Collaborative Virtual Environments Research Papers (original) (raw)

As part of the National Center for Border Security and Immigration (NCBSI) led by the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP), researchers from the University of Washington, Wayne State University, and UTEP conducted a three-site study of border security operations and the role of command, control and communication (C3) systems in support of those operations. While inevitably bringing some positive capability to the environment, if C3 systems are not consciously aligned with desired practices and decision-making, the implications will not always be for the better. This is especially true of C3 systems in the border security environment because these systems are intimately intertwined with complex and critical workflow and decision-making processes, often in the context of complex and, at times, competing missions.

Studies of video-computing technology in media spaces to support design practice, 1985-1987, at Xerox Palo Alto Research Center.

This paper describes Manufaktur, a prototype of a concept and infrastructure that goes beyond the classical CVE systems toward a collaborative augmented reality environment, where users' documents and objects appear as live representations in a 3D workspace. Manufaktur supports collaborative, distributed work across platforms. It provides the possibility of display on the MS Windows and the SGI IRIX platforms with mono and stereographic displays ranging from a monitor built into a table to a Holobench. The emphasis is on representing the materials with which people are working, and the actions they are taking with them, and far less on the visual representation, e.g. through avatars, of the collaborating persons. It seeks to facilitate users' collective self-organisation of environments, spaces and traces that embody the trajectory of their work.

- by Monika Buscher
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- Augmented Reality, Collaborative Virtual Environments, Virtual Reality, CSCW
- by Alan Munro
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- Collaborative Virtual Environments

Online communities have been proactive in producing collaborative creative content such as music, games and other social interactions. Online collaboration has enabled contributors to peer produce and share masses of creative content. Examples range from information sharing such as Wikipedia to open source software and other specific art projects. Software vendors have recently introduced low cost 2D and 3D content authoring tools allowing user communities to generate and share creative content. Emerging networking programming interfaces available inside modern game engines allow contributors to implement multiplayer or multiuser interaction relatively easily. This paper presents a 3D art creation framework to be used over networked infrastructure in a multiuser environment. Contributors will be able to create 3D sculptures at runtime, share with other users in a common networked working environment and critique each other’s work. Experimental work also involved evaluating procedura...

Although extensive research has been carried out on virtual learning environments and the role of groups and communities in social networks, few studies exist which adequately cover the relationship between these two domains In this paper, the authors demonstrate the effectiveness of integrating these two environments by creating a novel prototype and conducting a preliminary pilot evaluation session. For the prototype system, a Facebook Group was utilised as a repository for learning content and the Open Wonderland platform was selected as a mixed reality intelligent environment for 3D virtual collaborative activities. Since tacit knowledge can be gained via collaborative group-based activities and discussions, a new Wonderland module was developed to integrate this platform with the Facebook group. Similarly, explicit knowledge can be learned directly via the prepared materials which are provided within the group repository. We hope to demonstrate that this approach can provide greater accessibility to the learning content since it can be accessed from both the 3D world and the 2D Facebook Group. In other words, this system can support both synchronous interaction as well as asynchronous data retrieval. Finally, the prototype system was evaluated by means of a two-hour task-based assessment and user-satisfaction questionnaire. We present the key findings from this pilot study (which were very encouraging), and propose further ideas for the future refinement of the concepts presented in this paper.

- by Victor Callaghan and +1
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- Human Computer Interaction, Social Networks, E-learning, Social Networking

This article examines the development and outcomes of a collaborative design studio involving two groups of landscape architecture students in Japan and the United States. Through both virtual (online) and real (face-to-face) interactions, participating students jointly developed urban design proposals for two respective local neighborhoods in Matsudo and Seattle. The challenges for the studio included communicating across cultural, geographic, and technological barriers, as well as more subtle differences in design culture and approach. These barriers and challenges present a stark contrast to the seamless space of flows that often characterize the globalized network of transactions and communication. In analyzing the studio outcomes and pedagogical lessons, the article explores the complementarities of online collaboration and cross-cultural learning. Specifically, it examines the mechanisms of cross-cultural learning in an online environment and the processes through which cross-cultural learning open the windows for a critical understanding of the socio-cultural processes of design in the digital and network age.

