Abstract.Immersion, referring to the level of physical or psychological submergence of a user within a virtual space relative to that user's consciousness of the realworld environment, has predominantly been established as an indispensable part of interactive media designs. This is most prevalent in Virtual Reality (VR) platforms, as their applications are typically reliant on user believability. With a wide variation of possible methodologies for the enhancement of this feature, the collectively recognised paradigm lies on the emphasis of naturalism in the design of the virtual system [7]. Though widely used by some specialised VR applications [4] such concepts are yet to be fully explored in the more contemporary virtual systems such as Social Immersive Virtual Environment (SIVE).The focus of the study described in this paper are the techniques being developed to enhance user immersion, virtual presence and co-presence in a SIVE application, through the design and integration of a VR-based Natural User Interface (NUI) that allows users to naturally and intuitively interact with the virtual environment and other networked users through the utilisation of full body gesture controls. These gestural controls prioritise the emulation of the alternate equivalent of such real-wold interactions, whilst also providing an interface for the seamless and unobtrusive translation of the user's realworld physical state into the virtual environment through intuitive user to virtual avatar proprioceptive coordination.
An interesting educational development within the School of Technology at Leeds Metropolitan University (UK) has been the approach to the teaching of the level 2 BSc Multimedia Technology course. The level team has developed a structured, holistic approach to delivering modules. This has allowed students to develop skills and knowledge of the module subjects in semester one and then integrated the learning from ALL the modules in semester two. Working in groups they develop a major piece of work which has become known as "The Pipeline Project". This approach was further developed and enhanced as the level team went to the UK government-funded conference on group work and assessment (GWAP) at Bournemouth University.The main area of development was the assessment process that allows for students to clearly see the aims and objectives of each module but within a more global project. Not only has this holistic approach benefited the students, it has also allowed staff to develop material that goes across modules and allows for team teaching and an integrated lecture programme. This logical approach to project work echoes the skills required in the multimedia industry. As part of the GWAP experience, the teams have now enhanced a peer assessment programme from which individual student attainment is obtained from group assessment.
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