Analysis of Social Networks in a Virtual World

As three-dimensional virtual environments become both more prevalent and more fragmented, studying how users are connected via their avatars and how they benefit from the virtual world community has become a significant area of research. An in-depth analysis of virtual world Social networks is needed to evaluate how users interact in virtual worlds, to better understand the impact of avatar Social networks on the virtual worlds, and to improve future online Social networks. Our current efforts are focused on building and exploring the Social network aspects of virtual worlds. In this thesis, we build a Social network of avatars based on their interaction in the Second Life virtual world and compare it to other Social networking sites found on the web. Experimental results with data crawled from Second Life virtual worlds demonstrate that our approach was able to build a representative network of avatars in a virtual world from the sample data. The analysis comparison between virtual world Social networks and others in the flat web allows us to gauge measures that better explore the relationship between locations linked by multiple users and their avatars. Using this comparison, we can also determine if techniques of personalized search and content recommendation are feasible for virtual world environments

Exchanges in a Virtual Environment for Diabetes Self-Management Education and Support: Social Network Analysis.

BACKGROUND: Diabetes remains a major health problem in the United States, affecting an estimated 10.5% of the population. Diabetes self-management interventions improve diabetes knowledge, self-management behaviors, and clinical outcomes. Widespread internet connectivity facilitates the use of eHealth interventions, which positively impacts knowledge, social support, and clinical and behavioral outcomes. In particular, diabetes interventions based on virtual environments have the potential to improve diabetes self-efficacy and support, while being highly feasible and usable. However, little is known about the patterns of social interactions and support taking place within type 2 diabetes-specific virtual communities. OBJECTIVE: The objective of this study was to examine social support exchanges from a type 2 diabetes self-management education and support intervention that was delivered via a virtual environment. METHODS: Data comprised virtual environment-mediated synchronous interactions among participants and between participants and providers from an intervention for type 2 diabetes self-management education and support. Network data derived from such social interactions were used to create networks to analyze patterns of social support exchange with the lens of social network analysis. Additionally, network correlations were used to explore associations between social support networks. RESULTS: The findings revealed structural differences between support networks, as well as key network characteristics of supportive interactions facilitated by the intervention. Emotional and appraisal support networks are the larger, most centralized, and most active networks, suggesting that virtual communities can be good sources for these types of support. In addition, appraisal and instrumental support networks are more connected, suggesting that members of virtual communities are more likely to engage in larger group interactions where these types of support can be exchanged. Lastly, network correlations suggest that participants who exchange emotional support are likely to exchange appraisal or instrumental support, and participants who exchange appraisal support are likely to exchange instrumental support. CONCLUSIONS: Social interaction patterns from disease-specific virtual environments can be studied using a social network analysis approach to better understand the exchange of social support. Network data can provide valuable insights into the design of novel and effective eHealth interventions given the unique opportunity virtual environments have facilitating realistic environments that are effective and sustainable, where social interactions can be leveraged to achieve diverse health goals

More than Just a Game – User Expectations v Operator Interests

Trade in virtual goods is currently governed by social conventions. This has resulted in a complex network of social contracts being established outside the formal legal system. The size of informal secondary markets has transformed virtual environments from games into transaction spaces. This has been encouraged by operators and their marketing strategies. The design of virtual environments leads users to expect that virtual property will reflect the real world property system. Although users speak about ownership, the law may not authorise them to alienate virtual goods through the secondary markets. Therefore, transactions are carried out in the context of legitimate expectations based on implicit social conventions. Property law theorists tell us that the law develops by recognising and formalising social conventions. An analysis of those social conventions and contracts can therefore indicate how and to what extent formal law should be adopted in virtual environments and what categories of (property) law can best address these new challenges

E-learning in mixed reality landscape: emerging issues and key trends in scientific research

E-Learning aims to apply information and communications technology to enhance and support the learning process and is a popular mode of delivering educational materials in universities throughout the world. Recently, due to the advancements of Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual reality (VR), the E-learning process has great challenges and opportunities ahead. This study intends to explore the current trends in the field of AR/VR applied to distance education research. Using bibliographic data extracted from the Scopus® database and social network analysis techniques were able to analyse author keyword toward the identification of major trends. For the analysis, we collected keywords from research papers published in international journals related to E-learning, AR and VR, between 2006 and 2017, and constructed a co-word network, and then conducted the keywords network analysis. Retrieving the "E-learning" ego-network we could find some clusters that define major trends like virtual environments or evaluations process. The study reveals that E-learning process fits better in AR than VR research. The findings obtained in this study may be useful in the exploration of potential research areas in the field of distance education.info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio

