Integrating immersive 3D worlds and real lab equipment for teaching mechatronics

Three-dimensional (3D) virtual environments bring people together in real time irrespective of their geographical location to facilitate collaborative learning and working together in an engaging and fulfilling way. However, it can be difficult to amass suitable data to gauge how well students perform in these environments. With this in mind, the current study proposes a methodology for monitoring students’ learning experiences in 3D virtual worlds (VWs). It integrates a computer-based mechanism that mixes software agents with natural agents (users) in conjunction with a fuzzy logic model to reveal evidence of learning in collaborative pursuits to replicate the sort of observation that would normally be made in a conventional classroom setting. Software agents are used to infer the extent of interaction based on the number of clicks, the actions of users, and other events. Meanwhile, natural agents are employed in order to evaluate the students and the way in which they perform. This is beneficial because such an approach offers an effective method for assessing learning activities in 3D virtual environments.

Online systems, especially 3D virtual environments, hold great potential to enrich and expand learning opportunities for those who are challenged by traditional modes of instruction and interaction. In the process of developing a 3D Virtual Learning Environment to support the development and practice of social competence for individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorders, the iSocial project explored and advanced ideas for social orthotics in virtual environments. By social orthotics the authors mean structures in the environment that overcome barriers to facilitate social interaction and social learning. The vision of social orthotics in a 3D world is to be both assistive and adaptive for appropriate social behavior when the student, peers and guide are represented by avatars in a 3D virtual world designed to support learning and development. This chapter describes the formulation of social orthotics for avatar orientation and conversational turn-taking and describes experiences and lessons from early tests of prototype orthotics.

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.

This chapter aimed to reveal how the analysis, design, and development processes should be carried out while history teaching environments are being developed in 3D virtual environments and to set a concrete definition of teaching process in 3D virtual environments. In the history teaching session, the participants were represented in the 3D virtual environment developed in OpenSim simultaneously with their own avatars. They role-played the historical characters and actively participated in the events of that period by using historical reenactment technique in historical spaces. Additionally, this chapter describes the development process of a 3D virtual teaching environment from the design of the teaching process to the implementation. The procedures performed during the preparation of the 3D virtual teaching environment are presented with a flowchart. It is expected that this flowchart, suggested as a 3D virtual instructional design model, will guide researchers through the process of developing teaching implementations in 3D virtual environments in future studies.

Process models are often used to visualize and communicate workflows to involved stakeholders. Unfortunately, process modeling notations can be complex and need specific knowledge to be understood. Storyboards, as a visual language to illustrate workflows as sequences of images, provide natural visualization features that allow for better communication, to provide insight to people from non-process modeling expert domains. This paper proposes a visualization approach using a 3D virtual world environment to visualize storyboards for business process models. A prototype was built to present its applicability via generating output with examples of five major process model patterns and two non-trivial use cases. Illustrative results for the approach show the promise of using a 3D virtual world to visualize complex process models in an unambiguous and intuitive manner.

An international cooperation between educators in Australia and the US has led to a reconceptualization of the teaching of a library science course at Appalachian State University. The pedagogy of Action Learning coupled with a 3D virtual learning environment immerses students in a social constructivist learning space that incorporates and supports interaction and reflection. The intent of this study was to build a bridge between theory and practice by providing students with a tool set that promoted personal and social reflection, and created and scaffolded a community of practice. Besides, action learning is an educational process whereby the fifty graduate students experienced their own actions and experience to improve performance.

Considering the need to stimulate the interest of students, it is essential to create more attractive environments for teaching, and laboratory activities are indicated as essential to correlate theory and practice. The use of remote labs allows students access remotely at anytime and anywhere, a real lab equipment. The integration of remote experiments with 3D virtual worlds allows the creation of a rich environment for contextualization of laboratory activity, providing the user with additional information about the experiment. Thus, this article aims to understand and relate existing jobs currently about virtual 3D worlds using the integrated Remote Experiments.

This study focuses on comparing the quality of online deliberations that have the same deliberation process, concept and discussion topics but use different net-based technologies. For this, a web-based forum (WBF), a social networking site (SNS) and a 3D virtual world were chosen as research areas. Discussions regarding Turkey's public issues were examined by using the rationalistic and ethical criteria that come from the studies of Jurgen Habermas. Techniques of quantitative content analysis and survey were employed for data collection. Findings suggest that instead of actions that are oriented toward the common good, competitive actions directed towards success are more commonly observed. Although it is difficult to say which media is more qualified to support deliberative public discussions, the WBF stands out in terms of justification and reciprocity, whereas the 3D virtual environment Second Life stands out in terms of principles of discursive equality, reciprocity and respect.

