Denna studie är ämnad att undersöka hur framställningen av VR-teknologi påverkar lärande och leder till nya möjligheter för att motivera lärande genom frågeställningen: Vilka karaktärsdrag i virtuella lärmiljöer kan stödja individer att uppnå ett tillstånd av flow? Tidigare forskning har undersökt hur ett tillstånd av flow kan stödja individers lärande och hur utformningen av virtuella miljöer kan stödja lärande. I studien användes en kvalitativ forskningsansats med hjälp av observationer och semistrukturerade intervjuer. Studiens deltagare fick uppgifter att genomföra i VR-spelet Blocks by Google. Studien resulterade i tretton identifierade aspekter kopplade till karaktärsdrag i virtuella lärmiljöer, vilka kan stödja ett tillstånd av flow. / This study aims to explore how the making of VR technology affects learning and leads to new opportunities to motivate learning through the question: What characteristics in virtual learning environments can support individuals to achieve a state of flow? Previous research has investigated how a state of flow can support individuals' learning and how the design of virtual environments can support learning. The study used a qualitative research approach with the help of observations and semi-structured interviews. The study participants were given tasks to complete in the VR game Blocks by Google. The study resulted in thirteen identified aspects linked to characteristics in virtual learning environments, which can support a state of flow.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-03-15T19:42:15Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Priscila Zanganatto Mafra.pdf: 6993187 bytes, checksum: 2c4ea29fea7f002e08b5bae032968687 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2012-02-10 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / The objective of this study was to investigate how social networks have been used in the creation of virtual learning communities and how they lend themselves to this role. With this focus, we set up an exploratory qualitative research, which it is described here, and that was developed in the environment provided by the interdisciplinary master program in Education, Art and Cultural History The study is focused on personal experiences of users from different areas, through an exploratory qualitative research, emerging issues in order to take us to greater awareness and understanding of the nature of the connection between education and virtuality in contemporary world, and interviews, looking for deeper reflection about the use of virtual communities in the learning process, always. confining him in a rich theoretical framework of leading thinkers such as Castells, Coll, Levy, McLuhan, Moran, Santaella and Siemens. This dissertation titled Virtual Learning Communities in Collaborative Spaces, was developed as part of the main research project developed by the group EduTech (Education, Technology and Hypermedia), entitled Education: Cyberspace and Interactivity. / O objetivo geral do presente trabalho consistiu em investigar como as redes sociais vêm sendo utilizadas na constituição de comunidades virtuais de aprendizagem e como elas se prestam a essa função. Para esse fim, elaborou-se uma pesquisa qualitativa de cunho exploratório, a qual descreveremos aqui, e que se desenvolveu no ambiente de interdisciplinaridade proporcionado pelo programa de pós-graduação em Educação, Arte e História da Cultura. O estudo foi focado em experiências pessoais de usuários de diferentes áreas de atuação, por meio de uma pesquisa qualitativa de cunho exploratório, visando emergir aspectos que nos levassem a uma maior percepção e entendimento sobre a natureza da conexão da educação e da virtualidade na contemporaneidade, e de entrevistas, buscando aprofundamento reflexivo sobre o uso das comunidades virtuais no processo de aprendizagem, sempre circunscrevendo-o em um rico referencial teórico de renomados pensadores da área, como Castells, Coll, Lévy, McLuhan, Moran, Santaella e Siemens. Essa dissertação intitulada Comunidades Virtuais de Aprendizagem em Espaços Colaborativos foi elaborada como pesquisa parcial do projeto-mãe desenvolvido pelo grupo de pesquisa EDUTECHI (Educação, Tecnologia e Hipermídia), intitulado Educação: Ciberespaço e Interatividade.

<!--[if !mso]> <object classid="clsid:38481807-CA0E-42D2-BF39-B33AF135CC4D" id=ieooui></object><mce:style><! st1\:*{behavior:url(#ieooui) } --> Traditional education have for long been remaining without major changes made to the actual system. Up until very recently, there has been reluctance towards making fundamental and dramatic changes to the system, but as societies change and develop by mirroring on past experiences, new minds and new ways of thinking emerge suggesting changes and new developments. Consequently, new educational approaches such as e-learning and virtual learning have emerged. Lately, technology has been transforming and developing than ever before and the demand for modifying accordingly to new technology has become a prerequisite for all industries and institutions. Already with e-learning, a derived concept is worthy of notice. Authenticity, meaning validity and accuracy, has been imposed as one major issue when it comes to e-learning, and also v-learning. The main goal of this thesis is to present answers and suggestions to the following research questions: Ø  What value does a virtual education method create for the students? Ø  What implications are there for an education through Second Life and what is the significance of such an environment? Ø  What are the main auxiliary instruments or tools that enhance authenticity and the achievement of high presence in a virtual environment? This research adopted an inductive approach using a qualitative research. The characterizations of knowledge used were descriptive knowledge, normative knowledge, explanatory research and evaluating research for the respective research questions. As a result of collaborating with Kalmar University, Sweden’s first Second Life course “Oral Production” was observed and to intensify the results, an interview was held with the course’s lecturer. The results were thereon analyzed and scrutinized based on the Empirical Findings, Theoretical Framework – consisting of mainly pedagogical theories and of articles concerning virtual learning environments. The conclusion of this research entails the answers for the research questions. An education via a virtual environment is a development of e-learning, which is an enhancement of a traditional physical education. All students are persuaded to be active and participate in learning, which also promotes interconnectedness between students and teacher. Students can do role-playing and do presentations without feeling embarrassed about their “real” identities being represented. Main auxiliary instruments include virtual presentation boards, audio to communicate with each other and the avatar to direct the speech. Additionally, to enhance high presence in a virtual environment, involving all students with creative exercises seems to be another means in achieving high presence in a virtual environment.

