Cristian Lorenzini

Social Networks and Web-based Serious Games as Novel Educational Tools

Abstract This paper presents the concept and the work in progress of SONNA, a research project aiming to analyze the impact of social networks, web 2.0 and interactive multimedia as tools for learning. The overall architecture, the technical details of the platform and the storyboard of two samples interactive web-based serious games are also presented, highlighting challenges and current issues.

A Virtual Laboratory An immersive VR experience to spread ancient libraries heritage

This paper presents the evolving embodiments of “A Virtual Laboratory”, a VR-based videogame simulating an experiment of medical distillation in a medieval alchemy lab. Players are encouraged to acquire the knowledge needed to master the operations to be performed by consulting the digital representation of an ancient treatise on distillation hosted at the Gunnerus Library of Trondheim, The game is part of a larger project called MUBIL1 aimed at disseminating the knowledge of the Librarys collections of ancient books and manuscripts.

ADITHO – A Serious Game for Training and Evaluating Medical Ethics Skills

This paper presents “A Day In The HOspital”, a Digital Serious Game aiming at providing a technological tool for both evaluating and training ethical skills of medical staff personnel. During the game, the player interprets the role of a physician who has to perform a decision-making process that involves his ethical and medical skills. Usability and sense of Presence have been assessed through a specific post-game Likert-questionnaire.

Perception of Basic Emotions from Facial Expressions of Dynamic Virtual Avatars

Virtual Reality experiences featuring realistic Virtual Humans with convincing facial expressions are a useful tool to improve social skill in humans. For this reason several investigations have been carried out on the recognition of virtual avatar emotions, based on dynamic and static facial cues originated by basic emotions developed by Ekman. Dynamism and realism of facial expressions are both important aspects of the process of face-to-face interaction in everyday life. In this paper we present the results of a research aiming at investigating the impact of the combination of dynamic facial expressions corresponding to particular emotions with a high level of realism of virtual faces. A study where we have measured the level of intensity in the correspondence between facial expressions of virtual avatars and emotional stimuli perceived by an observer was carried out on two groups of participants with different expertise in Virtual Reality. Results show a high level of intensity in this correspondence in both groups through the evaluation of two variables: time response and the score assigned to each emotion. We suggest that the use of dynamic virtual avatars offers advantages for studying emotion recognition in a face in that they recreate a realistic stimuli in emotion research.

AMICA: Virtual Reality as a tool for learning and communicating the craftsmanship of engraving

We hereby present the progress of the work ongoing on AMICA, a project aiming at disseminating to the public at large the activities related to the craft of engraving and printmaking by means of an Immersive Virtual Reality (VR) system. The final platform will constitute not only a means for communicating and promoting such activities, but also an interactive learning tool to be used in vocational courses.

Safety Training Using Virtual Reality: A Comparative Approach

Virtual Reality is widely regarded as an extremely promising solution for industrial training purposes, as it allows to perform simulated hands-on activities in a controlled and safe environment. In this paper we present a Virtual Reality system aimed at providing a training solution for safety inside a generic power plant environment. The system includes several scenarios in order to offer a wide range of tasks and situations. We have tested the system with a sample of users in order to compare the effectiveness of traditional training against our system in terms of theoretical and practical learning. We carried on our study with questionnaires and observing the behaviour of all the users inside the Virtual Environment. We also studied the involvement of trainees and sense of presence generated by the system, as it is an important driver of user engagement and, consequently, impacts on motivation and training efficacy.

An Immersive VR Experience to Learn the Craft of Printmaking

This paper presents the AMICA VR system, aiming at exploiting immersive visualization paradigms enabling visitors to be physically and emotionally involved in a virtual experience conceived for the dissemination of the activities related to craftsmanship of printmaking. The developed platform aims at spreading a better knowledge about printmaking by appropriately using Interactive Digital Storytelling and Immersive Virtual Environments, exploiting their features in terms of presence, immersion, interaction and multi-modality.

LawVille: A Collaborative Serious Game for Citizenship Education

This paper presents LawVille, a Web-Based Collaborative 3D Serious Game aimed at teaching citizenship and the Italian Constitution to secondary school students, by making them the protagonists of a fantasy story meant to solicit their direct involvement in a series of political questions.

Automatic creation of bas-relieves from single images

When we think to bas-relieves it is natural to compare them with sculptures, because they share some common properties such as techniques, materials and shapes. However, from a different perspective, bas-relieves have even deeper connections with other bi-dimensional forms of art, such as the frescoes; both have been used to decorate walls surfaces, although bas-reliefs enabled different perspective of interpretation. Bas-relieves, in fact, extend themselves in the three-dimensional space and are therefore able to provide more information compared to an image representing the same scene; moreover, and not less interestingly, they are also enjoyable by users with special needs, such as blind people, that are able to explore their surfaces by means of their sense of touch. For this reason, many attempts have been made in the past to realize bas-relieves representing transpositions of bi-dimensional artworks such as images in order to improve their accessibility. Commonly these transpositions are manually made since manual procedures allow to retain the full control of the final result. The introduction of ICT tools such as 3D modeling and printing has allowed to simplify this process which however still results long and time-consuming, often aimed to one single specific case. In this paper we present an automatic system to enable a fast and massive production of 2.5D models, suitable to be transformed into simplified bas-relieves, starting from a single image, and providing an interactive editor in order to refine the results of the automatic reconstruction, designed for users having no special technical skills. The resulting digital models can be (optionally) refined with 3D modeling tools and directly used in Virtual Reality applications, for instance for educational purposes, or physically reconstructed as actual bas-reliefs to enable access to blind people. The paper details the methodology, the algorithm and presents the results obtained.