From Multi-User Virtual Environment to 3D Virtual Learning Environment

While digital virtual worlds have been used in education for a number of years, advances in the capabilities and spread of technology have fed a recent boom in interest in massively multi‐user 3D virtual worlds for entertainment, and this in turn has led to a surge of interest in their educational applications. In this paper we briefly review the use of virtual worlds for education, from informal learning to formal instruction, and consider what is required to turn a virtual world from a Multi‐User Virtual Environment into a fully fledged 3D Virtual Learning Environment (VLE). In this we focus on the development of Sloodle – a system which integrates the popular 3D virtual world of Second Life with the open‐source VLE Moodle. Our intent is not simply to provide additional learning support features for Second Life, but to study more generally the ways in which integrated virtual environments can benefit teaching and learning, and this is the focus of our closing discussion

An investigation to examine the most appropriate methodology to capture historical and modern preserved anatomical specimens for use in the digital age to improve access: a pilot study

Anatomico-pathological specimens constitute a valuable component of many medical museums or institutional collections but can be limited in their impact on account of both physical and intellectual inaccessibility. Further concerns relate to conservation as anatomical specimens may be subject to tissue deterioration, constraints imposed by spatial or financial limitations of the host institution, or accident-based destruction. In awareness of these issues, a simple and easily implementable methodology to increase accessibility, impact and conservation of anatomical specimens is proposed which combines photogrammetry, object virtual reality (object VR), and interactive portable document format (PDF) with supplementary historical and anatomical commentary. The methodology was developed using wet, dry, and plastinated specimens from the historical and modern collections in the Museum of Anatomy at the University of Glasgow. It was found that photogrammetry yielded excellent results for plastinated specimens and showed potential for dry specimens, while object VR produced excellent photorealistic virtual specimens for all materials visualised. Use of PDF as output format was found to allow for the addition of textual, visual, and interactive content, and as such supplemented the virtual specimen with multidisciplinary information adaptable to the needs of various audiences. The results of this small-scale pilot study indicate the beneficial nature of combining these established techniques into a methodology for the digitisation and utilisation of historical anatomical collections in particular, but also collections of material culture more broadly

Immersive Learning: Realism, Authenticity & Audience

For almost 20 years the Digital Design Studio has been exploring and applying virtual reality for a wide range of industrial, commercial and educational applications. Drawing from a range of recent projects, we explore the complex relationships between realism, authenticity and audience for effective engagement and education in immersive learning

The Spratly Islands: A Regional Perspective

The unprecedented and massive developmental growth China has experienced in the past decades has in fact transformed a country from a third-world overpopulated Asian state, to one of the most influential nations since the rise of the United States after World War II. China now faces the classic dilemma of maintaining its developmental growth and economic progress. It has been predicted that China’s overall economy could grow at 9 percent per year for the next 20 years

Massively Multi-Learner: Recent Advances in 3D Social Environments

In this paper we review work on developing an atypical MMO for use as a learning tool in traditional college settings. The MMO under consideration is Second Life by Linden Lab in San Francisco, CA. The platform is unusual in many regards. “Residents” play by creating content for use by others, gathering in ad hoc communities and constructing fictional narratives unrelated to the typical medieval combat genre prevalent in MMOs. It is this ability to add content and lack of an inbuilt narrative which has already attracted the attention of educators worldwide. We review a range of the education work already undertaken in Second Life and comment on its prospects for use more specifically in a Computer Science curriculum

Exploring How Faces Reveal Our Ethnicity

The human face varies with ethnicity as well as individually within any ethnotype. The ethnicvariation of the human face is seldom explicitly addressed in education. It would be of great value to foster the appreciation of the face as telling the story of the commonality of all of humankind and the diversity in our global distribution. Faces tell about origins and cultures. The language with which a face tells this story should be taught. It is a language not of words but of shapes, specifically three-dimensional shapes. Modern technology enables immersive visualization of three-dimensional shape in compelling ways that facilitate our learning a language with which to describe faces. An interactive animation framework is introduced that allows exploration of the space of ethnic variation via a set of intuitive, human understandable, facial shape properties. Parametric variation in these properties make explicit how our faces reveal our ethnicity

Merging the virtual and the real: A collaborative cross-reality game

In this paper, we present a collaborative cross-reality game for two players, Lab2, which blends tangible board game and immersive virtual reality playing spaces in a gameplay that aims to promote and train collaborative behaviour. As collaborative learning has been stressed as an effective teaching method for many years, Lab2 could assist learners in exploring and further developing their collaborative skills in a playful manner. One player controls a physical game board showing a moveable maze of “pathway” tiles, while the second uses a spatially tracked HMD to find himself inside a virtual-reality version of the game-board’s maze. The goal of the game is to collect a set of tokens hidden inside the maze. Reaching these tokens requires the players to collaborate via their complementary roles. We will first outline the game design concept and then detail the user-testing based evaluation of our game prototype

Digital curation and online resources: digital scanning of surgical tools at the royal college of physicians and surgeons of Glasgow for an open university learning resource

Collection preservation is essential for the cultural status of any city. However, presenting a collection publicly risks damage. Recently this drawback has been overcome by digital curation. Described here is a method of digitisation using photogrammetry and virtual reality software. Items were selected from the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow archives, and implemented into an online learning module for the Open University. Images were processed via Agisoft Photoscan, Autodesk Memento, and Garden Gnome Object 2VR. Although problems arose due to specularity, 2VR digital models were developed for online viewing. Future research must minimise the difficulty of digitising specular objects

Global Kids Online: researching children's rights globally in the digital age

Drawing on an ongoing international research project, Global Kids Online, this article examines the theoretical and methodological challenges of conducting global research on children’s rights in the digital age at a time of intense socio-technological change and contested policy development. Arguing in favour of critically rethinking existing research frameworks and measures for new circumstances, we report on the experience of designing a research toolkit and piloting this in four countries on four continents. We aim to generate national and cross-national insights that can benefit future researchers and research users concerned to build a robust evidence base to understand children’s rights in the digital age. It is hoped that such experiences will prompt wider lessons for the unfolding research and policy agend