Virtual Worlds - Science topic

In scientific theories, a virtual is a concept or entity that is postulated to exist but cannot be directly observed or measured. Virtuals can be useful in scientific explanations because they help to connect different phenomena or concepts. For example, in quantum mechanics, virtual particles are postulated to explain the behavior of observed particles in certain situations.

The criteria for differentiating virtuals from real entities can vary depending on the scientific theory or field. However, some general criteria that are often used to differentiate virtuals from real entities include:

1. Observability: Real entities are typically directly observable or measurable, while virtual entities are not. For example, we can directly observe and measure the mass and velocity of a real particle, but we cannot observe or measure the mass or velocity of a virtual particle.

2. Causality: Real entities are typically the cause or effect of other observable phenomena, while virtual entities are not. For example, a real particle can cause or be affected by other particles, but a virtual particle cannot.

3. Predictability: Real entities can be predicted or explained by scientific theories based on empirical evidence, while virtual entities are often postulated to explain gaps in our understanding or to make theoretical predictions.

4. Consistency: Real entities are typically consistent with other scientific theories and observations, while virtual entities may seem inconsistent or contradictory if they cannot be reconciled with other scientific explanations.

Raphael Neelamkavil

The scope of investigation of transboundary learning cultures and schooling (TLCS) research in education and social science is broad and multi-disciplinary. It involves transcultural, transdisciplinary, transnational, and trans-paradigmatic analysis of learning cultures and schooling in the Asia-Pacific region. This research seeks to analyze the phenomenon of transboundary space in education, which shapes new research directions in cultural studies, educational and social research, and policy implications.

The TLCS research aims to investigate and understand the new possible research agendas and implications of decentering the lens of cross-cultural, cross-national, cross-regional, and cross-theoretical analysis. It also seeks to examine the key concepts of ‘transboundary’ in learning cultures and schooling, as well as the ontological status of TLCS research in education.

The TLCS research is concerned with making cross-paradigm and cross-methodology comparisons to further develop research paradigms, methodology, and methods. It is also interested in exploring the underlying logic and axiological frameworks of traditional research paradigms and methodology.

The TLCS research is focused on academic success and aims to investigate the scope of transcultural, transdisciplinary, transnational, and trans-paradigmatic education studies. It also seeks to explore how postmodernist researchers map TLCS with other modernist research paradigms, and how comparativists locate the ‘lens’ of comparative and international education (CIE) in TLCS research for its further policy and research development.

In essence, the scope of investigation of TLCS research in education and social science is to understand the transboundary nature of learning cultures and schooling in the Asia-Pacific region and to provide a comprehensive and critical evaluation of the existing research on this topic.

Like this phrase about metaverse in Google; What's certain is that the metaverse will be a new paradigm where our digital and online lives converge.

Good morning

I will do

Best regards

Dear Christophe Bruchansky, this a very interesting discussion topic. I have experienced myself the power of the avatar in VR for personal goal-setting and the transformation of the self in the physical world. In the context of the Metaverse, I suggest the remarkable experiences and exciting research findings around identity in 3d multiuser virtual worlds and VR environments. Here are some indicative works for everyone's consideration.

Meadows, M. S. (2007). I, Avatar: The Culture and Consequences of Having a Second Life. Pearson Education.

Mystakidis, S. (2022). Metaverse. Encyclopedia, 2(1), 486–497. https://doi.org/10.3390/encyclopedia2010031

Yee, N., Bailenson, J. N., & Ducheneaut, N. (2009). The Proteus Effect: Implications of Transformed Digital Self-Representation on Online and Offline Behavior. Communication Research, 36(2), 285–312. https://doi.org/10.1177/0093650208330254

probably yes

A good job there

I’ll share the top 10 free virtual field trips for gifted children:

You could have a look at Huang et al. (2019) for insights. Here is the full citation.

Huang, Y.-C., Backman, S. J., Backman, K. F., McGuire, F. A. & Moore, D. (2019). An investigation of motivation and experience in virtual learning environments: A self-determination theory. Education and Information Technologies, 24(1), 591–611. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10639-018-9784-5

Good luck,

Virtuality reflects reality.

