Immersive virtual environments hold unexplored potential to scaffold and stimulate learning in multiple ways for the purpose of increasing potential learning gains. Yet, the number of implementations in educational settings remains very limited. One reason for limited implementation of immersive virtual environment applications may be a lack of…

In this article, the authors will first make the case that, though humans is rife with division, evidence suggests that in fact, they are all pretty much the same, and that therefore there are grounds for perceiving the pursuit of a collective identity as genuinely legitimate. They will then explore the many factors that have helped to…

Existing literature regarding social communication outcomes of interventions in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) depends upon human raters, with limited generalizability to real world settings. Technological innovation, particularly virtual reality (VR) and collaborative virtual environments (CVE), could offer a replicable, low cost measurement…

This article is based on a school experiment of three local makerspaces that connected and turned into a global makerspace online. The three municipal schools were from Australia, United Kingdom and Denmark and participated in "the Global Makerspace project," which was a part of the European Union project "Makerspaces in the early…

The world is becoming increasingly virtual. Since the invention of the World Wide Web, information and human interaction has been transferring to the web at a rapid rate. Education is one of the many institutions that is taking advantage of accessing large numbers of people globally through computers. While this can be a simpler task for…

The purpose of this paper is to present a review of research on Second Life (SL) as a learning environment within English as a foreign language (EFL) context, as research on its use within EFL learning is relatively new. The study is categorized into four main sections. Introduction section introduces the rationale of the paper and SL. Next…

Many studies that evaluate the introduction of technology in the classroom focus on student performance and student evaluations. This study focuses on instructor evaluation of the introduction of virtual microscopy into an undergraduate anatomy class. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with graduate teaching assistants (TA) and analyzed…

Organizing and implementing telecollaboration projects in foreign language curricula is not an easy endeavour (Belz & Thorne, 2006; Guth & Helm, 2010), as pedagogical, organizational and technical issues have to be addressed before cross-cultural interaction sessions can be carried out (O'Dowd & Ritter, 2006; O'Dowd, 2011). These issues make many…

This article explores the potential benefits of creating "virtual ecosystems" from real-world data. These ecosystems are intended to be realistic virtual representations of environments that may be costly or difficult to access in person. They can be constructed as 3D worlds rendered from stereo video data, augmented with scientific data, and then…

The "Immersed in Learning" project began in 2007 to evaluate the use of 3D virtual worlds as a teaching and learning tool in undergraduate programmes in digital media at the University of Wolverhampton, UK. A question that the research set out to explore was what were the benefits of integrating 3D immersive learning with face-to-face…

To understand world politics, one must appreciate the context in which international systems develop and operate. Pedagogy studies demonstrate that the more active students are in their learning, the more they learn. As such, using computer simulations can complement and enhance classroom instruction. CIVILIZATION is a computer simulation game…

Over the last decade, Alternate Reality Games (ARGs), a form of narrative often involving multiple media and gaming elements to tell a story that might be affected by participants' actions, have been used in the marketing and promotion of a number of entertainment related products such as films, computer games and music. This paper discusses the…

The purpose of this exploratory study was to identify and describe some of the dimensions of scientific collaborations using high throughput computing (HTC) through the lens of a virtual team performance framework. A secondary purpose was to assess the viability of using a virtual team performance framework to study scientific collaborations using…

Computers can help the range of ways learners build up their own perception. Students who collect data from the Internet can be self-directed and independent. They can select sources to study and the connections to follow. Relying on the bounds laid down by teachers, the students may be in full control of their subjects and their studies. Students…

Computer simulations are described in which pairs of simulated individuals in groups play a prisoner's dilemma game, with the choice to cooperate determined by one of three simple heuristics. Results reveal that the prevalence of cooperation depends on the heuristic used, value of the payoff, and the social comparison process. (SLD)