- by I. Kinoshita and +1
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- Community Engagement & Participation, Collaboration, Collaborative Virtual Environments, Distance Learning

Many advances in the information technology (IT) area have changed modern business practices. Such phenomenon has given a notion that human collaboration in supply chain management (SCM) has become more possible. In this third era of Internet technology, social media has been widely recognized as the most promising technology to socially connect people in virtual ways. Looking at these facts, this paper investigates the potential use of social media in SCM. This paper aims to explore the drivers of the use of social media for tightening human collaboration in the whole supply chain and to provide a framework of social media integration in SCM. Also, several rule of thumbs in implementing the integration are briefly described. This paper concludes that the integration of social media into SCM have required companies to understand the characteristics of SCM integration, the functional building blocks embedded in social media, and potential effects and impacts in the new environment. Any firm has to adapt social media into all business processes, meaning that strong attentions have to be addressed to the social media integration phases into supply chain as well as the integration phase of supply chain itself. Due to the fact that this topic still on its way to be a matured knowledge, this paper throws an initiation to understand the full potential of social media as well as the integration of social media to support human collaboration in SCM.

Back cover text: Real Social Science presents a new, hands-on approach to social inquiry. The theoretical and methodological ideas behind the book, inspired by Aristotelian phronesis, represent an original perspective within the social sciences, and this volume gives readers for the first time a set of studies exemplifying what applied phronesis looks like in practice. The reflexive analysis of values and power gives new meaning to the impact of research on policy and practice. Real Social Science is a major step forward in a novel and thriving field of research. This book will benefit scholars, researchers, and students who want to make a difference in practice, not just in the academy. Its message will make it essential reading for students and academics across the social sciences.

- by Bent Flyvbjerg and +1
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- Screenwriting, Critical Theory, Critical Theory, Critical Theory

The purpose of this study is to engage community members in the design and development processes of the Freire Project web site in order to assess their needs and preferences for collaboration tools in virtual communities. This study consisted of surveys taken by the participants of the Freire Project communities. The survey questionnaire investigated participants’ familiarity with activities and preferences for certain web tools in order to improve collaboration on the Freire Project website. Participants favored web tools with only marginal differences to increase the member collaboration in wikis, blogs, RSS, and folksonomy. Using digital technology and web tools encourages members to be active participants in the communities’ activities and creates new possibilities for the development of educational communities in online environments.

Virtual communities have become increasingly popular for the general public, using electronic mailing lists, newsgroups, WWeb-based forums, chat rooms, etc. However, it appears that online forums are not well integrated into the sphere of... more

- by Jonathan Bowen
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- Communication, Web 2.0, Informatics, Blogs

In this paper we report on the progress on an Open Source model server for collaboration between several stakeholders based on models of the Industry Foundation Classes. After a general introduction on the topic of model servers, a review on past and present research and development efforts in the field, we illustrate the general architecture of the framework and report on existing and planned features.

Research concerning computer hackers generally focuses on how to stop them; far less attention is given to the texts they create. Phrack, an online hacker journal that has run almost continuously since 1985, is an important touchstone in hacker literature, widely read by both hackers and telephone and network security professionals. But beyond its instantiation as a compendium of illicit technical knowledge, Phrack was, above all, a rhetorical publication. The files in each issue of Phrack created a shared rhetorical vision concerning the place of the hacker underground within society and in relation to law enforcement officials, as well as what it means to be a hacker. This essay examines two important events in the evolution of the hacker movement through the lens of Phrack—Operation Sundevil and the arrest of Kevin Mitnick. How these events were framed in Phrack both shaped and reflected emerging shifts in hacker collective identity.

In the study described in this paper, the role of technology in organizational learning and performance, and collaborative platforms’ contributions on improving organizational performance are explored. The paper also mentions major types of collaborative tools and platforms used for organizational performance improvement. This study investigates the possible contributions of the usage of technology together with appropriate collaborative strategy to the organizational learning and performance improvement.

