Journal For Virtual Worlds Research (Texas Digital Library - TDL E-Journals)
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The Growth and Direction of Healthcare Support Groups in Virtual Worlds
No full textWhat is the growth and direction of healthcare support groups grow in virtual worlds? Data was collected on over 300 groups from virtual worlds, Second Life, IMVU, There, and Kaneva. A collection of non-virtual world support groups was added. Similar categories of groups were found to be generally popular across worlds. The percentage of groups in categories of healthcare issues was also generally analogous between worlds. The long tail effect was shown- only a few groups had high populations. Group creation rate displayed generally similar growth between worlds. The worlds\u27 demographics and features were suggested to account for differences. Limited data availability and vague definitions of groups and categories hampered analysis
Universal Design for Virtual Worlds
No full textWe describe three broad approaches to the issue of accessibility design within Virtual Worlds. Our intent is to stimulate the thinking of content designers within Virtual Worlds about these approaches.
Approach 1: Minimal accessibility design principles incorporated into the Virtual World
For much of the current state of Virtual Worlds, this is the default situation: Minimal consideration has been given during design or construction to accessibility issues. This may be the preferred approach when the intent of the designer is artistic creativity.
Approach 2: Emulate Real World accessibility design principles in the Virtual World
In this approach, the designer replicates various aspects of Real World accessibility within the virtual setting. This approach is preferred when the intent is to create learning opportunities about Real World Universal Design or accessibility standards and requirements.
Approach 3: Incorporate only accessibility design principles that are appropriate for the Virtual World
This approach is focused entirely on the virtual environment. The only constraints of importance to the designer are those of the technology itself; Real World accessibility standards are not considered relevant.
We then use these three perspectives to address Virtual World accessibility in landscapes, structures, movement, communication, and perceived environments.
Designers should consider which approach best fits the desired intent and audience of their creation.
We advocate that for most builds, designers incorporate accessibility principles that are appropriate for the Virtual World, and not be constrained to a literal translation of Real World standards and requirements. We conclude that this is a definition of Universal Design for Virtual Worlds
Development of Virtual Patient Simulations for Medical Education
No full textVirtual Worlds such as Second Life provide unique opportunities to simulate real life scenarios and immerse the user in an environment that can be tailored to meet specific educational requirements. In these Immersive Learning Environments, students and faculty can interact from anywhere in the real world. From a general education perspective, they allow for virtual classrooms, virtual libraries, interactive role-playing, remote seminars, etc. From a medical education and science perspective, Immersive Learning Environments such as Second Life can be used to model doctor-patient interaction, clinical diagnosis skills, and three dimensional objects ranging from individual molecules and cells to whole organ systems, both healthy and diseased.
The principal goal of our project is the development of virtual patient simulations for medical education. In order to simulate real patients with greatest fidelity, the virtual patients are controlled by artificial intelligence. This allows students to engage in a natural language conversation with the patient to obtain relevant patient history, symptoms, etc, and then to develop relevant differential diagnoses and treatments appropriate for the simulated condition of the patients. Virtual world medical simulations enable students to rehearse professional behaviors in a risk-free environment, providing opportunities for skills practice prior to real-world patient encounters
Use of a virtual world system in sports coach education for reproducing team handball movements
No full textThe continuous need for education and the significant changes in European policies and regulations overseeing sports coaching and training require the adjustment of teaching models and methods to the needs and potential of teachers, students, and technology.
In educational and training programmes for team sports coaching, it is common to use a group of athletes or video to demonstrate physical, technical, and tactical procedures. This requires significant human resources, both while developing the procedures and to reproduce them. Furthermore, both cases (live execution by athletes or video recording) are limited in visual perspective and detail. For this reason, specific software for demonstrating tactical procedures is sometimes used. But existing software presents significant limitations, for instance, when one cannot change procedures in real time nor can one interact with the audience.
This article focus on the development of a new resource: a software system combining tri-dimensional automated avatars in the Second Life world, an external control server, and an helper desktop application. Using this system, coaches enrolled in education/training programs can more easily be involved, even taking a playe
Development of a Virtual Reality Coping Skills Game to Prevent Post-Hospitalization Smoking Relapse in Tobacco Dependent Cancer Patients
No full textMany smokers hospitalized for cancer-related surgery return to smoking after discharge even though continued smoking can compromise treatment effectiveness, reduce survival, increase risk of disease recurrence, and impair quality of life. After leaving the smoke-free hospital, patients encounter smoking cues at home, i.e., family members who smoke or emotional triggers such as stress that can elicit powerful urges to smoke and lead to smoking relapse. Enabling smokers to experience such urges in a controlled setting while providing the ability to practice coping skills can build quitting self-efficacy. We developed a virtual reality coping skills (VRCS) game to help hospitalized smokers practice coping strategies to manage these triggers in preparation for returning home after hospitalization. Our multidisciplinary team developed the prototype VRCS game using Second Life, a platform that allowed rapid development and functionality. The prototype uses virtual home spaces (e.g., living room, kitchen) populated with common triggers to smoke. The patient uses
Leveraging Game-Playing Skills, Expectations and Behaviors of Digital Natives to Improve Visual Analytic Tools
No full textWe report gaming research aimed at improving innovative visual analytic (VA) tools. Digital natives are entering the information analysis workplace. There are similarities between innovative visual analytic (VA) tools used by information analysts and the video games digital natives play. These similarities provide an opportunity to leverage the game-playing skills, expectations and behaviors of digital natives in the design of VA tools that will help them perform information analysis. To this end, we performed a user-centered usability engineering (UE) study of digital native video game player
Musings on the State of \u273-D Virtual Worlds for Health and Healthcare\u27 in 2009
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Learning in a different life: Pre-service education students using an online virtual world.
No full textSecond Life is an online virtual world that is three dimensional and uses rich graphics to allow the user to be engaged in this environment. There has been a significant increase in people using this virtual world and of those conducting research in it in the recent past. This research study analyses a project where pre-service education students accessed Second Life as part of a fourth year elective course. The students had not used this virtual world prior to being introduced to it in class. They completed a problem based learning experience in Second Life that allowed the students to explore the virtual world as well as develop an activity that could be taught to a high school class. This study used case study methodology within a qualitative research framework. Although it was only a small pilot study, results suggest that the students learned how to navigate around Second Life and were open to this new technology. Half the students reported that they would use this technology or similar technologies in the future
On the creation of standards for interaction between real robots and virtual worlds.
No full textResearch on virtual worlds and environments has increased tremendously in the last decade, giving birth to a variety of applications spanning over several areas such as virtual reality, human-computer interaction, psychology and sociology, among others. In this paper we elaborate on one issue affecting the areas of virtual worlds and robotics: the lack of standard mechanism for communication and interaction between virtual worlds and real robots
Virtual Worlds in Health Care Higher Education
No full textAdvances in information technology bring progress in distance education. Online education programs are pervasive, however, only recently has the Web 2.0 brought about interactive, dynamic distance based health care education in virtual worlds (VWs). VWs allow for real time representations of environments, manipulable objects and interactions between avatars or bots, creating a sense of realism and presence that is absent in traditional, flat online education. Presence has been linked to knowledge transfer and better learning. Second Lif