I can see no transformation of moral values in the virtual world, which are not connected to the real world. The difference between a real candle and the image of a virtual candle in a mirror is obvious: only the real candle burns and can burn you.

the present generation students will get tremendous mental pressure in future if teachers do not provide them with the supplementary skills they lack. our task is more demanding nowadays. there is no other option in the era of technology. they are exposed to virtual world. we should help them to cope with the real issues of the real world.

unfortunately we live in a very unstable economic moment for researchers, so even though being multitasking is not recommended, we have to do it to maintain our position

this link is useful

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_economy

regards

It will be interesting! Virtual platforms are taking charge of the traditional face to face attendance of social gatherings and academic forums. Recently, via virtual platform, I presented my paper at a conference. Indeed, it saves time and other resources like travelling costs.

While maybe beyond the scope of the original question ill would like to explore the idea of "Mixed Reality" further. I also agree with what you have identified as the main two definitions of "Mixed reality, both the continium concept as one, and increased level of user interaction with the real world over AR the another.

One question about how your current definition of "Mixed Reality" is what do you define as the cross over from AR to MR . For example is it just limited to physical interaction with real world? 

For example, I recently saw a panel discussion about AR and the social impact when the device starts to understands it surrounds such as identifying point of interest to the users like historical information about a site, etc, currently this is commonly refered to as AR

This made me think of this situation, now let say you have glasses on and it can identify potential hazards in the environment. For example, hazards that a fire fighter cant see due to smoke so the glasses provides a 3D virtual representation of its scanning environment as an overlay of the smoke, what term do we use now AR/VR or MR? I know this is a blue sky example but it begs the question of where the line is drawn , personally I don't have a firm opinion but my initial instict says to categorise as MR

Dear Harshvardhan and Nirmala.

Thank you so very much for your suggested resources with links and useful recomendations! Will come much in handy.

Thank you!

Kindest regards,

Carlos

Dear Felipe

Here some of my articles

Pellas, N. (2014). Exploring interrelationships among high school students’ engagement factors in introductory programming courses via a 3D multi-user serious game created in Open Sim.  Journal of Universal Computer Science (J.UCS). Special Issue: Immersive Education: What does the future hold?, 20(12), 1608-1628.

Pellas, N. (2015). An exploration of interrelationships among presence indicators of a community of inquiry in a 3D game-like environment for high school programming courses. Interactive Learning Environments (to appear).

Pellas, N. & Peroutseas, E. (2015). Leveraging Scratch4SL and Second Life to motivate high school students’ participation in introductory programming courses: Findings from a case study. The New Review of Hypermedia and Multimedia Journal (to appear).

Pellas, N. & Peroutseas, E. (2016). Gaming in Second Life via Scratch4SL: Engaging high school students in programming courses.  Journal of Educational Computing Research, 54(1), 108-143.

 Regards

NP

Dear Felipe, please see the embedded search from Google Scholar. Good luck.

I'm very interested to see how virtual reality could be used as an environment to simulate dangerous situations like an accident scene or a civil construction environment. With modern technologies users' presence and agency can be enhanced drammatically. Also augmented reality can play an important role, if you want to recreate a dangerous situation by inducing the perceptional and cognitive reaction of students by projecting them into an immersive learning environment. 

Dear Jacquelyn,

In Brazil, many researches are being developed using Virtual Worlds for presencial or online education. Several topics in the area of chemestry, physics and informatics are being studied to develop pratical activities in the Virtual Worlds, that are difficult of being developed in real world

Great ! all the beat !!

Hi, there are IMU sensors in V-Rep software, but I have not find the compass sensor inside yet, Besides, there is also a forum for V-Rep. You can browse that forum or ask a question there. 

By mid 2015 there will be a special flights based data gathering for virtual reality examination / simulation around bridge design.

I think sometimes we go back to the more conventional forms (tree metaphor, meshing gears etc.) for the sake of convenience and simplicity. The success of a visual or textual metaphor is also dependent on cultural variables, which may considerable differ in their interpretation of symbols when that symbol bears a very imaginative and interesting correlation with the actual object or feature. This might work well for a niche audience or for someone who values creative conceptualizations and is willing to break free from existing conditioned responses. 

It always helps to keep an open mind and an observant eye. This visual metaphor, for example, (nothing to do with computers/ devices) is probably used for global warming campaigns, but a closer look also shows a side face turning away from us (on the right). It is fairly interesting and novel, and fairly universal too, through our common knowledge of desserts and ice creams.

