The Presentation of Self and Identity Construction in Virtual World: A Case Study of Avakin Life

Identity in the virtual world has become a point of interest for researchers. The virtual world has become a place where people go to interact and in turn create an identity for themselves. This study sets out to investigate identity construction in a 3D Virtual world game using Avakin Life as a case study. Going with Goffman’s theory of self-presentation, this study aims to understand why identities are created in the virtual world and how this identity is created. The process to achieving this is carried out through a review of previous literature on virtual world identity construction and an ethnographic research carried out in Avakin Life using observation and semi-structured interviews as a method for data collection. The data is analysed thematically, and the findings show that participants use the virtual world to create an extension of themselves while they achieve this creation by duplicating a piece of themselves through the use of their Avatars. This study therefore helps to add to the existing knowledge on identity and identity construction in the virtual world.

Design and Evaluation of Gamification Experiences in Computer Science Studies

This paper presents two gamification experiences developed in the Computer Science (CS) degree at the University of Barcelona. Usually, the CS degree suffers from low class attendance, which impacts the participation of students in in-class programming activities. Additionally, this degree includes a basic course related to human computer interaction that, despite of being valuable for the formation of students, they feel as boring and useless, far from their - heavily computer focused - interests. Then we decided to gamify a basic course of programming skills and the mentioned HCI course. We decided to use two different formats, online and physical. First, one experience was performed in “Human Factors in Computing” course of third year of studies, with 70 enrolled students. First, students attended to a 3D online theoretical class related to emotional design in “The education district” (TED) platform, which is a 3D Virtual World (VW) for educational purposes, developed by Virtway corporation. Afterwards, they participated in the ‘Game of thrones’ gamified activity where they evaluated the usability of TED. Second, we designed ‘physical’ gamified classes to increase attendance to Data Structures course, and in consequence, augment the number of programming exercises that students perform and the assistance they receive from the teacher. During the gamified sessions, the 120 enrolled students enhanced their skills in solving programming problems. The experience consisted of three kinds of challenges (with easy, medium, and hard difficulty level) solved in large, medium, and low-sized groups of students, respectively. The results of both experiences were satisfactory as evidenced by the percentage of students (>=66,7%) that rated the activities between 6 and 10 (in a 0 to 10 scale).

Assessment of Structure from Motion for reconnaissance augmentation and bandwidth usage reduction

Modern militaries rely upon remote image sensors for real-time intelligence. A typical remote system consists of an unmanned aerial vehicle, or UAV, with an attached camera. A video stream is sent from the UAV, through a bandwidth-constrained satellite connection, to an intelligence processing unit. In this research, an upgrade to this remote-video-stream method of collection is proposed. A set of synthetic images of a scene captured by an UAV in a virtual environment is sent to a pipeline of computer vision algorithms, collectively known as Structure from Motion. The output of Structure from Motion, a three-dimensional (3D) model, is then assessed in a 3D virtual world as a possible replacement for the images from which it was created. This study shows Structure from Motion results from a modifiable spiral flight path and compares the geoaccuracy of each result. A flattening of height is observed, and an automated compensation for this flattening is proposed and performed. Each reconstruction is also compressed, and the size of the compression is compared with the compressed size of the images from which it was created. A reduction of 49–60% of required space, or bandwidth, is shown. A corresponding video demonstrating this technique is available online.

Instructional Design Applied to TCN5 Virtual World

This chapter presents the development and implementation of an instructional design (ID) for computer networks learning within a three-dimensional (3D) virtual world (VW) that considers characteristics of cognitive style and level of expertise of the student, titled TCN5. For this purpose, a hybrid model of ID was created based on ADDIE and Dick and Carey models. To facilitate the inclusion and management of didactic materials, an educational resources manager called GRECx was developed, which was allocated to the VW through web pages inserted in 3D media objects. The approach was submitted to the evaluation of a sample of students, who pointed out that it allows greater use of didactic materials within the immersive environment, and that GRECx can actually help teachers in the inclusion of resources, avoiding the need to deal with VW settings.

Creating Contexts for Collaborative Learning in a 3D Virtual World for Distance Education

The purpose of this chapter is to explore the contexts that teachers can create to promote collaborative learning in 3D virtual learning environments. The authors report on the findings of a case study using the 3D virtual world Second Life in a preservice teacher distance education program. Two types of contexts are identified: social interaction (social context) and instructor's scaffolding (pedagogical context). The anonymity represented by avatars in the 3D environment allowed learners to engage in social interaction and practice collaboration skills. Scaffolding involved several stages: scaffold the students' learning of the new technology, plan the course structure, implement the procedures during the lesson, and facilitate transitions between activities. The study also identifies the potential for a third context (emotional context), as the participants—both the instructor and the students—report a need to express emotions in many situations, but the environment does not seamlessly support this mode of communication.