How to Prepare High-Level Massive Online Open Courses for the Metaverse: Tools and Needs

The adoption of methodologies and practices from distance learning (MOOC) and gamification is a promising basis to facilitate the design of a new generation of MOOCs (massive online open courses) and well suited for XR-based immersive shared social spaces, i.e., educational metaverses. Therefore, we discuss the tools and requirements to assist teachers to acquire two levels of competence, “beginner-level creator” and “advanced-level creator”, within the current ecosystem of metaverses. The adoption of such tools and XR platforms within STEM university educational settings is discussed to introduce the novel concept of the edu-metaverse

A PROPOSAL FOR A VIRTUAL REALITY METHOD IN LANGUAGE LEARNING

The paper presents a new method for the use of extended reality (XR) technologies in education, particularly in language learning. The authors realized a prototype of XR environment for distance learning of French language, via the software Unreal Engine 4. It deploys two types of VR activities, with the aim to improve understanding of grammatical concepts and memorization of new words, respectively. The dimension of depth is embedded into the learning process, by exploiting the kinesthetic aspects of the immersive environment. Thus, the learner moves in space and manipulates specific virtual objects involved in the learning activity to complete the task. A qualitative assessment has been conducted with a limited number of target students and now is currently under a wider experimental validation. However, the article introduces also the theoretical aspects of the new method, paving the way for further development

Teaching in the Metaverse: Recreating an Italian Level A1 Course in Meta Horizon Woorkrooms

In recent years, the concept of the Metaverse has led to considerable ethical and moral discussions about the digital creation of an alternative world. Despite the extensive investments made by multinationals such as Meta [1] or Roblox [2], the possibilities offered by the Metaverse in Virtual Reality have not yet been able to meet expectations due to issues such as the high cost of Head-Mounted Displays and a low presence of active users. The creation of virtual lessons that can be delivered directly within the Metaverse is an aspect that has not yet been properly explored and could finally lead to effective use of the virtual worlds born in recent years. This paper aims to lay the theoretical and practical basis for transporting a course designed to teach Italian at level A1 within the immersive environment of Meta Horizon Workrooms [3]. The features offered by the virtual office created by Mark Zuckerberg's company can provide a safe environment in which to engage students while keeping their active attention on the educational objective and avoiding the distractions caused by distance learning

Applying gamification techniques to enhance the effectiveness of video-lessons

Gamification techniques are commonly used in e-learning to enhance the effectiveness of educational activities and the learners\u2019 partaking. In fact, owing to the engagement effect, they can improve learning processes in diverse disciplines, empowering the traditional methods of acquisition of competences and skills. This approach is giving results in informal education activities both in traditional Learning Management Systems and in Massive Open Online Course platforms, mostly based on the consumption of video-lessons. In this context, we describe the gamification-oriented design choices made for the realization of a video-course for the training on the use of office automation software programs. Specifically, we planned the revamping of a course produced in 2012, whose lessons are made by short fictional videos, animated tutorials, and screen captures that show how to perform common operations. The design of the gamification process is following the hype for the launch of the new Star Wars\u2122, Episode 7, and, as a consequence, will be delivered as \u201cStar Words\u201d. In the paper we present the gamification methodologies adopted to create the first prototype of Star Words, also analyzing the criticisms that emerged

XR Enhanced Learning: an A1 Level Gamified MOOC for Italian Learning

The past three years have seen increasingly rapid progress in using Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), i.e., education delivered online on specific platforms to refine or teach several subjects. The COVID-19 pandemic that has hit the planet pushed many people towards finding new tools to experience and learn. This contribution examines how the use of Gamification mechanics and rules can be used to increase motivation and trigger the interest of foreign students enrolling at the University of Genoa to learn A1 Level Italian through an extended MOOC. Topics will be delivered on the EON-XR platform, enabling students to access brief texts and/or audio contributions as well as 3D models related to concepts dealt with by lecturers in class

Privacy-Preserving OLAP-based monitoring of data streams: The PP-OMDS approach

In this paper, we propose PP-OMDS (Privacy-Preserving OLAP-based Monitoring of Data Streams), an innovative framework for supporting the OLAP-based monitoring of data streams, which is relevant for a plethora of application scenarios (e.g., security, emergency management, and so forth), in a privacy-preserving manner. The paper describes motivations, principles and achievements of the PP-OMDS framework, along with technological advancements and innovations. We also incorporate a detailed comparative analysis with competitive frameworks, along with a trade-off analysis

