторске дисертације јесте да се имплементацијом модела учења кроз игру у електронско образовање побољшавају перформансе и квалитет образовног процеса, квалитет комуникације и сарадње између студената и образовне институције и постигне веће задовољство студената. Учење кроз игру (edutainment) се односи на хибридни метод образовања који користи забавне активности засноване на мултимедији за реализацију едукативних активности. У процесу електронског образовања често се употребљава систем за управљање учењем (Learning Management System- LMS). Moodle LMS је најчешће коришћено софтверско решење за управљање образовним материјалима које интегрише све реализоване целине докторске дисертације...The availability of modern information and communication technology has significantly impacted the process of learning and teaching, as well as the process of education strategy creation. Hence, the vast majority of educational institutions and communities propose electronic education as one of the emerging research trends in the education process development. Having in mind that every education strategy bears certain risks, it is necessary to design electronic education models in order to avoid potential complications and maximize the benefits of the strategy. In order to enhance learning and teaching efficiency, educational process needs to be enriched with modern interactive content that stimulates students to actively participate in the education process. Edutainment represents one of the prevailing methods that enhance students’ active participation in the education process. The research topic of the dissertation is the development of the edutainment model in electronic education. The main hypothesis developed and proved in the dissertation is that the implementation of the edutainment model in electronic education enhances the performances and the quality of the educational process, quality of communication and collaboration processes between students and the educational institution, and achieves higher levels of students’ satisfaction. Edutainment refers to a hybrid education method that uses fun multimedia-based activities for materializing educational activities. The process of electronic education is often supported by Learning Management Systems (LMS). Moodle LMS is the most frequently used software solution for managing educational materials and it serves as a platform that integrates all implemented units of the dissertation. The analysis of the existing learning management system served as a basis for defining the structure of the proposed edutainment model in electronic education. The base elements of the proposed model include defined goals, preferences, motivation and needs of every student. The proposed edutainment model in electronic education comprises the infrastructure, the edutainment system architecture, and process of introducing edutainment into electronic education and edutainment services..

ALT-C 2011 Abstracts

This is a PDF of the abstracts for all the sessions at the 2011 ALT conference. It is designed to be used alongside the online version of the conference programme. It was made public on 1 September, with a "topped and tailed" made live on 2 September

Construção de conhecimento em ambientes virtuais : influência das relações interpessoais

Doutoramento em Multimédia em EducaçãoA presente investigação foi conduzida no ambiente virtual imersivo 3D Second Life®, com o suporte de ferramentas Web 2.0 como complemento a aulas presenciais - numa lógica de sala de aula estendida. Teve como pressuposto que a socialização é um fator-chave para as aprendizagens colaborativas e para a construção de conhecimento. O estudo tem por objetivo identificar as variáveis que poderão influenciar a partilha de conhecimento em contextos de aprendizagem com recurso a ambientes virtuais; com a finalidade de contribuir para a melhoria das situações de aprendizagem com recurso a ferramentas online. Esta investigação é de carácter exploratório e enquadra-se no campo dos estudos fenomenológicos. O estudo foi implementado, em duas fases, com quatro turmas de ensino superior, duas turmas diurnas (regime geral) e duas turmas de ensino noturno (regime de maiores de 23). Todas seguindo o mesmo curso e a mesma unidade curricular. Concluímos que nos espaços virtuais os estudantes tendem a sentir-se mais confiantes, abertos, participativos, criativos, compreensivos e parecem participar nas sessões de formação online porque estão, de facto, interessados em aprender. Por outro lado, a possibilidade de providenciar sessões de tutória online permite chegar a um maior número de estudantes. Estas sessões online podem ser estabelecidas numa hora e local (virtual) livre de restrições e que pode ser adaptado, permitindo uma participação mais efetiva por parte dos estudantes. Assim, e com base nas observações retiradas do estudo implementado, pode ainda referir-se que os contrastes de comportamento verificados entre os alunos do regime diurno e do regime noturno, no que concerne ao empenhamento com as ferramentas online, parecem ser em função do nível de maturidade, do nível de independência enquanto alunos, da motivação intrínseca.This research was conducted in immersive 3D virtual environment Second Life®, with the support of Web 2.0 tools to support the physical classroom - in a logic of extended classroom. It was based on the assumption that socialization is a key factor for collaborative learning and knowledge construction. The study aims to identify the variables that may influence knowledge sharing in virtual learning environments, with the aim of contributing to the improvement of learning situations using online tools. This research is exploratory in nature and falls within the field of phenomenological studies. This study was implemented in two phases, with four classes of higher education, two daytime classes and two classes of night courses. All following the same syllabus and the same course. We conclude that students in virtual spaces tend to feel more confident, open, participatory, creative, understanding and seem to participate in online training sessions because they are indeed interested in learning. Moreover, the possibility of providing online tutorial session allows to reach a larger number of students. These online sessions can be established in a time and place (virtual) free of restrictions and can be adjusted, allowing a more effective participation by students. Thus, based on observations taken from the study implemented, can also be noted that the contrasts in behavior observed among students in daytime and nighttime regime, regarding the engagement with online tools, seem to be based on the level maturity, the level of independence as students and intrinsic motivation