Modeling Human Group Behavior In Virtual Worlds

Virtual worlds and massively-multiplayer online games are rich sources of information about large-scale teams and groups, offering the tantalizing possibility of harvesting data about group formation, social networks, and network evolution. They provide new outlets for human social interaction that differ from both face-to-face interactions and non-physically-embodied social networking tools such as Facebook and Twitter. We aim to study group dynamics in these virtual worlds by collecting and analyzing public conversational patterns of users grouped in close physical proximity. To do this, we created a set of tools for monitoring, partitioning, and analyzing unstructured conversations between changing groups of participants in Second Life, a massively multi-player online user-constructed environment that allows users to construct and inhabit their own 3D world. Although there are some cues in the dialog, determining social interactions from unstructured chat data alone is a difficult problem, since these environments lack many of the cues that facilitate natural language processing in other conversational settings and different types of social media. Public chat data often features players who speak simultaneously, use jargon and emoticons, and only erratically adhere to conversational norms. Humans are adept social animals capable of identifying friendship groups from a combination of linguistic cues and social network patterns. But what is more important, the content of what people say or their history of social interactions? Moreover, is it possible to identify whether iii people are part of a group with changing membership merely from general network properties, such as measures of centrality and latent communities? These are the questions that we aim to answer in this thesis. The contributions of this thesis include: 1) a link prediction algorithm for identifying friendship relationships from unstructured chat data 2) a method for identifying social groups based on the results of community detection and topic analysis. The output of these two algorithms (links and group membership) are useful for studying a variety of research questions about human behavior in virtual worlds. To demonstrate this we have performed a longitudinal analysis of human groups in different regions of the Second Life virtual world. We believe that studies performed with our tools in virtual worlds will be a useful stepping stone toward creating a rich computational model of human group dynamics

Examining Meaningful Engagement: Musicology and Virtual Music Making Enviroments

In the twenty- first -century music is being made in new ways in both real and virtual environments. This study builds on an ongoing examination of meaningful engagement in the production of music curriculum and experience design in music software and examines the adaptation of musicological strategies for research in these fields. The study reports upon the use of musicological analysis of both music making processes and communities that have been applied to the production of networked improvisational musical environments and community music projects. It advocates an exciting emergent role for musicology and ethnomusicology as a means of observing, evaluating and creating meaningful and engaging environments for music learning that enable interactive engagement with real and virtual musical worlds. The paper serves as the beginnings of a methodological meta study that examines a series of music projects involving youth community music and the effects of music making on social and cultural inclusion and the creation of Networked Improvisational Musical Environments. This project suggests a ‘contemporary musicianship’, which embraces the computer as instrument, the network as ensemble and cyberspace as venue. The paper focuses upon the implementation and adaptation of musicological strategies of musical analysis in software design and ethno-musicological methods for ethically observing and documenting mutli-cultural and urban Indigenous music communities. It is suggested that these methodologies and strategies that are inclusive of the artifacts and symbols systems common to music making practice should be used more in music education research than text and number based educational methods, which it is argued, filter the meaning inherent in music experience