- by Cemil UZUN
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- Social Networks, Knowledge Management, Knowledge & Creativity Management, E-learning

Virtual Reality (VR) is a three-dimensional simulation environment where users can feel close to real life experiences in an artificial world developed with different devices and visualization equipment, as well as interacting with other... more

Phronetic organizational research is an approach to the study of management and organizations focusing on ethics and power. It is based on a contemporary interpretation of the Aristotelian concept phronesis, usually as ‘prudence’. Phronesis is the ability to think and act in relation to values, to deliberate about ‘things that are good or bad for humans’ in the words of Aristotle (1976:1140a24–b12). Phronetic organizational research effectively provides answers to the following four value-rational questions, for specific problematics in management and organization studies: 1. Where are we going with this specific management problematic? 2. Who gains and who loses, and by which mechanisms of power? 3. Is this development desirable? 4. What, if anything, should we do about it?

- by Bent Flyvbjerg
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- Screenwriting, Critical Theory, Business, Entrepreneurship

Integrated Project Delivery is an emerging delivery system in which participants' success is dependent on collaboration among key parties. Developing and maintaining such a collaborative environment is not easy and requires continuous team assessment and improvement. Although much research highlighted that collaboration is a critical requirement in IPD, only few research has focused on collaboration assessment and improvement. A proactive and real-time collaboration assessment helps to make sure a project is healthy from the standpoint of collaboration and also reflect bottlenecks and required actions to improve collaboration. To fill this gap in research, this paper comprehensively reviews the literature in construction and nonconstruction research to collect indicators, and develop a framework of metrics for assessing collaboration within IPD. This study investigates traits of collaboration within IPD and links them with respective metrics to shape the framework. Development of this framework is the first step for more comprehensive research on aspects of proactive collaboration assessment within IPD. It can also be used in professional practice to interpret collaboration level and effectiveness in IPD projects.

- by Hamid Abdirad
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- Collaboration, Metrics, Collaborative Virtual Environments, Collaborative Design

In 2009, a joint research project among the University of California Merced, the City of Teramo and the Institute of Technologies
Applied to Cultural Heritage (National Research Council, Rome) started with the goal to communicate virtually the archaeological
context of the city, on the basis of the key archaeological areas of the urban network. The title of the entire project is Teramo: a city
virtually “dressed”. The main goal is the creation of a network of digital installations across the city based on different digital
technologies and mobile systems.
Despite the importance of the city from the archaeological point of view, the fragmentation of the sites, mostly hidden or decontextualized,
and the difficulties to communicate them in broader sense, make difficult an adequate cultural communication from
any point of view: scientific, educational, social and touristic. Therefore the Virtual becomes a social connector for the local
communities, stimulated to re-discover their territory, and for visitors, involved in a more effective learning experience. Is a
metaverse, such as OpenSimulator, able to develop a social sense of presence even in a virtual world? Is it possible to construct new
social narratives by virtual worlds? This paper is related to an application developed in the open source platform OpenSim for a
virtual community of users embedded in the cyberspace. This application is specifically created for the virtual island 3DMetaversity,
an open source project hosted at the CINECA, Supercomputing Center of the University of Bologna. At the current stage of the
project two key ancient Roman monuments of the city, the Theatre and the Domus, have been reconstructed; in addition, the creation
of a virtual library, Virtuoteca, constitutes a meta-space for the communication of archaeological contents.

- by Nicola Lercari and +2
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- Digital Archaeology, Collaborative Virtual Environments, Digital Media & Learning, Virtual Worlds

Distributed ledger technology (DLT) is one of the emerging technologies adopted in organizations. Unlike traditional databases, the integrity of the DLT is maintained automatically by an algorithmic consensus mechanism and not by any dominant authority. Thus, the consensus mechanism controls the decision-making and governance process. But the adoption of DLT is faced with issues regarding how to ensure that governance decisions in distributed ledger systems in the interest of all actors and stakeholders involved in the operations of organizational operations. Therefore, it is imperative to provides a better understanding of the governance of DLT adoption in organizations. Accordingly, this study conducts an extensive literature review to investigate the governance issues and control of DLT adoption in intra-organizational domain. Findings from this study presents state-of-the-art governance practices to offer a comprehensive understanding on key governance issues in organizations. Additionally, the findings present factors associated with governance of DLT adoption solutions. More importantly, a governance model is developed to enhance the adoption of DLT adoption to accelerate the digitalization of organizational operations.

