Farooq Umar, Rabbi Ihsan, Akbar Sajida, Zia Kashif, Rehman Waheed Ur
University of Science and Technology, Bannu, Pakistan.
Sohar University, Sohar, Oman.
Multimed Tools Appl. 2022;81(13):18033-18051. doi: 10.1007/s11042-022-12593-w. Epub 2022 Mar 8.
Virtual worlds are the most advanced form of virtual environments, which offer one of the best platforms for serving various domains. They are, especially, well suited for education, to cope with the physical restrictions imposed due to COVID-19 outbreak, as they offer classroom experience to their users through immersion. They are online interactive spaces which are collaborative, persistent, coherent, and social in nature. Users immersed in these spaces are represented in the form of digital characters called, avatars. Virtual worlds offer advanced navigation methods such as flying and teleporting to facilitate quick learning. This paper analyses the use of a partial but carefully reconstructed cultural heritage site, developed in OpenSimulator framework, for learning both in terms of discourse and quantitative analysis. Discourse analysis compares the developed virtual world presence with traditional content provisioning methods in terms of a large set of well-known characteristics. Quantitative analysis, on the other hand, is based on data collected from users after conducting simple learning experiments. It revealed that the properties such as realism, friendliness, advanced navigation, and being detailed and social in nature greatly attracted user attention in learning. The learning was fast compared with traditional methods, however, it was a little hard for naive users to start exploring the content. Pre and post learning responses of users revealed that their knowledge level was significantly increased. Based on valuable suggestions, it is planned in future, to add intelligence to traditional agents, so they may help in an increased learning experience of users, based on the knowledge gained in earlier sessions.
虚拟世界是虚拟环境的最先进形式，为服务各个领域提供了最佳平台之一。它们特别适合教育领域，以应对因新冠疫情爆发而带来的物理限制，因为它们通过沉浸式体验为用户提供课堂体验。它们是在线互动空间，本质上具有协作性、持久性、连贯性和社交性。沉浸在这些空间中的用户以称为“化身”的数字角色形式呈现。虚拟世界提供了飞行和传送等先进的导航方法，以促进快速学习。本文从话语分析和定量分析两方面，分析了在OpenSimulator框架中开发的一个部分但精心重建的文化遗产地在学习中的应用。话语分析根据大量知名特征，将开发的虚拟世界呈现与传统内容提供方法进行比较。另一方面，定量分析基于在进行简单学习实验后从用户收集的数据。结果表明，逼真性、友好性、先进的导航以及细节性和社交性等属性在学习中极大地吸引了用户的注意力。与传统方法相比，学习速度很快，然而，对于新手用户来说，开始探索内容有点困难。用户学习前后的反应表明，他们的知识水平有了显著提高。基于宝贵的建议，计划在未来为传统代理添加智能，以便它们可以根据早期课程中获得的知识，帮助用户增加学习体验。
