3D Virtual Worlds: An Ethnography of Key Artifacts and Processes

This paper examines youth storytelling during co-design of an identity-expressive educational game for learning data science.Using interaction analysis of co-design interviews with middle school students, we explore how storytelling allows participants to (a) use existing game elements to position themselves and (b) express their interests and identities through imagined game futures.We argue that analyzing youth's interactive storytelling and identity enactments during co-design can inform the development of game narratives that represent diverse youth.Our findings contribute to the design of inclusive virtual worlds for STEM learning that celebrate youth identities and experiences.We discuss implications for engaging youth voices in the co-design process and creating educational games that resonate with diverse learners. PurposeVideo games are important contexts for inclusive STEM learning, allowing players to explore and enact identities (Gaydos & Devane, 2019; Gee, 2014).However, designing educational games that connect to diverse players' lives and identities is a significant challenge.Our project employs youth co-design to create "The Isles of Ilkmaar," a virtual world that supports identity-expressive data science learning among diverse youth, particularly genderexpansive youth, cis-girls, and youth of color.In this paper, we explore storytelling as a method for engaging diverse youth in co-design.An initial analysis showed how storytelling within co-design activates youth expertise and imaginations, facilitating a transition from game players to game designers (Radke, et al., 2023).We now look more closely at storytelling episodes to understand youth's shifting positionalities within the co-design context, illustrating how storytelling allows youth to (a) refer to and take up existing game elements as resources for positioning themselves as designers and (b) author and animate imagined new game futures in which they can projectively identify (Gee, 2014) with the player character.By analyzing youth narratives through the lens of positioning, we aim to understand how youth contributions to co-design arise from and reflect the dual positionalities of game designer and future player, contributing to the understanding of how to design educational games that connect to diverse players' lives and identities.

Whilst students may find Educational Virtual World (EVWs) more visually appealing and enjoyable than reading the theory in a textbook, using an EVW does not guarantee learning. The exploratory and experiential nature that potentially can enhance learning, can also lack structure or apparent purpose and may not achieve the intended learning outcomes. This paper reports a study that sought to understand whether navigational tips based on patterns in navigation paths to predict student performance, measured by recall for events and material encountered in the EVW, would be useful to provide timely hints or encouragement to improve performance and/or make learning more efficient.

Within most architecture and design schools, 3D virtual worlds are traditionally perceived and used as a CAAD tool for modelling and collaboration. Building on the understanding of virtual worlds as the extension of our physical environments where people can inhabit and participate in a variety of activities, we teach designing virtual worlds as a design subject which considers 3D virtual worlds as a different kind of environment design other than a technical tool for supporting design simulation and collaboration. This paper reports on our teaching experience, as well as discusses the principles for designing and teaching in 3D virtual worlds.

This paper aims to demonstrate the ongoing work of developing a framework that will allows to improve performance to students. The framework combines use of the open source virtual worlds, the Sloodle module and a learning analytics tool, in order to facilitate the execution of the collaborative learning techniques and improved the performance to students through of analytics learning tool monitorization. This framework is still in the design phase and will later be tested in a classroom context. The target public will be students of the fifth year of basic education, with aim of improve the learning mathematics.

The rapid advancement of digital technologies has transformed the landscape of education, with the metaverse emerging as a new and immersive learning platform.At the same time, gamification has proven to be a powerful pedagogical strategy for enhancing student engagement and motivation.The convergence of these two fields -educational virtual worlds and game-based learning -opens new avenues for experiential and interactive education.This study explores the integration of gamification into educational virtual environments in the metaverse, focusing on how game design elements, such as points, badges, levels, and collaborative missions, can be incorporated to support pedagogical goals.Building on the existing literature, this research proposes a methodology for designing immersive, game-enriched educational experiences.The study examines both the benefits and limitations of such applications, highlighting the potential of collaborative design as a means to enhance creativity, motivation, and deeper engagement.

An important security aspect of Virtual Worlds (in particular Virtual Worlds oriented towards commercial activities) is controlling participants’ adherence to the social norms (rules of behavior) and making them follow the acceptable interaction patterns. Rules of behavior in the physical world are usually enforced through a post factum punishment, while in computer-controlled environments like Virtual Worlds we can simply block the actions that are inconsistent with the rules and eliminate rule violations as such. In order to facilitate enforcing the rules in such automatic manner and allow for frequent rule changes, the rules have to be expressed in a formal way, so that the software can detect both the rules and the actions that can potentially violate them. In this chapter the authors introduce the concept of Virtual Institutions that are Virtual Worlds with normative regulation of interactions. For development of such systems the authors employ the Virtual Institutions Methodology that separates the development of Normative Virtual Worlds into two independent phases: formal specification of the institutional rules and design of the 3D interaction environment. The methodology is supplied with a set of graphical tools that support the development process on every level, from specification to deployment. The resulting system is capable of enforcing the social norms on the Virtual Worlds’ participants and ensuring the validity of their interactions.

3D virtual worlds are networked environments designed using the metaphor of architecture. Recent developments in 3D virtual worlds focus on interactivity, flexibility and adaptability. Rather than creating virtual environments in which the objects have intelligent behaviours, our research takes a different approach to develop an agent model that is associated with an individual person in the 3D virtual world as a personal design agent. This paper presents a Generative Design Agent (GDA), a kind of rational agent capable of representing a person in a virtual world and designing, implementing and demolishing 3D virtual places based on the occupants’ current needs in the virtual world. The core of a GDA’s design component is a generative design grammar that is able to capture a style of 3D virtual worlds. 3D virtual worlds designed using the GDA model is another kind of architecture for the “moment”.