While developing effective teamwork and collaboration skills are considered important to the learning process, many students find group work challenging and difficult. In this episode we explore how Internet technologies can improve the... more

- by Simon McIntyre
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- Education, Web 2.0, Educational Technology, Social Networks

Aufgrund der zunehmenden Fortschritte der Technik in den letzten Jahrzehnten, ist es Unternehmen und Individuen gelungen sich immer stärker global zu vernetzen. Die Zusammenarbeit über Unternehmens-und Landesgrenzen hinweg hat zu weltweit kooperierenden Expertenzentren und interkulturellen Teams geführt, die einen weit gefächerten Erfahrungsschatz zugänglich machen. Die letzten Jahre haben jedoch gezeigt, dass die Zusammenarbeit mit Menschen, die nicht real anwesend sind, nicht immer zu den erwarteten Innovationen und Verbesserungen geführt hat. Diese Thesis möchte sich den Problemen der Kommunikation in virtuellen Teams annehmen und herausstellen, inwiefern sie sich von denen traditioneller Teams unterscheiden. Es wird versucht aus dem aktuellen Stand der Forschung Handlungsrichtlinien für virtuelle Teamarbeit abzuleiten und eine Sensibilisierung für die Probleme medientechnologiegestützter Kommunikation zu schaffen. Die Erkenntnisse werden im Anschluss in Form einer eLearning-Einheit im Rahmen des Projektes CCBM-TRAILS aufbereitet.

- by Jaqueline Brinn
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- Human Computer Interaction, Communication, Media Studies, Project Management

Within education, concepts such as distance learning, and open universities, are now becoming more widely used for teaching and learning. However, due to the nature of the subject domain, the teaching of Science, Technology, and Engineering are still relatively behind when using new technological approaches (particularly for online distance learning). The reason for this discrepancy lies in the fact that these fields often require laboratory exercises to provide effective skill acquisition and hands-on experience. Often it is difficult to make these laboratories accessible for online access. Either the real lab needs to be enabled for remote access or it needs to be replicated as a fully software-based virtual lab. We argue for the latter concept since it offers some advantages over remotely controlled real labs, which will be elaborated further in this paper. We are now seeing new emerging technologies that can overcome some of the potential difficulties in this area. These include: computer graphics, augmented reality, computational dynamics, and virtual worlds. This paper summarizes the state of the art in virtual laboratories and virtual worlds in the fields of science, technology, and engineering. The main research activity in these fields is discussed but special emphasis is put on the field of robotics due to the maturity of this area within the virtual-education community. This is not a coincidence; starting from its widely multidisciplinary character, robotics is a perfect example where all the other fields of engineering and physics can contribute. Thus, the use of virtual labs for other scientific and non-robotic engineering uses can be seen to share many of the same learning processes. This can include supporting the introduction of new concepts as part of learning about science and technology, and introducing more general engineering knowledge, through to supporting more constructive (and collaborative) education and training activities in a more complex engineering topic such as robotics. The objective of this paper is to outline this problem space in more detail and to create a valuable source of information that can help to define the starting position for future research.

- by Victor Callaghan
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- Engineering, Robotics, Computer Science, Teaching and Learning

Three-dimensional Multi-User Virtual Environments (MUVEs) are being increasingly used in many areas, and they are becoming more and more integrated with learning and teaching. MUVEs can be used in learning and teaching to facilitate student learning and collaboration. This study identified the effects of MUVEs on collaborative learning and social presence and investigated whether these effects varied by gender. The participants were sophomore students attending a programming language course. They used a MUVE for their group meetings as part of their collaborative work. They also held voice communication. A four-section questionnaire was administered to the students who attended the meetings, in which the researchers served as facilitators. Interviews were held with randomly selected students. In addition, the group project meetings were tape-recorded, and field notes were taken for each meeting. The results showed that the MUVE enabled the group members to exchange ideas in an authentic environment, and that the file-sharing platform used as a complement to the MUVE reinforced collaborative learning. As long as technical problems are prevented, effective collaborative learning can be achieved in these environments.

