With the rapid development of technology and the increasing use of social networks, many opportunities for the design and deployment of interconnected systems arise that could enable a paradigm shift in the ways we interact with cultural heritage. The project described in this paper aims to create a new type of conceptually led environment, a kind of Cyber–Physical–Social Eco-Society (CPSeS) system that would seamlessly blend the real with virtual worlds interactively using Virtual Reality, Robots, and Social Networking technologies, engendered by humans’ interactions and intentions. The project seeks to develop new methods of engaging the current generation of museum visitors, who are influenced by their exposure to modern technology such as social media, smart phones, Internet of Things, smart devices, and visual games, by providing a unique experience of exploring and interacting with real and virtual worlds simultaneously. The research envisions a system that connects visitors to events and/or objects separated either in time or in space, or both, providing social meeting points between them. To demonstrate the attributes of the proposed system, a Virtual Museum scenario has been chosen. The following pages will describe the RoboSHU: Virtual Museum prototype, its capabilities and features, and present a generic development framework that will also be applicable to other contexts and sociospatial domains.

Attendance and participation in education are important for students to obtain the experiences necessary to develop their knowledge. However, there are some students who experience challenges hindering their access and participation in Higher Education. To support students, Universities utilise E-Learning. One of the many E-Learning tools is the use of virtual worlds in the form of cyber campuses. This paper investigates the extent to which cyber campuses can help to mitigate barriers and support students experiencing them. A prototype has been developed and a series of empirical studies have been performed. The results of this research suggest that a cyber campus environment can be used as an alternative learning support tool that can enhance online learning experiences, and help to mitigate some of the barriers that hinder access and participation to education. The associated limitations of this research and the future work planned out are also presented.

The use of 3D virtual worlds in the form of cyber campuses has been introduced in higher education over the past decade to support and enhance students' online learning experiences. Considering that students learn in socially constructed ways and through peer collaboration, the development of Transactive Memory System-the collective awareness of the group's specialization, coordination, and credibility-is found to be beneficial for educational purposes. This paper presents the results of a study investigating the extent to which a TMS can be developed within a 3D virtual world educational setting.

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Museums are institutions that primarily care for cultural heritage exhibition, preservation and conservation of historical artifacts. However, simply displaying artifacts and provide complex information to describe them is simply not sufficient to effectively engage museum visitors. To improve visitors engagement and their overall museum experience, the use of technology utilized by museums, introducing the concept of Virtual Museums. This paper discusses the use of Virtual Reality through the use of smart phone devices as a mean of a Cyber-Physical-Social system to support, improve and enhance the visitors' experience. The RoboSHU prototype, its current development stage and future work are presented, together with the future research directions of the research team.

CSCW in education is a topic that drew a lot of attention over the years, and Multi User Virtual Environments (MUVEs) are one of the tools utilized by many educators to support their teaching objectives. MUVEs enable students to connect, immerse and interact with their peers and the environment, and synchronously engage and collaborate in learning activities. Effective communication and collaboration contributes to student learning, and the topic of Transactive Memory System (TMS) within working groups has been found to be very beneficial. TMS relates to the representation of the knowledge possessed by the members of a team that allows identifying who knows what, providing efficiency in collaboration. While the use of educational MUVEs has been thoroughly investigated in the literature, little is known about the use of such environments to support TMS and their relationship with working group dynamics. This paper presents the results of a study investigating the development and evolution of a TMS between groups within a MUVE, in order to better understand the dynamics that need to be considered when using MUVEs to support teaching and learning.

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The rapid developments in online technology have provided young people with instant communication with each other and highly interactive and engaging visual game playing environments. The traditional ways of presenting museum and heritage assets no longer, therefore, hold their attention and provide them with an exciting and dynamic visitor experience. There is considerable interest in the use of augmented reality to allow visitors to explore worlds that are not immediately accessible to them and relating them to the real worlds around them. These are very effective in providing much needed contextual information, but appear rather static when compared with multi-player games environments where players interact with each other and robotic characters (non-player characters) in real time. By fusing these technologies, the authors postulate a new type of conceptually-led environment (cyber museum) that fuses real (physical), virtual worlds and cyber-social spaces into a single dynamic environment that provides a unique experience of exploring both worlds simultaneously.