User interfaces for a virtual learning environment: two study cases

The application of virtual worlds through Internet for teaching allows that the student can submerge himself in friendly environments that make learning more pleasant. This article presents three educational applications developed in these worlds. The first, for vocabulary learning, shows a set of virtual worlds designed in VRML where the student interacts with different objects. When an object is selected, its written name can be read and the student can listen to its pronunciation. In the following application, a virtual classroom, the created world can be shared simultaneously by several users. There are diverse materials available as in the traditional classrooms, for example a blackboard, laser pointer and a slide projector. Finally, the latest advances in the creation of virtual environments have been applied in the third application using a game engine. This has made possible the design of a more realistic world where the student can interact with other users and share his experiences.

2010

Designing user interface has special importance in Virtual Learning. Considerable portion of students' time is spent in attempting to learn system, work with present lists in user interface and so forth. Perhaps virtual education system has several computational powers, but it lacks adequate user interface. Then, using system would be difficult and user may encounter many confuses during the work and would be unsuccessful in reaching their goals. These are results of unfamiliarity with fundamental principles and in user interface design and disusing them in generating virtual learning systems. Thus, in any virtual learning system design, it is necessary to consider fundamental principles and rules of the user interface design in such system, and in this manner, in this research an adequate user interface is suggested for e-learning Environment in which has been evaluated with regard to these fundamental principles and rules. Evaluations have been done on this interface show its desirable ability to attract users' satisfaction.

Proceedings of the working conference on Advanced visual interfaces - AVI '04, 2004

Virtual Reality (VR) became an attractive alternative for the development of more realistic and interesting visual interfaces for the user. The environments that make use of RV techniques are refered as Virtual Environments (VEs). Nowadays, the focus of attention has been the integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and VEs. The objective is to obtain larger usability and realism from the interfaces, exploring the combination of three-dimensional objects and intelligent entities. The environments that explore such integration are called Intelligent Virtual Environments (IVEs). This paper present an intelligent and adaptive virtual environment, which has its structure and presentation suitable according to users' interests and preferences (represented in an user model) and in agreement insertion, removal or update of contents in the environment. A process of automatic categorization of contents is applied in the creation of content models, used in the spatial organization of the same ones in the environment.

2012

This paper aims to discuss the use of visual metaphors in the development of System Interfaces for Distance Education about the differences between two scholars concerning Human-Computer Interaction: Donald Norman and Jakob Nielsen, whether or not to use the metaphors. The possibility of networking, both as a framework for access and processing of information, and as a framework for exchange and collaborative activity is the high quality of emerging technologies. These techniques allow structures to implement new and more complexes forms of social interaction, arising the possibility of immediate exchange of information and content in cyberspace. Hence, the individuals become at the same time, transmitters and receivers, producers and consumers of the message. Therefore, communication is no longer linear and one way to become multilingual, polycentric and polysemic. In this context, the interfaces through which individuals will interact should be designed towards their needs in a fa...

EduTech Computer-Aided Design Meets Computer-Aided Learning, 2004

This paper presents an intelligent, adaptive, three-dimensional and virtual environment for distance learning. The environment, used to make educational content available, has its structure and presentation customized according to users' interests and preferences (represented in user models) and in accordance with insertion or removal of contents. An automatic categorization process is applied in the creation of content models, used in the spatial organization of the contents in the environment. Moreover, the environment is populated by an intelligent agent, who assists users during the navigation and retrieval of relevant information.

Developing Successful Strategies for Global Policies and Cyber Transparency in E-Learning, 2016

It is quite important to effectively benefit from e-learning tools and environments which have dynamic structures in order to meet the learning needs of distance learners. E-Learning provides independence of time and space, student-centered, learner-controlled, flexible learning environments and equal educational opportunities. However, this flexibility has increased learners' self-cognition, self-control and self-responsibility for learning. In order for learners to cope with these issues, it is important to use metaphorical interfaces made up of metaphors as structures that provide clues to understand a new and complex concept, system or model. In this study, three main issues are discussed. These issues are e-learning and distance education, interface designs for distance education and metaphors in interface design. In the last part of the study, the advantages and disadvantages of metaphorical interface design in distance education are discussed. Based on these discussions, some important recommendations provided. The main purpose of this study is to discuss three main issues. These issues are e-learning and distance education, interface designs for distance education and metaphors in interface design. In the last part of the study, the advantages and disadvantages of the metaphorical interface design in distance education and e-learning environments will be discussed. Based on these discussions, some important recommendations will be provided.