- by Hakan Tüzün and +1
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- Education, Distance Education, Virtual Reality (Computer Graphics), Virtual Environments

Participation in networks has nowadays become very important for any organization that strives to achieve a differentiated competitive advantage, especially if the company is small or medium sized. Collaboration is a key issue to rapidly answer market demands in a manufacturing company, through sharing competencies and resources. The Collaborative Networked Organizations (CNO) area focuses on this type of organizational models that use ICT for supporting the development of collaborative business opportunities. This paper describes the key concepts related to CNOs, provides a high level classification of collaborative networks, and presents some application cases in the manufacturing industry. Finally a holistic research initiative addressing key challenges in the area is presented and a discussion of the CNO paradigm contribution to the challenges faced by manufacturing systems is made.

- by Luis M Camarinha-Matos and +1
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- Information Systems, Internet Studies, Clusters & Networks, Virtual Environments

Teknolojinin gelişmesiyle kampüsler ve sınıflar geleneksel çizgiden uzaklaşıp sanal ortamlara taşınmakta, eğitim ve öğretim etkinlikleri bu ortamlarda devam etmektedirler. Özellikle 3Boyutlu (3B) sanal ortamların ortamda bulunma hissini ve bireylerin birbiriyle etkileşimini arttırması, Bireylerin hayal gücünü desteklemesi ve bu ortamların gerçeğe yakınlığı eğitim ortamlarının internet ortamına taşınmasında önemli bir faktör olmuştur. Bu ortamlar da bulunan bireylere kendilerini temsil eden avatarlar yardımıyla gerçek hayatta yapılan birçok aktiviteyi gerçekleştirme olanağı verilmektedir. Ayrıca katılımcıların kendilerini daha rahat ifade etmelerini sağlayarak eğitimi daha etkili ve ilgi çekici hale getirmekte böylece öğrenenlere otantik ortamlarda öğrenme deneyimi yaşatmaktadır. Sanal ortamlar gerek hedef kitleleri, gerek kullandıkları teknolojiler, geliştirilme amaçları, etkileşim imkânları, işbirlikli çalışma imkânları açısından farklılaşmaktadır. Bu çalışmada sanal dünyalardan Secondlife, Imvu, Active Worlds ve World of Warcraft programlarının amaçları, hedef kitleleri, sundukları teknolojiler, etkileşim,
Eğitime getirdikleri katkılar açısından karşılaştırılması amaçlanmaktadır. Yapılan çalışmanın eğitimde sanal ortamların hangi amaçlarla kullanıldığının ve ortaya çıkardıkları ürünlerin tespit edilmesinin gelecek çalışmalar için rehberlik edeceği düşünülmektedir.

- by Dilek Dogan
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- Information Technology, Education, Educational Technology, Virtual Environments

This paper focuses on Virtual West Cambridge – an interactive multimedia environment constructed to support design and development of a large-scale, long-term urban project. In architecture, such persistent, continuously-growing virtual environments are unusual. Consequently, they pose unique challenges in procurement, development, maintenance and utilization. This paper re-conceptualizes virtual environments as situated techno-social performances rather than software programs or multimedia representations and discusses how this re-conceptualisation can inform their understanding, design and utilisation.

- by Stanislav Roudavski
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- Design, Digital Humanities, Architecture, Virtual Environments

Even if assessment of teams with several levels of hierarchy has been done through ages, this process has never been formalized with theoretical models and published until this actual research project and also not taught at college and university levels except for the work of Professor Nance [1]. In the conventional assessment paradigm all individuals have the same assessment at the opposite of Hierarchical Aggregate Assessment (HAA) where the assessment changes with the hierarchical level of the team member. That type of assessment gives scores on the task to be done and on leadership soft skills. This brings changes to the theories and paradigms of conventional assessment. A hierarchy is found in the results, the positions assigned to the members and the assessment tasks. So Hierarchical Aggregate Assessment (HAA) implies a hierarchy of team members, assessment tasks and assessment results. The actual research includes a definition, a process, theories, two software applications that computerized the aggregation process as well as four experiments. The computerized assessment of teams at several levels of hierarchy has existed for a long time, but in the field of management information systems (MIS). However little research has been done in the field of education. The concept of HAA is based on the assessment of teams with several levels of hierarchy in education. This assessment process is done on a treelike organization similar as the ones in management information systems (MIS). The process is done in three phases, the first phase consists in the team formation and the attribution of hierarchical levels to team members that is the aggregation process, the second phase is the presentation of a test or an assessment task done in team to the student and the third phase is the team dislocation and the return to the initial phase until the course is done. This iterative process consists of the course curriculum management. While the process iterates, assessment data is collected through the process as summative (marks and scores) and formative assessment (self-assessment and peers assessment) data that can be used to determine the course success or to guide student for improvement, More research will be done for the development of teamwork with multiple hierarchy levels assessment tasks in the Hierarchical Aggregate Assessment (HAA) field by computer applications that could be implemented in parallel programming, cloud computing and distributed computing paradigms. Hierarchical Aggregate Assessment (HAA) computer applications could also be seen as a large teamwork electronic portfolio that records teams work, productions, performances, scores, marks, and also team member's self-assessment and peers assessment for the entire course duration. Group dynamics, soft skills, soft skills leadership abilities, resistance to change and influence on work environments of teamwork assessment computer applications could also be interesting to study.