"Internet en el aula" como espacio para la formación profesional de profesores

La presente investigación “usos de la red social “internet en el aula” como espacio para la formación profesional de profesores”, se enmarca en el enfoque comprensivo de un Estudio de Caso, aplicado en un Ambiente Virtual: red social “Internet en el aula”1, de la cual se eligió el grupo “Las TIC en Infantil y Primaria” seleccionando de éste aleatoriamente una muestra de 185 profesores. Se realizó observación no participante de las diferentes interacciones, se crea el perfil de usuario y se examinan las características, también se realiza un análisis cuantitativo de las participaciones en los foros y en el muro y finalmente se analizan cualitativamente las interacciones entre los participantes. La información obtenida permitió determinar que la mayoría de los profesores usan la red social para buscar información, compartir recursos y recibir apoyo, con el fin de mejorar sus prácticas educativas. Aunque son pocos los que se vinculan en actividades de construcción colectiva, se evidencian, las oportunidades de autoformación que brindan los entornos virtuales, sin embargo, el profesor verá beneficios en la medida que participe activamente en los diferentes espacios de la Red Social.This research "uses of social network" internet en el aula" as a space for the professional training of teachers," is part of the comprehensive approach to a case study that was used in a Virtual Environment: social network "Internet en el aula ", which the group chose" ICT in Infant and Primary "selecting from this random sample of 185 teachers. Non-participant observation of the different interactions was performed, the user profile is created and the characteristics are examined, a quantitative analysis of the holdings in the forums and on the wall is also performed and finally the interactions between participants are qualitatively analyzed. The information obtained allowed us to determine that most teachers use the social network to find information, share resources and receive support, in order to improve their educational practices. Although there are few who are linked in collective construction activities, are evident, self-training opportunities offered by virtual environments, however, the teacher will benefit to the extent that actively participate in the different areas of the Social Network

Analysis of PLEs’ implementation under OER design as a productive teaching-learning strategy in Higher Education. A case study at Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia

This paper shows some research which analysed the didactic functionality of Personal Learning Environments (PLEs) and Open Educational Resources (OERs). They were created by students from the Master’s Degree in Information and Communication Technologies applied to language teaching and processing, at Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED, Spain). A thorough analysis has been carried out based on a virtual ethnography methodological framework, with a twofold qualitative dimension: on the one hand, by using the Atlas-Ti program and on the other hand by following a reticular, category-based social network analysis with UCINET and yED Graph Editor. Results show that the joint use of PLEs and OERs designed by students improves their digital competence, mainly in capabilities such as: accessing and searching for online information; articulating information needs; finding relevant information; selecting resources effectively; navigating between online sources; and creating personal information strategies. Furthermore, the scrutiny of the forums using the reticular social network analysis shows how the main benefits of the implementation of PLEs and OERs are: a student-centric approach, the development of personal knowledge management strategies and the formation of a self-regulated learning model

+SPACES: Serious Games for Role-Playing Government Policies

The paper explores how role-play simulations can be used to support policy discussion and refinement in virtual worlds. Although the work described is set primarily within the context of policy formulation for government, the lessons learnt are applicable to online learning and collaboration within virtual environments. The paper describes how the +Spaces project is using both 2D and 3D virtual spaces to engage with citizens to explore issues relevant to new government policies. It also focuses on the most challenging part of the project, which is to provide environments that can simulate some of the complexities of real life. Some examples of different approaches to simulation in virtual spaces are provided and the issues associated with them are further examined. We conclude that the use of role-play simulations seem to offer the most benefits in terms of providing a generalizable framework for citizens to engage with real issues arising from future policy decisions. Role-plays have also been shown to be a useful tool for engaging learners in the complexities of real-world issues, often generating insights which would not be possible using more conventional techniques

Understanding Collaboration in Virtual Labs: A Learning Analytics Framework

Online education is increasing and progress within technology has inspired the development of virtual laboratories, which allow students to conduct experiments online. One of the main challenges of virtual laboratory environments is facilitating collaboration similar to those existing in physical laboratory settings. This research explores how one can obtain a better understanding of collaboration in virtual labs through the use of learning analytics. The research work of this thesis was carried out within the frame of design science research, where the main contribution is an artefact in the form of a learning analytics framework. The aim of the artefact is to provide a guiding framework for the integration of learning analytics to better understand and support learning and collaboration in virtual labs. The artefact was evaluated in two iterations using semi-structured interviews with seven experts. It was found through the artefact development process that social network anal- ysis, statistical analysis, natural language processing, and sentiment analysis are valuable data analysis methods for identifying patterns within collaboration in virtual labs. A proposal of a learning analytics dashboard has proved to be a valuable tool to visualise the analysis to the stakeholders in question (students and instructor). The overall reception of the framework was understandable and well-presented. The contribution of this research provides opportunities for future work which involves putting the framework into practice. The implementation of learning analytics to support collaboration in virtual labs can make it easier for students to reflect on their own performances and thereafter improve from it, as well as supporting instructors to reflect on their teaching methods and provide assistance to students in need.Masteroppgave i informasjonsvitenskapINFO390MASV-INF