As educational systems emphasize and experiment with forms of online and remote learning, it is increasingly important to investigate the cultural competence of instructional designers. This chapter addresses the experiences of instructional designers in a 3D virtual learning environment designed for development of cultural competence. Design-based research (DBR) and user experience (UX) methodologies were employed to explore experience of six instructional designers in 3D virtual environment. A taxonomy of experience (ToE) established by Coxon guided qualitative data collection and analysis. Through examples and data, the chapter emphasizes the necessity for instructional designers to keep in mind the challenge of cultural diversity in the backgrounds of students and their own, and bring guidelines and principles into culturally sensitive and responsive instructional design processes. The authors recommend four future research directions, including cross-cultural instructional designer competencies along with research into cultural personas, avatars, and guest-host relations.

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”.

The proliferation of the Internet and other technological innovations has transformed the structure of the tourism industry as well as affected how tourism destinations are perceived and consumed. The 3D virtual world provides opportunities for destination marketing organizations to communicate with targeted markets by offering a rich environment for potential visitors to explore tourism destinations. However, as of yet, there is little understanding about how to effectively market tourism destinations to virtual world participants who are technology users as well as potential consumers. The purpose of the present study is to develop a research framework that integrates the technology acceptance model (TAM) and self‐determination theory to understand how tourists use a 3D virtual world. Primary data were obtained for this study through self‐administered Web questionnaires. The data were conducted in a laboratory setting with 186 participants. This study contributes to the empirical TAM literature by applying the model to a 3D virtual tourism site. Additionally, this study provides a research framework to capture the entertainment nature of a 3D virtual world by extending the TAM to incorporate psychological elements of self‐determination theory to understand consumer experience. From the perspective of tourism professionals, this study contributes to an understanding of how best to construct informative and interactive tourist destinations in 3D virtual worlds to attract potential online and real‐world tourists. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The purpose of this case study was to determine if learning occurred within a 3D virtual learning environment by determining if elements of collaboration and Nonaka and Takeuchi's (1995) knowledge spiral were present. A key portion of this research was the creation of a Virtual Learning Environment. This 3D VLE utilized the Torque Game Engine provided by Garage Games and a content pack created by BraveTree Productions, LLC. By creating this 3D didactic constructivist virtual environment, conversations were observed for collaborative and knowledge creation elements. Data for this mixed-design case study were gathered through three sources: the 3D virtual environment; a survey created by the researchers; and follow-up interviews. Findings revealed that the five forms of collaboration (Elementary Clarification, In-Depth Clarification, Inference, Judgment, and Application) amplified the knowledge creation process and indeed occurred within the virtual learning environment. It was also determined that all four modes for knowledge creation (socialization, externalization, combination, and internalization) were observed as well.

The main purpose of this study is to understand the satisfaction level of students to teach the basics of programming in 3D virtual worlds and investigate the factors affecting their satisfaction. Multiple case study with three cases were conducted in three different educational programs: as curricular (Case-1), extra-curricular (Case-2) and after-school (Case-3). Satisfaction scale adopted from previous study was used to understand current level of satisfaction and semi-structured interviews were conducted with participants to reveal factors affecting satisfaction. Descriptive analysis of quantitative data showed that that the most satisfied students were those from Case-1 (M = 4.35), Case-3 (M = 4.28) and Case-2 (M = 3.99), respectively. Single case analysis of qualitative data revealed the factors increasing and decreasing satisfaction of the students. Apart from the story about the tasks, group study, object construction, having tasks, off-task activities, 3D environment and tour in the environment emerged as an increasing factor across all three cases at different ratios. Technical problems, studying alone, difficulty of the tasks, and avatar-related problems were the factors stated by some of the students across all cases as decreasing factors. Cross-case analysis provided a table which shows the similarities and differences among the cases.

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.

This paper examines the effects of substituting a computer simulation for real laboratory equipment in the second semester of a large-scale introductory physics course. The direct current circuit laboratory was modified to compare the effects of using computer simulations with the effects of using real light bulbs, meters, and wires. Two groups of students, those who used real equipment and those who used a computer simulation that explicitly modeled electron flow, were compared in terms of their mastery of physics concepts and skills with real equipment. Students who used the simulated equipment outperformed their counterparts both on a conceptual survey of the domain and in the coordinated tasks of assembling a real circuit and describing how it worked.