- by Martin Lesage and +1
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- E-learning, Distance Education, Assessment, Collaborative Virtual Environments

Emerging technology is facilitating collaboration and peer-production across a wide variety of industries. In the music industry, one example of this is in the use of a remote mix engineer-contracted to work on a recording made by another engineer in a different location and time domain because of the value in their specialised expertise. This paper examines the rise of the remote mix engineer in the contemporary music industry. It does this by examining the technology, methods of working, expertise and the concept of stardom using two contrasting examples-one a world-renowned mix engineer with several decades of experience and a high profile client list, the other being a younger and less experienced mix engineer with a different range of clients.

- by Mark Thorley
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- Music, Music Technology, Digital Humanities, Digital Media

The use of Virtual Reality (VR) in tourism sector is gaining grounds across the globe. VR is an efficient persuasive marketing promotion tool for tourism stakeholders but its use in developing nations has raised some concerns especially in a 'growing-tourism' nation like Nigeria. Can VR replace the alluring, scenic and captivating tourist sites in Nigeria? What are the factors in favor and against the use of VR in Nigeria tourism sector? Possible answers to these questions necessitated this study. Secondary data were the principal means of data generation and the results were analyzed thematically. The study revealed that a developing nation like Nigeria's adoption of VR into its tourism sector comes with gains and losses respectively. Tourism planning and promotion, preservative and conservative values, insecurity challenges and the tainted image of Nigeria favor the use of VR in the sector but economic losses via reduction in dwindling-poor-tourists traffic, decline in patronage of existing destinations stifle development of unidentified potential tourists site, discourage the application of VR in the nation's tourism. VR application in Nigeria holds dual stand of which in-depth investigation is imperative before its application to Nigeria's tourism sector. The need for Nigeria's apex tourism organization (NTDC) and other state owned tourism ministries and parastatals to study VR pros and cons in tourism is a probable right path in the 21st Century. The study serves as a pointer to policy makers and academia of the vicissitudes of VR application in developing nations, with attendant value to neighboring countries and nations with interest in tourism due to the unpredictable future of VR which keeps evolving daily.

What is the state of the research on crowdsourcing for policymaking? This article begins to answer this question by collecting, categorizing, and situating an extensive body of the extant research investigating policy crowdsourcing, within a new framework built on fundamental typologies from each field. We first define seven universal characteristics of the three general crowdsourcing techniques (virtual labor markets, tournament crowdsourcing, open collaboration), to examine the relative trade-offs of each modality. We then compare these three types of crowdsourcing to the different stages of the policy cycle, in order to situate the literature spanning both domains. We finally discuss research trends in crowdsourcing for public policy and highlight the research gaps and overlaps in the literature.

- by Araz 𝖳aeihagh
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- Business, Information Systems, Business Administration, Information Science

'The Frozen Academy' was set up in Larroque SW France by Kenneth Hay and Josef Danek in 2007 to create a global platform for a distributed art practice, initially for Josef, whose employment status in Brno, CZ had been 'frozen' and his students left Professor-less. Taking the metaphor of 'freezing', which is after all a way to keep things fresh, the FA (Frozen Academy) 'defrosts' every now and then in different physical locations to work on networked art projects with a team of core members and numerous 'remote operators' around the globe. The FA has in this way realised many projects, exhibitions, performances and other events utilising the internet and digital technologies to facilitate distributed and interactive creativity: in Larroque, Leeds, Berlin, Korea, Armenia, New York, Prague, Brno etc. The current catalogue maps many of these projects to date.