I've been using virtual worlds for education since 2006. This includes Second Life, but also Activeworlds, Open Croquet/Cobalt, serious game development with Unity3D and private OpenSimulator installations. I used them for higher education, for primary education and highschools, for on-the-job training of business managers and aircraft mechanics, and for large-scale corporate training providers. They provide unique opportunities for online learning taking advantage of both multiuser presence (as chatrooms) and spatial user arrangement, spatial context and immersion, etc. You can find many papers reporting this. I'm attaching two. One ("Can presence improve collaboration...") is an early effort to demonstrate how the concepts of Presence theory are intertwined with 3D virtual worlds as a new medium. For the more practice-oriented readers, the other one ("The attributes and advantages...") provides the rationale for using virtual worlds in professional training and how it enables trainees to be in contact with real scenarios, not just simulated ones. Finally, if you want a quick list of good practices for trainers using virtual worlds, VITA project's good practices handbook is a very nice resource: http://issuu.com/easpombas/docs/vita-101220-guide_of_good_practices_rev_final?e=0

The major hurdle is large scale deployment. A small group of enthusiast teachers can deploy and use virtual worlds successfully, but going beyond that to large scale deployment, with non-enthusiasts, requires more administrative support from computing systems and - alas - that is nowhere near readiness. I explain the challenges in a paper from 2013, which summarizes my experience ("Technology challenges...").

SLOODLE in my view tackles the problem from the wrong end. It mostly provides virtual world users with access to Moodle contents. That helps individual teachers and students. But if you want to deploy virtual worlds for an entire school, company, or region, you need to track events and provide support for all teachers, all trainers, all students. You'll want to manage virtual object repositories across courses and users. Some cumbersome solutions exist, but not straightforward ones.

In my 2009-2011 project for Portugal Telecom's Innovation arm (PTIn), my team tackled this and provided PTIn with a solution, which was deployed at a large telecom company, but not pursued as an active commercial product. Papers were not drafted then, but were now, and both the software architecture and the list of requirements that was developed throughout this large field effort should see the light of day soon.

Yes bejamin, i meant the same as you said computer generated images as objects and suay thanks for the link too as it provides a nice info.

Thank you Tom, the original idea is to develop regions which can be used as inputs for models in the field of climate change adaptation, e.g in the analysis of risks related to natural disasters. To the extent the simulations become more and more realistic (virtual worlds instead than usual GIS maps, graphs and tables) they could be used for interacting with stakeholders, to explore behaviours, prefrerences, etc.

Hi Sebastian,

Thank you for your answer! Indeed, I may try to expand my scope to inlcude smaller companies.

Currently though, my main limitation is effectively linking my research to the inductry's needs. Other researchers in academia seem to feel this 'gap'. For that I would need to know more about what companies actually do to monitor/analyse game dynamics and stats. I would probably be more successful if I could 'translate' what I am doing (ecology, conservations) into a language understood by the industry. My first strategy has been to conduct informational interviews, but I failed to get answers on this as well.

I will keep working on these points!

Absolutely yes. Virtual world is nothing but a practice ground. For doing anything you practice first. But there are no many things unavailable during practice. For example for a foot ball match you will not have a big crowd and ground. Those things you can simulate and practice in a virtual environment. Virtual training and learning is very important for mining, astronauts and where human has to explore unknown hazards. If you get trained and learned in such virtual environments, it will be easy to handle difficult situations.

If you were out in the field, you could practice a procedure virtually at the site before tackling it in the real world. I'm thinking about a procedure on a production animal or something of that nature. Or you could manoeuvre a model before tackling a task. Would that be useful?

Mentioned books are really good. I'd just add "3D User Interfaces: Theory and Practice", by D. A. Bowman. In my opinion, still the best manual for 3D interaction.

I am not completely sure, but maybe these two papers could help?

Fiorentino, M., Monno, G., Uva, A., & Bari, P. (2010). Tangible Interfaces for Augmented Engineering Data Management. ISBN: 978-953-7619-69-5, InTech, Available from: http://www.intechopen.com/books/augmented-reality/tangible-interfaces-for-augmented-engineering-data-management

Shin, H., & Dunston, P. (2008). Identification of application areas for Augmented Reality in industrial construction based on technology suitability. Automation in Construction, 17, 882–894.

Regards

I have been involved in this kind of work for many years and recently switched from SL to a new web-based technology. You can see the beta version of our world at: http://cyber.mpnodes.info This has many benefits, including much lower cost, and far lower learning curve. There are a couple deficits being voice availability is still month away and there is no equivalent to SL web on a prim browser.