On the Web and on informatics systems, 3D virtual worlds used become big both in number and in size. Therefore, we propose in this paper a new method for retrieving 3D virtual worlds based on the semantics and the content. Firstly, we propose a new classified database of 3D virtual worlds given in VRML format. To achieve the semantic method, we construct an ontology that describes virtual worlds in various aspects including their contents (3D objects building a virtual world) and information about their contents (authors, file format, etc). This ontology is presented by OWL, the W3C recommended language. So as to extract desired 3D scenes from the proposed database we use the SPARQL query language. We propose finally a shape based method for searching desired virtual worlds by content in this database. This method is based on a new distance (metric) that define the similarity between virtual worlds. This method is evaluated using the recall vs. precision curves.

This paper presents a summary model of the design process of educational video games for CH . The model is based on the use of the Classification of Educational Video Games for Cultural Heritage (CH) and the Design Recommendations included in it, described in a previous study by the author of this paper. The summary model focuses on CH objects that form the theme of the educational video game. Designers should carefully and purposefully research and analyze the CH objects, use the classification, and follow the design recommendations to design educational video games for CH, following the described design stages in the presented summary model of the design process. The paper also presents an appropriate example of using the summary model in applying it to design a new educational maze video game dedicated to CH object. The proposed summary model can serve as a starting point in establishing the design process of educational video games for CH and direct designers and creators of such games in the overall design process. Based on the classification and the design recommendations intended for the designers, the summary model presents essential design stages that designers should follow in designing and developing informative, purposeful, and effective educational video games in CH.

This work describes the development of a 3D virtual world with remote experimentation applied to Science teaching. The student, using avatars, can explore the virtual world and interact with a remote lab which shows images captured from a real microscope, with samples of roots, stalks and leafs.

Video Games and the Future of Learning

Over the past three years (2006–2008), the medical/health and public health communities have shown a growing interest in using online 3D virtual worlds like Second Life® (http://secondlife.com/) for health education, community outreach, training and simulations purposes. 3D virtual worlds are seen as the precursors of ‘Web 3D’, the next major iteration of the Internet that will follow in the coming years. This paper provides a tour of several flagship Web 3D experiences in Second Life®, including Play2Train Islands (emergency preparedness training), the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention—CDC Island (public health), Karuna Island (AIDS support and information), Tox Town at Virtual NLM Island (US National Library of Medicine - environmental health), and Jefferson’s Occupational Therapy Center. We also discuss the potential and future of Web 3D. These are still early days of 3D virtual worlds, and there are still many more untapped potentials and affordances of 3D virtual worlds that are yet to be explored, as the technology matures further and improves over the coming months and years.

Purpose– This paper examines the three-dimensional (3D)virtual world users’ perceptions of authenticity and trustworthiness in the virtual prototypes and users’ potential purchase behavior in the real-world settings. The 3D virtual worlds provide a new platform that exhibits virtual prototypes as a promotion channel for new products of real-world and online service, where users can communicate “face to face” via their representative avatars.Design/methodology/approach– The authors conducted an experiment in Second Life and collected data in a post-study questionnaire to test our proposed conceptual model. Structural equation modeling was the main methodology.Findings– The research results showed that 3D virtual world users obtained a high sense of telepresence and social presence. The sense of telepresence positively leads to users’ perceptions of online trust in the virtual prototypes and thus increases their intention to purchase real-world objects; the users’ sense of social presence positively associates to their perceptions of authenticity and online trust and, therefore, their purchase intention.Research limitations/implications– In survey research, the common method variance is a problem. A more robust way is to use objective measures.Practical implications– A new channel was proposed for businesses to enhance their online strategies that will increase their business value.Social implications– 3D virtual world is also a cutting-edge platform for remote education, public information service, etc.Originality/value– This paper initially contributes to the literature that interprets underlying factors in 3D virtual worlds associated to purchase intention in real-world objects. We demonstrated the advantages, i.e. the communication efficacy and vivid virtual design in the 3D user-generated environment.

Information and Computer Technologies have produced new generation interaction methods and services to support human activities, offering evolutionary learning procedures. 3D Virtual Worlds are sophisticated platforms supporting a set of human activities, enriching the way we learn, work and socialize. They are platforms that can support a constructivist learning approach of medical students, based on methods at the edge of technology inducing a team spirit and enhanced collaboration experience. In our work, we introduce the concept of e-learning through virtual worlds in medical and healthcare education, providing a literature review on the field. Furthermore, we discuss the advantages and disadvantages of virtual worlds in healthcare, we provide a comparison of the most popular platforms, while some open research issues are being considered in the conclusion.

This project seeks to demonstrate the use of remote experimentation and 3D virtual environments applied to the teaching-learning in the areas of exact sciences-physics. In proposing the combination of remote experimentation and 3D virtual worlds in teaching-learning process, we intend to achieve greater geographic coverage, contributing to the construction of new methodologies of teaching support, speed of access and foremost motivation for students to continue in scientific study of the technology areas. The proposed architecture is based on a model implemented fully featured open source and open hardware. The virtual world was built in OpenSim software and integrated it a remote physics experiment called “electrical panel”. Accessing the virtual world the user has total control of the experiment within the 3D virtual world.