Georgios Dafoulas

Effects of Virtual World Environments in Student Satisfaction: An Examination of the Role of Architecture in 3D Education

Universities and educational institutions are currently becoming more dependent on delivering courses within online virtual worlds, such as 3D Virtual Learning Environments (3D VLES). There is insufficient research on how environmental and architectural design elements of 3D virtual educational spaces and buildings inside these virtual worlds can affect the e-learning process of the students and their satisfaction and contentment. This study investigates students’ satisfaction from different architectural features used in 3D educational facilities by recording, from surveys, students’ degree of agreeability toward varied design characteristics in different learning spaces within 3D VLES. Defining best perceived design traits can improve 3D educational space design to augment a student’s overall e-learning experience, and lead to general design guidelines for future creation of 3D virtual educational facilities.

Global teams: futuristic models of collaborative work for today's software development industry.

This paper emphasises the importance of global teams in the field of software development. The paper presents an approach for setting up pilot studies simulating those key features that make global software development teams particularly attractive to exploit and challenging to manage. The underlying research is supported by a research project funded by the US National Science Foundation with the participation of universities from US, Turkey, Panama and the UK. The paper provides detailed guidelines for setting up simulations resembling globally dispersed software development teams and discusses preliminary data of two pilot studies with involving collaboration between teams residing in the US and the UK. Key concerns of this research are those factors affecting collaborative work when global teams are involved. Such factors include differences caused by distance, culture, time zones and technology.

The role of feedback in online learning communities

The Internet, with its capabilities for flexibility, networking and distributed nature, and technologies that foster interactivity provides a suitable medium for distance education delivery. This paper contributes in the relatively limited literature that deals with the evaluation of learning systems and more specifically computer-aided assessment (CAA). The work discussed in this paper follows on the successful findings of earlier experiments of online assessment concerned primarily with the provision of feedback to participating learners. The sample for the study was drawn from undergraduate students taking a module of methodologies and techniques for engineering and information systems at two different campuses of Middlesex University, London. These findings are compared to the ones of an earlier study previously published in ICALT2004 and TEDC2004.

The impact of 3D virtual environments on communication patterns

The proliferation of information technology over the past couple of decades have significantly affected the way technology enhanced learning evolved. The learning, teaching and assessment student experience has evolved from rather static, content focused, textbook based practices to dynamic, highly interactive and agile approaches. The computer supported cooperative learning techniques and groupware tools of the early 1990s provided the opportunity to enhance communication and collaboration in a learning context. The development of mainstream content management systems supported the creation and use of virtual learning environments in the late 1990s. The customization and personalization of the slearning experience was supported by innovative practices, especially in the field of learning objects in the early 2000s. Emphasis on e-assessment and the role of feedback through voice or video over the Internet Protocol as well as podcasts and the use of other innovative technologies was the next step. Currently the use of social learning networks and associated technologies provide the means for adding value on social networking platforms and investigating their role in future learning platforms. The project team focuses on how to enhance learning, teaching and assessment practices through the use of such technologies. For the past few years emphasis was given on enhancing traditional learning environments by exploiting the benefits of 3D virtual learning environments and more specifically the architectural, interaction and communication freedom provided by virtual worlds. This paper provides an overview of the journey taken from creating a 3D virtual learning environment using the Second Life platform to the development of the Distributed and Collaborative Technologies (DaCT) learning village. The paper discusses several pilot studies that took place over a period of four years, focusing on how learning activities are supported in virtual worlds. Our focus is on how architectural features affect interaction and communication patterns in certain learning settings. The paper explains the process followed for (i) setting up the 3D virtual learning environment, (ii) structuring a scenario, (iii) planning induction and training activities, (iv) conducting research in the form of task observation and collaborative evaluation of the environment, (v) performing certain learning and assessment tasks, (vi) evaluating the learning experience and (vii) monitoring and analyzing communication patterns. The scope of the paper is to share findings from extensive knowledge in conducting 3D virtual learning field studies and their evaluation. Emphasis is given on the interactive features of such approaches and the special requirements of engaging with these methods and associated techniques. Pilot studies discussed in the paper included scenarios involving more than 30 participants placed in four different physical locations interacting through the 3D virtual learning environment.