- by Luis M Camarinha-Matos
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- Business, Social Networks, Social Networking, Virtual Communities

This paper reviews current approaches to designing virtual environments and investigates aspects of influence in designing auditory spaces to support novel forms of interaction in virtual places. Initial research on human imagined sounds from places has identified ‘expectation’ as an important psychological construct, which must be considered when designing sounds for virtual places. The research work continues to provide evidence that there are differences between sounds people expect to hear in places and sounds recorded in real life places. Instead of designing realistic virtual spaces, the paper suggests a user’s sense of presence as a measure of the user’s experience in virtual environment. The results indicate that using highly expected sounds increases users’ sense of presence. As such, it is to propose that designing auditory spaces using expectations as perceived affordance is perhaps a minimal way to design auditory spaces that support sense of place, hence provoke the emergence of virtual communities.
Future work of the project is discussed.

This paper introduces the concept of online 'Innovations-Labs' (i-Labs) as location-independent collaborative ideation spaces. We highlight the challenges and opportunities that disruptive innovations present to companies and society, and discuss how Science Fiction Prototyping and Diegetic Innovation Templating can provide a means to explore that space by acting as ideation process and a language for capturing and communicating innovations. A core hypothesis of this paper is that there are significant gains to be accrued from integrating Virtual Reality, Science Fiction Prototyping, Diegetic Innovation Templating and Innovation Labs to form an online immersive reality innovation lab which both offers better affordances and access to people wishing to undertake innovation related activities. We present details of our initial implementation of an online innovation-lab (Our HEX) which takes the form of a virtual reality space-station. We then conclude the paper by describing future directions of our work, principally, a venture which uses 'Our HEX' space-station platform, plus a supporting textbook published by Tsinghua University Press, to teach 'English, Computing and Creativity' to Chinese students. Finally the paper concludes with a summary and reflections on our work to-date.

- by Victor Callaghan and +1
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- Entrepreneurship, Engineering, Technology, Development Studies

Manuale utente: descrizione delle funzionalità di Pinakes 3.0. Pinakes 3.0 è un'applicazione Web modulare, personalizzabile, open source e gratuita che permette di definire e gestire, in maniera collaborativa, modelli semantici per la raccolta e la condivisione di informazioni sparse in archivi, database e altri collettori con una logica di catalogazione diretta alla maggiore comprensibilità e precisione nella ricerca delle informazioni. Grazie a Pinakes 3.0. è possibile pubblicare sul Web e condividere interdisciplinarmente le informazioni e i risultati delle ricerche sul patrimonio dei beni culturali o provenienti da discipline umanistiche, scientifiche e altri settori. Offre la possibilità di identificare chi ha fatto cosa e quando, ovvero di riconoscere i diritti e la proprietà intellettuale sia nelle informazioni che nei risultati individuali provenienti anche da ricerche di gruppo.

The online social platforms known as virtual worlds present their users various affordances for avatar based co-presence, social interaction and provide tools for collaborative content creation, including objects, textures and animations. The users of these worlds navigate their avatars as personal mediators in 3D virtual space to collaborate and co-design the digital content. These co-designers are also the residents of these worlds, as they socialize by building inworld friendships. This article presents a social semiotic analysis of the three-dimensional virtual places and artifacts in the virtual world known as Second Life by the collaborative efforts of its so-called residents. The social semiotic perspective is used to develop a multimodal analytical framework and to analyze the co-creation of meaning potentials by various social actors who use the available semiotic resources as mediational means. The findings show that co-design and co-creation practices do not only depend on various actors and their mediated interactions, but also on a variety of tools, practices and resources that digital media platforms provide. Moreover, the multimodal analysis of these places demonstrates how the audio-visual characteristics of designing in multi-user virtual environments generate experiential, interpersonal and textual meaning potentials.

- by Ates Gursimsek
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- Semiotics, Design, Qualitative methodology, Visual Culture