James Braman

Multi-User Virtual Environments for the Classroom: Practical Approaches to Teaching in Virtual Worlds

This project is a proposal for a case study that aims to describe and understand communicative and pedagogical processes involved in Second Life (SLTM) in a context of second language learning, by modelling in-world lessons of Portuguese as a second language for ERASMUS students arriving in Portugal. The purpose is to provide examples of situated elearning driven activities and perceive how an immersive context stimulates learning by involving students in a virtual reality situation, where real life language context situations are provoked and where ‘not possible in real life’ learning routines happen. This will allow experiencing the advantages of this platform compared to physical life teaching and learning contexts, through the inherent characteristics of this medium, such as the synchronous and simultaneous use of voice and text.

Teaching through Multi-User Virtual Environments: Applying Dynamic Elements to the Modern Classroom

Giovanni Vincenti received his Doctorate of Science in Applied Information Technology from Towson University in 2007 after an academic career that focused on Bioinformatics through a B.A. in Biology and an M.S. in Computer Science. He is in charge of Research and Development at Gruppo Vincenti, a small but dynamic company with interests across several fields. His main areas of research include Fuzzy Mediation, Technology-Based Education and Emotionally-Aware Agency. He is also a Lecturer with the Department of Computer and Information Sciences at Towson University. He published his findings at several regional, national and international conferences. His interest in education and technology-based instruction comes from years of direct interaction with students in the classroom and empirical experiences that formed him as a teacher. Market: This premier publication is essential for all academic and research library reference collections. It is a crucial tool for academicians, researchers, and practitioners and is ideal for classroom use. Giovanni Vincenti (Towson University, USA) and James Braman (Towson University, USA)

Handbook of Research on Computational Arts and Creative Informatics

As technology becomes further meshed into our culture and everyday lives, new mediums and outlets for creative expression and innovation are necessary. The Handbook of Research on Computational Arts and Creative Informatics covers a comprehensive range of topics regarding the interaction of the sciences and the arts. Exploring new uses of technology and investigating creative insights into concepts of art and expression, this cutting-edge Handbook of Research offers a valuable resource to academicians, researchers, and field practitioners.

Letter to the Reader

We would like to start our service to you, our readers, by expressing our most sincere appreciation for your curiosity about this initiative. This project has finally taken shape after years of planning and countless communications among a significant number of people. In true modern fashion, even though we have been working together for years, we have no idea what most of those within our extended team look like. This fantastic world of technology once again enables us to produce significant works without the need of direct or even synchronous interaction. It is this very aspect of today’s global infrastructure that plays the most central role into this project: the ability of interacting socially through electronic media, focussing on research and practice applied to the modern classroom. Our interest in e-education stems from the pure curiosity of ‘how can we improve our teaching’ once we became faculty members, with a significant load of classes to manage every semester. Our initial studies were concentrating mainly in agent-based simulations and artificial intelligence, interests that are still deeply rooted within us and that we carry on exploring. It is the classroom aspect of our jobs that has led us to exploring new and more efficient ways to utilize technology in teaching. Whether we are carrying out office hours in multi-user virtual environments, letting the students review programming concepts until the very last minute before the exam through some online demonstration, or thinking about the next project, we are researchers and practitioners just like you. The pervasiveness of information systems keeps breaking its own records, as we get to a degree of connectivity that is continuously increasing. Although its presence is not uniform through the entire globe, the possibilities that this intercontinental infrastructure offers appear nearly endless. It is in the intersection where we find the niche of e-learning and e-education that attracts us the most. As teaching is one of the most ancient practices, it has witnessed innovation first-hand. Without education we couldn’t transmit our knowledge and discoveries to others; this practice has transferred innovation from one person to the next, effectively taking a predominant role in the history of humanity. For this very reason it is only fair that education should not just teach about modern infrastructures, but it should also get a well-deserved makeover through distance learning and teaching practices. The idea of e-education is one that goes well beyond what typical readers generally perceive. When we describe our work and research to our friends and family, they often assimilate the greater field of e-education to formal schools. This idea breaks free of the traditional scholastic paradigm and reaches people who are using the Internet to learn new notions, companies who are training new employees embarking on new and exciting careers, or children who cannot utilize the traditional instructional tools in the manner most people do. E-education affects not only learners, but also society, economics, psychology, and a countless array of other aspects of every-day life. It breaks barriers and levels of users of any age, race, or credo. The ICST Transactions on e-Education and e-Learning aim at witnessing and reporting on the progress that this field is bound to walk from today’s explosive potential to tomorrow’s affective action. Just like any proud parent seeing their baby for the first time, we have very high hopes and dreams for this publication. We would like to share some of those with you. First of all, the multidisciplinary nature of e-education appeals to a greater audience. Given the interest that e-education has generated in the last few years, we are trying not to limit our audience to experts in the field of education or computing, but to a much larger audience. Our articles aim at conveying sometimes difficult concepts in a practical and replicable manner. The second aim of this publication is not to lose the true focus of any information technology infrastructure: the person. We are not working to advance the state of the art for Received on 14 June 2011