On Data-driven systems analyzing, supporting and enhancing users’ interaction and experience

Tesis doctoral en inglés y resumen extendido en español[EN] The research areas of Human-Computer Interaction and Software Architectures have been traditionally treated separately, but in the literature, many authors made efforts to merge them to build better software systems. One of the common gaps between software engineering and usability is the lack of strategies to apply usability principles in the initial design of software architectures. Including these principles since the early phases of software design would help to avoid later architectural changes to include user experience requirements. The combination of both fields (software architectures and Human-Computer Interaction) would contribute to building better interactive software that should include the best from both the systems and user-centered designs. In that combination, the software architectures should enclose the fundamental structure and ideas of the system to offer the desired quality based on sound design decisions. Moreover, the information kept within a system is an opportunity to extract knowledge about the system itself, its components, the software included, the users or the interaction occurring inside. The knowledge gained from the information generated in a software environment can be used to improve the system itself, its software, the users’ experience, and the results. So, the combination of the areas of Knowledge Discovery and Human-Computer Interaction offers ideal conditions to address Human-Computer-Interaction-related challenges. The Human-Computer Interaction focuses on human intelligence, the Knowledge Discovery in computational intelligence, and the combination of both can raise the support of human intelligence with machine intelligence to discover new insights in a world crowded of data. This Ph.D. Thesis deals with these kinds of challenges: how approaches like data-driven software architectures (using Knowledge Discovery techniques) can help to improve the users' interaction and experience within an interactive system. Specifically, it deals with how to improve the human-computer interaction processes of different kind of stakeholders to improve different aspects such as the user experience or the easiness to accomplish a specific task. Several research actions and experiments support this investigation. These research actions included performing a systematic literature review and mapping of the literature that was aimed at finding how the software architectures in the literature have been used to support, analyze or enhance the human-computer interaction. Also, the actions included work on four different research scenarios that presented common challenges in the Human-Computer Interaction knowledge area. The case studies that fit into the scenarios selected were chosen based on the Human-Computer Interaction challenges they present, and on the authors’ accessibility to them. The four case studies were: an educational laboratory virtual world, a Massive Open Online Course and the social networks where the students discuss and learn, a system that includes very large web forms, and an environment where programmers develop code in the context of quantum computing. The development of the experiences involved the review of more than 2700 papers (only in the literature review phase), the analysis of the interaction of 6000 users in four different contexts or the analysis of 500,000 quantum computing programs. As outcomes from the experiences, some solutions are presented regarding the minimal software artifacts to include in software architectures, the behavior they should exhibit, the features desired in the extended software architecture, some analytic workflows and approaches to use, or the different kinds of feedback needed to reinforce the users’ interaction and experience. The results achieved led to the conclusion that, despite this is not a standard practice in the literature, the software environments should embrace Knowledge Discovery and data-driven principles to analyze and respond appropriately to the users’ needs and improve or support the interaction. To adopt Knowledge Discovery and data-driven principles, the software environments need to extend their software architectures to cover also the challenges related to Human-Computer Interaction. Finally, to tackle the current challenges related to the users’ interaction and experience and aiming to automate the software response to users’ actions, desires, and behaviors, the interactive systems should also include intelligent behaviors through embracing the Artificial Intelligence procedures and techniques