Information Integration - the process of integration, evolution and versioning

At present, many information sources are available wherever you are. Most of the time, the information needed is spread across several of those information sources. Gathering this information is a tedious and time consuming job. Automating this process would assist the user in its task. Integration of the information sources provides a global information source with all information needed present. All of these information sources also change over time. With each change of the information source, the schema of this source can be changed as well. The data contained in the information source, however, cannot be changed every time, due to the huge amount of data that would have to be converted in order to conform to the most recent schema.\ud In this report we describe the current methods to information integration, evolution and versioning. We distinguish between integration of schemas and integration of the actual data. We also show some key issues when integrating XML data sources

Interactive product browsing and configuration using remote augmented reality sales services

Real-time remote sales assistance is an underdeveloped component of online sales services. Solutions involving web page text chat, telephony and video support prove problematic when seeking to remotely guide customers in their sales processes, especially with configurations of physically complex artefacts. Recently, there has been great interest in the application of virtual worlds and augmented reality to create synthetic environments for remote sales of physical artefacts. However, there is a lack of analysis and development of appropriate software services to support these processes. We extend our previous work with the detailed design of configuration context services to support the management of an interactive sales session using augmented reality. We detail the context and configuration services required, presenting a novel data service streaming configuration information to the vendor for business analytics. We expect that a fully implemented configuration management service, based on our design, will improve the remote sales experience for both customers and vendors alike via analysis of the streamed information

Lessons learned in developing a Second Life educational environment

Virtual worlds are rapidly spreading beyond gaming and entertainment into education and the corporate world. Should this trend continue, as forecast by the industry, then immersive applications will become more prominent, with bespoke software developed in the metaverse affording both opportunities and challenges. This paper reflects on the experience of developing a learning virtual space based on Second Life as part of an innovation project at The Open University, UK. The paper focuses on the lessons learnt from the viewpoint of managing the development of the learning environment, and could be of benefit to educators and educational technologists who are thinking to engage in this sort of development

Towards European-wide Quality and Benchmarking of Open Educational Resources

Empowered by a multi-partner Consortium, MORIL will deliver high-quality Open Educational Resources (OER) with pedagogically-rich content, specifically designed and developed for distance learning. MORIL refers to "Multilingual Open Educational Resources for Independent Learning". It constitutes a New Generation of open resources, having a strong focus on development and delivery of quality-assured materials for off-campus target groups. MORIL is value added, as face-to-face didactics are not obligatory, contrary to on-campus education. Besides open offers, formal offers are fronted as well, establishing a transparent prospective learning path into higher education for those that seek recognition and/or certification. MORIL will provide a single European access point for lifelong open and flexible learning: a referatory to participating local repository portals. For courses of interest to domestic markets, universities can utilise multilingual versioning and localisation. Blending MORIL with leading edge quality assurance and benchmarking, truly provides the Consortium with a head start. European-wide quality and benchmarking is enabled by E-xcellence: a web-based instrument to assess the quality of e-learning in higher education. Although many instruments already exist, which cover the organisational and content-related quality assurance of higher education institutions and programmes, only few exist which have developed a focus on the parameters of quality assurance that govern e-learning and even fewer or none, have their focus on OER. E-xcellence as such being supplemented to MORIL, is to cater for open and accessible quality and benchmarking. MORIL is supported by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation

An Empirical Analysis of Virtual Goods Pricing Strategies in Virtual Worlds

3D Virtual worlds are computer mediated environments intended for the users to inhabit and interact via their representational avatars. Trading virtual goods in 3D virtual worlds plays an important role in realizing the virtual economy. This essay examines the impact of the unique virtual goods permission settings (Copy, Modify, and transfer) on creators’ pricing strategies. We collect data of virtual items from the Second Life marketplace XStreet to explore the factors that affect virtual goods prices. We use ANOVA to test the relationship between each permission and price, and conduct random effects model to investigate how permissions affect price in different categories. Our empirical results show that “Copy” permission, which might be regarded to reduce the profit of the creators, has a positive effect in virtual goods pricing strategies. Virtual items are more likely to be assigned “Copy” which seems to give additional duplicates for free. Furthermore, prices of virtual goods with “Copy” permission are higher than those without, and the more copies a consumer wants, the higher the price difference between the items with “Copy” and those without “Copy” permission. The effects of other issues on virtual goods prices are analyzed and managerial implications are discussed