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1. The Effect of Virtual Humans Making Verbal Communication Mistakes on Learners’ Perspectives of their Credibility, Reliability, and Trustworthiness

   https://doi.org/10.1109/VR51125.2022.00065  

   Stuart, Jacob; Aul, Karen; Bumbach, Michael D.; Stephen, Anita; de Siqueira, Alexandre Gomes; Lok, Benjamin (March 2022, 2022 IEEE on Conference Virtual Reality and 3D User Interfaces (VR))

   Simulating real-world experiences in a safe environment has made virtual human medical simulations a common use case for research and interpersonal communication training. Despite the benefits virtual human medical simulations provide, previous work suggests that users struggle to notice when virtual humans make potentially life-threatening verbal communication mistakes inside virtual human medical simulations. In this work, we performed a 2x2 mixed design user study that had learners (n = 80) attempt to identify verbal communication mistakes made by a virtual human acting as a nurse in a virtual desktop environment. A virtual desktop environment was used instead of a head-mounted virtual reality environment due to Covid-19 limitations. The virtual desktop environment experience allowed us to explore how frequently learners identify verbal communication mistakes in virtual human medical simulations and how perceptions of credibility, reliability, and trustworthiness in the virtual human affect learner error recognition rates. We found that learners struggle to identify infrequent virtual human verbal communication mistakes. Additionally, learners with lower initial trustworthiness ratings are more likely to overlook potentially life-threatening mistakes, and virtual human mistakes temporarily lower learner credibility, reliability, and trustworthiness ratings of virtual humans. From these findings, we provide insights on improving virtual human medical simulation design. Developers can use these insights to design virtual simulations for error identification training using virtual humans. 

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2. Collaborative Learning in Cloud-based Virtual Computer Labs

   https://doi.org/10.1109/FIE.2018.8659018  

   Hu, Xiaolin; Le, Hai; Bourgeois, Anu G.; Pan, Yi (October 2018, 2018 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE))

   This Innovative Practice Work-In-Progress paper presents a collaborative virtual computer lab (CVCL) environment to support collaborative learning in cloud-based virtual computer labs. With advances of cloud computing and virtualization technologies, a new paradigm of virtual computer labs has emerged, where students carry out labs on virtualized resources remotely through the Internet. Virtual computer labs bring advantages, such as anywhere, anytime, on-demand access of specialized software and hardware. However, with current implementations, it also makes it difficult for students to collaborate, due to the fact that students are assigned separated virtual working spaces in a remote-accessing environment and there is a lack of support for sharing and collaboration. To address this issue, we develop a CVCL environment that allows students to reserve virtual computers labs with multiple participants and support remote real-time collaboration among the participants during a lab. The CVCL environment will implement several well-defined collaborative lab models, including shared remote collaboration, virtual study room, and virtual tutoring center. This paper describes the overall architecture and main features of the CVCL environment and shows preliminary results. 

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3. Going remote: Recommendations for normalizing virtual internships

   https://doi.org/10.1002/ecs2.3961  

   Hruska, Amy M.; Cawood, Alison; Pagenkopp Lohan, Katrina M.; Ogburn, Matthew B.; Komatsu, Kimberly J. (March 2022, Ecosphere)

   Abstract Research internships provide students with invaluable experience conducting independent research, contributing to larger research programs, and embedding in a professional scientific setting. These experiences increase student persistence in ecology and other science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields and promote the inclusion of students who lack opportunities at their home institutions and/or are from groups that are underrepresented in STEM. While many ecology internship programs were canceled during the 2020 COVID‐19 pandemic, others successfully adapted to offer virtual internships for the first time. Though different from what many researchers and students envision when they think of internships, virtual ecology internship programs can create more accessible opportunities and be just as valuable as in‐person opportunities when research programs and advisors develop virtual internships with intention and planning. Here, we highlight six ways to structure a virtual intern project, spanning a spectrum from purely computer‐based opportunities (e.g., digital data gathering, data analysis, or synthesis) to fully hands‐on research (e.g., sample processing or home‐based experiments). We illustrate examples of these virtual projects through a case study of the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center's 2020 Virtual Internship Program. Next, we provide 10 recommendations for effectively developing a virtual internship program. Finally, we end with ways that virtual internships can avoid the limitations of in‐person internships, as well as possible solutions to perceived pitfalls of virtual internships. While virtual internships became a necessity in 2020 due to COVID‐19, the development and continuation of virtual internships in future can be a valuable tool to add to the suite of existing internship opportunities, possibly further promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion in ecology and STEM. 

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4. Signing Avatars in a New Dimension: Challenges and Opportunities in Virtual Reality

   Quandt, L. C.; Lamberton, J.; Leannah, C.; Willis, A.; Malzkuhn, M. (June 2022, Proceedings of the 7th International Workshop on Sign Language Translation and Avatar Technology (SLTAT 7))

   Efthimiou, E.; Fotinea, S-E.; Hanke, T.; McDonald, J.; Shterionov, D.; Wolfe, R. (Ed.)

   With improved and more easily accessible technology, immersive virtual reality (VR) head-mounted devices have become more ubiquitous. As signing avatar technology improves, virtual reality presents a new and relatively unexplored application for signing avatars. This paper discusses two primary ways that signed language can be represented in immersive virtual spaces: 1) Third-person, in which the VR user sees a character who communicates in signed language; and 2) First-person, in which the VR user produces signed content themselves, tracked by the head-mounted device and visible to the user herself (and/or to other users) in the virtual environment. We will discuss the unique affordances granted by virtual reality and how signing avatars might bring accessibility and new opportunities to virtual spaces. We will then discuss the limitations of signed content in virtual reality concerning virtual signers shown from both third- and first-person perspectives. 

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5. Adaptation in Virtual worlds

   https://doi.org/10.19229/978-88-5509-096-4/392020  

   Guathier, Jean-Marc (May 2020, Resilience between Mitigation and Adaptation)

   In collaboration with scientists, engineers, sociologists and designers, we have developed virtual worlds for the visualization and interaction with dynamic systems. This allows participants to interact with three-dimensional structures that constantly change and adapt through time. Participants can use simple building blocks to manipulate three-dimensional structures in real-time, allowing them to interact with systems that constantly change and adapt over time. This paper analyses the source and role of change in dynamic systems using virtual reality; particularly the role of constraints and transformations that can generate real-time adaptations of a virtual system. We propose a new design process that allows participants to collaborate with virtual agents. The goal of this process is to create accurate dynamic three-dimensional systems that can self-adapt under constraints and evolve into new spatial configurations as a result of adaptation. The collaboration between participants and virtual agents offers new perspectives on user interaction, dynamic three-dimensional manipulations and about the evolution of a virtual architecture inside a virtual world. 

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