Journal For Virtual Worlds Research (Texas Digital Library - TDL E-Journals)
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A Pedagogical Model for Virtual World Residents: A Case Study of the Virtual Ability Second Life Island
No full textMany benefits are available to people with disabilities who wish to participate in a virtual world. These include self-efficacy and the ability to share in virtual world community support. Further, many disabled residents of virtual worlds can vicariously experience physical activities through their avatar such as dancing, walking, and runnin
Virtual Worlds, Collective Responses and Responsibilities in Health
No full textVirtual worlds are an exciting area offering opportunities in clinical teaching and interventions. Clinicians and academics alike may approach these emerging opportunities with enthusiasm or scepticism. Attitudes towards applying virtual worlds in clinical practice may arise from a number of sources, facilitating a more or less positive view towards this media. Virtual worlds have the potential to provide a considerable amount of control to the end users, in this case, the clien
Virtual Chironomia: Developing Standards for Non-verbal Communication in Virtual Worlds
No full textOnline virtual worlds offer new ways to explore evolving forms of social interaction, including the use of non-verbal elements used in conjunction with other communication modalities of text and voice. Ancient rhetorician Cicero coined the ter
World of Bizcraft
No full textThis article sketches the features required of a platform (which I refer to a
Virtual Education: Teaching Media Studies in Second Life
No full textFollowing the adoption of the virtual world Second Life by tertiary educational institutions worldwide, a limited study was conducted at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University to test the feasibility and desirability of employing a virtual environment to conduct classes. 30 tutorials were held in Second Life over a period of five weeks in support of a course on Media Studies with 60 students. Feedback was gathered continuously from students and the lecturer via informal interviews, feedback forms, and participant observation. The results proved most of the initial hypotheses wrong, but supported the value of virtual teaching and learning in a well-supported institutional environment. The paper emphasises the need to integrate virtual environments into the educational framework of courses and for a careful consideration of the educational aims and uses of virtual worlds within specific courses
Beyond the Game: Quest Atlantis as an Online Learning Experience for Gifted Elementary Students
No full textQuest Atlantis (QA) is a learning and teaching project that uses a 3D virtual environment to immerse children, ages 8-15, in educational tasks. It allows users to travel to virtual places to perform educational activities known as Quests. The core elements of QA are: 1) a 3D multi-user virtual environment (MUVE), 2) inquiry learning Quests and unit plans, 3) a storyline involving a mythical Council and a set of social commitments, and 4) a globally-distributed community of participants (Barab, Arici, & Jackson, 2005). These inherently engaging environments are natural motivators for this age-level student, who can be considered members of the Club Penguin generation. To determine the perspectives of the users, themselves, a survey was conducted with a group of 35 gifted elementary students. The results, gathered through both closed and open-ended questions, identified the strengths and limitations of this media as a viable pedagogy for teaching more traditional content area subjects. Teacher observations of student behavior both in the real life classroom and in the online environment present additional insights how digital natives engage in and interact with this media. Implications for using virtual worlds such as Quest Atlantis for distance learning of upper elementary students are proposed
Content Level Gateway for Virtual Worlds
No full textOne of the technologies from which we can say that it definitely and completely changed the way we work today is the Internet. Along with these many advantages, people are however also burdened with inefficient parental control, spam , pop-ups, viruses, adware and spyware to name a few. Virtual Environments (VE) are posing themselves as the future of Internet. Today, several 100s of VEs already exist, each addressing a certain target group. These VEs will have to deal with the same negative influence as the Internet of today only now presenting itself in a different package. This paper proposes a solution to guard our future Internet already from the very start from such counterproductive content
Piracy vs Control: Various Models of Virtual World Governance and their impact on Player Experience
No full textThe recent (February 2009) defection of a key member of the Band of Brothers Alliance in EVE caused a major restructure of the EVE gaming environment, much to the joy of the gam
Virtual World Interoperability: Let Use Cases Drive Design
No full textVirtual worlds are slowly creeping into our daily lives. While some early
adopters have been using them for entertainment, research and training
over the last 20 years, virtual trade shows and online conferencing with
user avatars are putting them front and center on the desktops of workers
around the world. However, while a "walled garden" virtual world may be
useful in and of itself (just like a cell phone being able to call other
cell phone customers using the same carrier), the real usability
explosion will come when the different virtual worlds start talking to
each other (just like cell phones being able to call any phone number in
the world, no matter who the destination carrier or operator is).
This article will examine the history of virtual world interoperability
as evidenced through early systems like DIS and HLA, current systems such
as Second Life / OpenSim teleport and OLIVE simulation interoperability,
and will examine some common use cases for the future, interconnected
metaverse. Based on this learning, a comprehensive approach to
standards-based virtual world interoperability is described, and the
article ends with a call for action.
The author has a unique depth of perspective on virtual worlds
interoperability, having worked with a variety of technologies ranging
from military simulation all the way to massively multiplayer online
games, having worked for a leading virtual world platform provider
since 2001, and having shipped public virtual world interoperability
solutions since 2005