Teaching introductory programming through reusable learning objects: a pilot study

This paper describes a pilot study that examines the perceived effectiveness and usability of a dynamic reusable learning object that enriches lecture material in an introductory programming course. In particular, we focus on the topic of looping by providing students an interactive tool that lets them simulate and review the execution of code. The results suggest that students in CS0 courses may utilize this tool for learning about looping, while CS1 students are more likely to use it for reviewing concepts that they learned in class. The findings of this pilot study have enabled us to focus on which aspects to improve for the next set of reusable learning objects.

Learning Computer Science Fundamentals through Virtual Environments

Utilizing the inherent visual qualities of immersive virtual environments can be advantageous for educating students on particular topics. Basic fundamentals in Computer Science curriculums often can be difficult for students to grasp due to high levels of abstraction and various theoretical frameworks used to describe important structures. Virtual worlds such as Second Life® provide a unique medium for education, allowing for the visualization of concepts coupled with the interaction potential that this environment allows. Briefly discussing traditional methods for teaching fundamental topics in several courses, we discuss how Second Life can be integrated into classroom instruction for the benefit of student understanding of complex materials. We outline some of our preliminary observations and student feedback as we begin to use virtual environments in new innovative ways.

Teaching about the impacts of social networks: an end of life perspective

As the use of various social networking technologies increase, so does the importance of understanding the long term implications for users in the context of end of life. Users post many digital artifacts online for many reasons, such as for storage, construction of their digital identity, communication, etc. Often these posts and uploads inadvertently build the digital legacy of the user. In this paper, we discuss the impacts of social networking and the construction of an online identity from an end of life perspective. The authors discuss the importance of education as an essential element for preparation and understanding of this topic. A survey of college social network users is also reported along with a discussion on their feedback.

Investigating Cyber Law and Cyber Ethics: Issues, Impacts and Practices

Ethical values in computing are essential for understanding and maintaining the relationship between computing professionals and researchers and the users of their applications and programs. While concerns about cyber ethics and cyber law are constantly changing as technology changes, the intersections of cyber ethics and cyber law are still underexplored.Investigating Cyber Law and Cyber Ethics: Issues, Impacts and Practices discusses the impact of cyber ethics and cyber law on information technologies and society. Featuring current research, theoretical frameworks, and case studies, the book will highlight the ethical and legal practices used in computing technologies, increase the effectiveness of computing students and professionals in applying ethical values and legal statues, and provide insight on ethical and legal discussions of real-world applications.

Gaining insight into the application of second life in a computing course: students' perspectives

As educational delivery methods have changed over the years, often through enhancement by technology, new and innovative strategies have been introduced to enhance learning. Virtual worlds such as Second Life are being used as an educational tool in many domains and for a variety of purposes. To gain a further understanding of the use of virtual worlds in the classroom from a students perspective, the authors discuss the feedback gained from students about their participation utilizing Second Life in a computer course. Pre and post surveys were distributed to the class to get students feedback. The responses from these surveys are reported in this paper.

Hybrid Emotionally Aware Mediated Agent Architecture for Human-Assistive Technologies.

Emotionally aware agents used to support human-computer interactions form the basis for our hybrid mediated agent architecture. This paper expands on our framework for an emotionally aware interface architecture that couples with the human user where data is mediated between agent processes for adaptive controlled assistive technologies. We present a hybrid emotionally aware mediated agent architecture that couples human and artificial operators. Agent behaviors in the context of emotion are derived from interactions from human users and interactions with its environment. 1