Educational virtual environments: design rationale and architecture

Collaborative E-Learning: Towards Designing an Innovative Architecture for an Educational Virtual Environment

“…A usability evaluation of the prototype was undertaken by Bouras, et al 2006 in order to validate the design of EVE prototype. Research studies (Montoya et al, 2011;Lin et al, 2010;Kirkwood, 2010;Peter et al, 2010;Bouras et al 2008 andDalziel, 2003) suggest that the objectives of the usability evaluation are to: (a) assess usability problems with the EVE interface, and (b) investigate more requirements of the end users in order to improve the functionality of the EVE prototype.…”

“…It is important to note that in the case of EVE, the first step was to investigate the main functional features. As demonstrated by Bouras et al, 2006, the next step was to create a prototype-which was evaluated by users. It is not only difficult, but may also be restrictive for educational designers to follow a set of rules for transforming the design principles to functional features.…”

Virtual Campus: A Case Study of Development Using Open Sources Software

“…The main benefit of avatar representation is the psychological feeling of a sense of presence that results in suspension of disbelief (feeling of immersion) and an increase in motivation and productivity [14].…”

Collaborative Virtual 3D Environment for Internet-Accessible Physics Experiments

“…Through facilitating 3D visualizations, these environments have the ability to make the unseen seen. A 3D simulation generated from a formal mathematical model embodying the laws of physics becomes a controllable computer-generated analog of real-world objects or processes, which the student can use to understand the behavior of complex systems [2] [19] [4]. Along with visualizing physics phenomena and simulating their actions/behavior, a 3D VLE also provides standard, quasirealistic mechanisms for the user to interact with the underlying physical/mathematical models.…”