Mark Chavez

Design Perspectives for Learning in Virtual Worlds

This chapter describes a program of research that is exploring pedagogical, technological, and aesthetic dimensions for designing virtual worlds for learning. The design and research work involving Virtual Singapura is discussed, which is a virtual world for learning science inquiry skills. The chapter first discusses issues in the literature related to learning content-specific knowledge in immersive virtual worlds and game environments, and pedagogical design approaches for learning in virtual worlds. Next, the design of Virtual Singapura is described in terms of its scenario for science inquiry learning, graphic design, behaviors of the intelligent agents representing nineteenth-century characters, and the associated guided inquiry curriculum materials and research materials. The research findings from two studies involving Virtual Singapura are reported. The chapter concludes with consideration of future research that will explore learning with different pedagogical trajectories for providing structured versus unstructured virtual learning experiences as well as activities “outside” of the virtual worlds that might consolidate or enhance understandings students construct “inside” such environments.

Research into Learning in an Intelligent Agent Augmented Multi-user Virtual Environment

This paper describes ongoing learning and intelligent agent research involving a new class of educational Interactive and Digital Media (IDM) that integrates computational intelligent agents with the functionality and affordances of 3D Multi-User Virtual Environment (MUVE). This research builds upon a proof-of-concept VIRTUAL SINGAPURA immersive learning environment project. Ongoing technical development work and planned learning research are described.

A gesture-based interface and active cinema

Visual design affects the viewer with various meanings depending upon how it is presented. Our research optimizes visual design in a short animated movie format whose plot is a fixed linear narrative. Designed and functioning in a simulation environment we manipulate the visual design of this short movie according to feedback detected from the viewer. Our goal is to explore the film-makers ability to refine and optimize a movie experience in a real-time environment working toward a system that dynamically optimizes the visual and auditory impact of a narrative. In this paper, we describe a prototype system that explores and demonstrates these ideas.

An emotion aware agent platform for interactive storytelling and gaming

As an emerging medium and industry, computer games received a lot of attention from scholars across a variety of disciplines. The realistic 3D graphics, intelligent non-player characters (NPC) and fascinating game play have made a great impact on user experience in the entertainment domain, e-Learning and other gaming related applications. In this paper, we investigate the game from another perspective - how the game can be affected by the players real-time experience, such as emotion and gesture. A generic goal oriented software agent platform is proposed to automatically refine the animation, the NPCs personality and emotions, and the game story by learning from the players realtime feedback from the emotion analyzing and gesture tracking modules. Fuzzy cognitive maps (FCMs) and data mining techniques are used to infer the mutual influences between the players real world experience and the contents of the game. The adaptation of game to the players real-time reactions will bring dynamism into the players game experience. The proposed agent platform has been integrated with several commercial game engines including Unreal Engine 3, and Torque, etc.

Voyage to the age of the dinosaurs project, an experiential learning situation with undergraduates, graduates and visiting professionals

Experiential learning is a popular form of instruction within higher education. [Kolb and Fry 1975] The purpose of this paper is to detail how the experiential model can be blended within an open ended and ever evolving project management environment. The experiential model however is not only extended to facilitate the learning of undergraduate students but also to extend and challenge the preconceptions of visiting graduates and professionals, throughout the course of the projects development. [Chen 2008] This paper will discuss the process of how this blending is applied to the research and development of a 3d interactive game. We will present the methodology used for collaboration primarily from the perspective of the School of Art, Design and Media art assets creation and design team, reference to the other collaborating partners objectives and methodologies will also be discussed briefly but are not the main focus of this paper.

Artificial Intelligence and Dynamic Design: Adaptive Real Time 3D Characters

Creating design that relates to the dynamic nature of a conversation is what this project explores. As a focus of intent the exploration pursues the interaction that people have with reactive visually dynamic Web based agents. This is in an attempt to expand on the concept on human computer interfaces by creating design specific, emotive and responsive. The current focus is on a single real-time 3D character with the design concept encompassing elements of conversational artificial intelligence

An Active Cinema Experience: A Study on User Expectation and Perceived Gratifications of a Real-time Animated Film System

Active Cinema is a brand-new cinematic experience in which the audiences emotion will be detected and the style of the scenes in the film will change in order to bring the audiences emotion to the state desirable by the film maker. This paper reports on a user study to understand the expectation and motivation of potential audience of the proposed active cinema, as well as to investigate the various aspects of gratification. The factors that may cause majority of data dispersion in our sample, and the overall users experience and expectations of interaction modes are also discussed.

Cinematics and Narratives: An Exploitation of Real-Time Animation

The research goal of project Cinematics and Narratives is to significantly explore approaches to the development of contemporary animation. CaN is comprised of three integrated objectives, the first is focused on developing and exploiting real-time animation and content within the context of a visual and narrative design based repository of primitives, the second explores the dynamic of context, exposition and expression, mixing our design primitives into a new dynamic form, and the third goal is to interfaces this system with an audience in such a way as to enable the system to learn from viewer reaction, where the system automatically refines the design based on the emotive input of the viewer.

Cinematics and Narratives: Development of a Prototype System

Cinematics and Narratives (CaN) researchs goal is to significantly explore approaches to the development of contemporary animation. CaN is comprised of three integrated objectives; the first is focused on developing and exploiting real-time animation and content within the context of a visual and narrative design based repository of primitives; the second explores the dynamic of context, exposition and expression, mixing our design primitives into a new dynamic form; and the third interfaces this system with an audience in such a way as to enable the system to learn from viewer interaction, where the system automatically and further refines the design based on the emotive input of the viewer. Furthermore, this project is focused on integrating computational intelligent agents designed as character archetypes within a dynamically changeable world created to adapt along a possibility of multiple narratives. In this paper we will discuss the processes taken to implement our cinematic engine and associated visual content; its significance to automated storytelling and design focused narrative creation.

Social Interaction with a Conversational Agent: An Exploratory Study

Conversational agents that display many human qualities have become a valuable method business uses to communicate with online users to supply services or products, to help in online order process or to search the Web. The gaming industry and education may benefit from this type of interface. In this type of chats, users could have different alternatives: text display, photo of a real person, or a cartoon drawing and others. This is an exploratory study that reviews five randomly chosen conversations that an animated chatbot has with Web users. The character simulates human gestures, but they are stylized to reproduce animation standards. The goal of this exploratory study is to provide feedback that will help designers to improve the functionality of the conversational agent, identify user’s needs, define future research, and learn from previous errors. The methodology used was qualitative content analysis