Journal of Computing and Information Technology, 2006

E-leaming is a new and rapidly evolving discipline. Particularly, e-leaming environments have become a topic of research and study. This paper presents an investigation related to e-leaming and the development of virtual learning environment (WebINFO) made by an interdisciplinary team at the University of La Plata. Some experiences within university scope using this kind of technology are also presented.

IGI Global eBooks, 2011

Journal of Network and …, 1999

WWWIC, the NDSU World Wide Web Instructional Committee, is engaged in developing a range of virtual environments for education. These projects span a range of disciplines, from earth science to anthropology, and from business to biology. However, all of these projects share a strategy, a set of assumptions, an approach to assessment, and an emerging tool set, which allows each to leverage from the insights and advances of the others. This is an extended and modified version of a paper presented at ED-MEDIA 99, where it received a top paper award. The ED-MEDIA conference series is organized by AACE, see

Conference on Frontiers in Education, 2011

This paper presents two tools developed to facilitate the use and automate the process of using Virtual Worlds for educational purposes. The first tool has been developed to automatically create the classroom space, usually called region in the virtual world, which means, a region in the virtual world used to develop educational activities between professors, students and interactive objects. The

Computers and education in the 21st …, 2002

This paper presents an approach to Web-Based learning environment authoring based in a high level description and in the use of reusable instructional components. These components have been previously categorised in a set of knowledge domains according to its instructional, didactic and pedagogical properties. Learning environment design is carried out using a description written in an SGML-derived language called PALO. PALO allows describing a variety of instructional scenarios that can be instantiated with a certain content matter using references to the domain model. This description is then turned into a Web-Based scenario by means of a compilation process. 1 M. Ortega and J. Bravo (eds.), Computers and Education in the 21 st century, 79-81.

International Journal of Technology and Human Interaction, 2009

The advent of Internet technologies since decades ago has propelled distance learning drastically. In this modern world, knowledge develops so fast that the amount of intellectual information that needs to be learnt before it becomes obsolete again is so huge. Distance learning through the use of Internet technologies has the advantage of being able to get across the information to the students remotely and effortlessly. The other advantage, which is the main focus of this paper, is that students are able to learn from their instructors on an entirely new media platform -the Internet-enabled and tangible user interface. This paper discusses how to use two main new media: multi-modal Internet technologies, namely remote physical interface and remote augmented reality technology in distance learning.

Networking the Learner, 2002

Brazil, such as many other countries, does not have the capacity to train enough teachers to attend the educational needs ofthe growing population of children. This has a direct impact on the quality of education that the students receive. The low cost and ease of use of semi-immersive virtual reality environments have recently resulted in a rapid expansion ofthis technology across the world. In this work, we present a low cost distributed virtual reality system for the education of students from grades K to 12. The proposed system is based on an architecture that allows efficient data distribution in low bandwidth networks. We believe that virtual schools, based on the proposed virtual reality system, where remote teachers and students can exchange ideas and propose activities, may be an important part of the solution to this prob lern.

Teleteaching’98 Distance Learning, Training and Education, 1998

In this paper we present the EVA project, which consists in teams of a number of Mexican universities developing an approach to distance learning, based on modern information technologies that support the works of teams distributed geographically. We show how this approach can be applied and results in a highly re-configurable, interactive computer aided teaching modules. We show examples of such technologies and applications in the domain of the Master and Doctorate education in Computer Science, which are effectively used by the students at the Centro de Investigacion en COmputacion (CIC) of the Instituto Politecnico Nacional (IPN).

2012

The emphasis of many studies investigating Virtual Learning Environments (VLEs), including our own, has been on evaluating whether learning has occurred and in determining what factors might have influenced learning. Participants are typically asked to perform certain tasks and answer many questions about their characteristics, preferences, experiences and what they learnt. But what do participants see as relevant to tell us; perhaps they think we have missed something important? To answer this question, we chose three diverse studies, concerning realism, interactivity and immersion, and analyse the free-text comments to see if any patterns could be found in what users were wanting to tell us. Based on the analysis and literature, we suggest a set of categories and usability attributes to be considered when designing and evaluating VLEs.