Digital Libraries and Educational Resources: the AquaRing Semantic Approach

Large amounts of scientific digital contents are nowadays held by scientific institutions which collect, pro- duce and store information valuable for dissemination, work, study and research. In this context, the development of the web and of learning technologies has brought new opportunities for teachers and learners to retrieve and share pedagogical objects. This paper introduces the use of a se- mantic approach developed within the EC funded AquaR- ing project with the aim of improving access to the vast amount of digital content concerning the aquatic environ- ment and its resources, as well as supporting enhanced edu- cation and informal learning in this specific domain. In or- der to achieve these goals, a semantic framework and an educational ontology were developed and implemented. Both were used to support the indexing of learning re- sources and to provide several educational services to end- users (especially children, students, parents and teachers). Index Terms—Digital Libraries, Learning Objects, Ontolo- gies, Semantic Web

Skeleton driven action recognition using an image-based spatial-temporal representation and convolution neural network

Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) typically present difficulties in engaging and interacting with their peers. Thus, researchers have been developing different technological solutions as support tools for children with ASD. Social robots, one example of these technological solutions, are often unaware of their game partners, preventing the automatic adaptation of their behavior to the user. Information that can be used to enrich this interaction and, consequently, adapt the system behavior is the recognition of different actions of the user by using RGB cameras or/and depth sensors. The present work proposes a method to automatically detect in real-time typical and stereotypical actions of children with ASD by using the Intel RealSense and the Nuitrack SDK to detect and extract the user joint coordinates. The pipeline starts by mapping the temporal and spatial joints dynamics onto a color image-based representation. Usually, the position of the joints in the final image is clustered into groups. In order to verify if the sequence of the joints in the final image representation can influence the model’s performance, two main experiments were conducted where in the first, the order of the grouped joints in the sequence was changed, and in the second, the joints were randomly ordered. In each experiment, statistical methods were used in the analysis. Based on the experiments conducted, it was found statistically significant differences concerning the joints sequence in the image, indicating that the order of the joints might impact the model’s performance. The final model, a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN), trained on the different actions (typical and stereotypical), was used to classify the different patterns of behavior, achieving a mean accuracy of 92.4% ± 0.0% on the test data. The entire pipeline ran on average at 31 FPS.This work has been supported by FCT—Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia within the R&D Units Project Scope: UIDB/00319/2020. Vinicius Silva thanks FCT for the PhD scholarship SFRH/BD/SFRH/BD/133314/2017

Towards a virtual coach for boccia: developing a virtual augmented interaction based on a boccia simulator

Science and Technology Publications, Lda. All rights reserved. Disability can be a factor that leads to social exclusion. Considering that involvement in society is paramount for a person with disability, participation in sports can be a powerful tool for inclusion. Based on this premise, the authors propose an intelligent virtual coach for Boccia to encourage the practice of this sport on persons with disabilities, while promoting social inclusion and shortening the learning curve for individuals new to the sport by learning about game strategy. The envisioned virtual coach will rely on Artificial Intelligence models, thus requiring the creation of large datasets, namely for ball placement and throwing movement recommendations. To answer these problems, this work is focused on the development of a Boccia simulator. With this simulator, it is possible to generate artificial gameplay images and allow the user to control an avatar with body tracking. Gesture recognition was implemented with a state-machine, thus enabling the player to throw the ball, with customizable physics, by performing one of two different throwing movements. This functionality can allow the recording of data describing the body movement associated with the placement of the ball in a certain position within the virtual court, which is essential for the proposed recommendation system.FCT - Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia(690874).This article is supported by the project Deus ex Machina: NORTE – 01 – 0145 – FEDER - 000026, supported by Norte Portugal Regional Operational Programme (NORTE 2020), under the PORTUGAL 2020 Partnership Agreement, through the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) and by national funds through FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia within the Project Scope: UID/CEC/00319/2019. Vinicius Silva also thanks FCT for the PhD scholarship SFRH/BD/133314/2017

Topic Maps for Learning Design

n/