Looking at human communication from the perspective of semiotics extends our view beyond verbal language to consider other sign systems and meaning-making resources. Those include gestures, body language, images, and sounds. From this perspective, the communicative process expands from individual mental processes of verbalizing to include features…

Although scholars emphasised the essence of feedback delivered on virtual reality-based tasks, it remains unclear whether the acquisition of students' oral presentation skills can be enhanced by the timing of feedback. An exploratory study, recently conducted in a Dutch university, explores the potential differential impact of immediate versus…

A challenge for the virtual reality (VR) industry is facing is that VR is not immersive enough to make people feel a genuine sense of presence: the low frame rate leads to dizziness and the lack of human body visualization limits the human-computer interaction. In this dissertation, I present our research on enhancing visual and gestural fidelity…

Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are characterized by deficits in social communication, partly attributed to the inability to pick up cues from social partners using joint attention (JA) skill. These deficits have cascading adverse effects on language acquisition and the development of cognitive skills. Therapist-mediated JA…

Interactive training environments typically include feedback mechanisms designed to help trainees improve their performance through either guided or self-reflection. In this context, trainees are candidate teachers who need to hone their social skills for their future classroom. We chose an interactive virtual training system as the basic research…

This paper investigates the differences between Immersive Virtual Reality (IVR) and the webcam (WBC) in the context of a Spanish distance-learning course. Two specific objectives were set: (1) to determine the existence of a relationship of dependence between the device used and the oral interaction, and (2) to analyse the existence of a…

Research from brain science and the learning sciences support the notion that human cognition is grounded in our sensorimotor engagement with the physical world and that processes of learning can be shaped by our movements and actions. Increasing recognition that effective educational interventions can be seeded with embodied actions is paralleled…

Multimodality, the study of the interaction of language with other semiotic resources such as images and sound resources, has significant implications for computer assisted language learning (CALL) with regards to understanding the impact of digital environments on language teaching and learning. In this paper, we explore recent manifestations of…

In this paper we examine the transferability of the Jigsaw and Fishbowl collaborative learning techniques to the Second Life platform. Our aim is to assess the applicability of Second Life for collaborative learning by developing virtual tools and metaphors and exploiting the representational richness of this novel medium. In order to enhance the…