Investigating Student Satisfaction from Environmental and Architectural Design Elements of 3D Educational Facilities within 3D Virtual Worlds

Evolving online virtual worlds are intensely being utilised as 3D Virtual Learning Environments (3D VLEs) by hundreds of universities worldwide. However, there is inadequate academic research depicting satisfaction of users from the environmental design factors of 3D virtual buildings used within these virtual worlds. Specifically, there is no research evidence representing satisfaction of educational facilities’ users, namely students and faculty, from the architectural design characteristics of their 3D virtual university campuses. This research focuses explicitly on capturing the contentment levels of students towards specified variations of certain architectural design elements of the 3D virtual learning spaces, where educational sessions are conducted in 3D VLEs. This hence provides preliminary guidelines on how to enhance the design of these spaces to augment e-learning experiences of students within 3D VLEs; achieved by analysing survey results representing students’ opinions towards different architectural features of the learning spaces within different university 3D virtual campuses.

A framework of using online portfolio to provide learner and learning support in e-learning

This paper is concerned with issues rising of current practices in learner and learning support in e-learning. The underlying research attempts to address the needs and establish new ways of supporting online learners to cope with time and distance constraints affecting the distance education curriculum. The focus of the paper is on presenting a framework of using online portfolios for providing learner and learning support in e-learning. This framework is currently tested with 32 different modules over 5 undergraduate and postgraduate courses delivered through the Global Campus distance education programme. This work concludes with a summary of the benefits of applying online portfolio in education and in e-learning specifically.

Enriching a pedagogical model for the implementation of a virtual training environment

The progress of a project for the training of e-learning professionals in South East Asia is reported in this paper. A Web-based survey identified key areas for the professional development. The process of content design is explained as well as the enrichment of the pedagogical model. The Virtual Training Environment is underpinned by this model and the potential role of learning objects is consequently discussed.

Assistive technologies and environmental design concepts for blended learning and teaching for disabilities within 3D virtual worlds and learning environments

3D Virtual Learning Environments (3D VLEs) are increasingly becoming prominent supporters of blended learning for all kinds of students including adult learners with or without disabilities. Due to the evidenced effect of architectural design of physical learning spaces on students’ learning and current lack of design codes for creating 3D virtual buildings, this case study aims at evaluating the suitability of the architectural design elements of existing educational facilities and learning spaces within 3D VLEs specifically for delivering blended e-learning for adult students with disabilities. This comprises capturing student contentment and satisfaction levels from different design elements of the 3D virtual spaces in an attempt to issue recommendations for the development of 3D educational facilities and hence initiate a framework for architectural design of 3D virtual spaces to augment accessibility, appeal and engagement for enhancing the e-learning experience of under-graduate, post-graduate and independent-study adult learners with disabilities within these virtual worlds.

3D Assistive Technologies and Advantageous Themes for Collaboration and Blended Learning of Users with Disabilities

The significance of newly emergent 3D virtual worlds to different genres of users is currently a controversial subject in deliberation. Users range from education pursuers, business contenders, and social seekers to technology enhancers and many more who comprise both users with normal abilities in physical life and those with different disabilities. This study aims to derive and critically analyze, using grounded theory, advantageous and disadvantageous themes and their sub concepts of providing elearning through 3D Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs), like Second Life, to disabled users; hence providing evidence that 3DVLEs not only support traditional physical learning, but also offer e-learning opportunities unavailable through 2D VLEs (like moodle, blackboard), and offer learning opportunities unavailable through traditional physical education. Furthermore, to achieve full potential from the abovementioned derived concepts, architectural and accessibility design requirements of 3D educational facilities proposed by different categories of disabled students to accommodate for their needs, are demonstrated.

Enhancing computer mediated communication in virtual learning environments

The aim of this paper is to present a study for the communication patterns evident in computer mediated communication in e-learning online communities. For the first time in this paper a list of factors affecting communication patterns within online communities is presented. A key concern of the study is twofold: first to define the correlation between patterns of communication and the affecting factors and second to suggesting criteria for designing successful learning activities. This study is concerned with an initial analysis of student interaction in three residential modules (approximately 1500 posts) that is currently followed by the analysis of threaded discussions of 32 online modules of a distance education programme.