Master of Science / Department of Geology / Iris M. Totten / Problem-based learning in the sciences has been demonstrated to be a successful educational approach to engage students and increase content knowledge. However, the power of collaborative learning to engage students, increase content knowledge and develop problem-solving skills in the sciences has not yet been fully researched. Collaborative learning has an enormous potential not only to foster student learning, but also to increase interest in the sciences and promote cutting-edge education strategies worldwide. Collaborative learning tactics in this study take place within the virtual learning environment entitled “GeoWorlds.” GeoWorlds is an online educational gaming program within the Second Life 3-D Teen Grid. The curriculum was developed as a collaborative, investigative and engaging program to promote learning of Earth science content. The program allows students to be submersed-in and explore different geologic time periods; enabling them to observe species and geological structures while interacting with one another to complete tasks. This study investigates the educational impact, emotional response and overall feedback of the GeoWorlds virtual learning environment on Midwest ninth graders.

Using the Internet for teaching and learning has become a trend in modern higher education, facilitated through the exploitation of advanced computing technologies. Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) applications support online learning over the Internet, and VLEs have thus emerged as e-learning domains that are essential prerequisites in cutting edge design and implementation technologies in education. Service Oriented Computing (SOC), as a novel software development and implementation approach, has become an active area of research and development. Web services, as an example of SOC, support the integration of software applications in an incremental way, using existing platforms and languages that utilize and adopt existing legacy systems. Thus, VLEs should be particularly well suited to Web services through the SOC approach. VLE services is a field subjected to continuous development but VLEs as Web services are still not generally accessible for academic institutions, although they have been adopted by some scientific projects. The next generation of VLEs should address the limitations of the current online systems by providing a richer context for online learning, one that is sensitive to the specific domain requirements of e-learning. Web Services Matching and Selection (WSMS), as a part of the functional requirements of Web services, has received less attention from SOC researchers. It involves discovering a set of semantically equivalent services by filtering a set of available services based on service metadata, and instantaneously selecting the best possible service. WSMS is the discovery of a service by a user, where correspondence is established between the objectives of the consumer and the capabilities of the service. It thereby aims to match and select the optimal service that best meets the requestor's needs. The main aim of this doctoral work is to explore novel architectural designs for VLEs, based on the SOC paradigm and its related techniques. In addition, this investigation aims to extend the core ideas behind VLE tools, which are gradually becoming dominant within academic institutes. Another aim is to devise a policy- based technique to enforce security requirements for VLEs and to build a test-bed for VLE security based on Modular Moodle. The fundamental contribution of this thesis that it demonstrates that VLEs can be considered as services, which can be published, discovered and composed as perceived in the SOC paradigm. An additional contribution to the knowledge is that it has built a new extension to the structure of Web services: the Web Services Matching and Selection (WSMS) system. Another contribution to the knowledge is that traditional security requirements have been modified to cater for the highly mobile and changeable environment of VLEs; this has been achieved through policy- based techniques. These contributions to the body of knowledge have been published in learned journals and at conferences.

Šių laikų studentai nuotolines arba pusiau nuotolines studijas vertina ypač teigiamai. Patiems dėstytojams nebelieka kito pasirinkimo, kaip rengti savo studijų dalykus virtualiose mokymo/si aplinkose. Šio darbo tikslas yra pritaikyti virtualaus mokymo aplinką informatikos studijoms. Pagrindiniai uždaviniai – išanalizuoti dėstytojų poreikius; poreikių padengimą tradicinėmis Moodle priemonėmis ir papildomais moduliais; suformuoti eksperimentinę Moodle sistemą su įdiegtais papildiniais; sukurti tipinių dalykų grupių prototipus pateikimui Moodle sistemoje. Darbe analizuojama problema: virtuali mokymo/si aplinka (VMA) savo turimomis standartinėmis funkcijomis, neišpildo tikrųjų specifinių dėstytojų poreikių. Problemos sprendimui rasti atliktos dvi dėstytojų apklausos, išanalizuoti ir apibendrinti apklausų rezultatai. Remiantis apklausų rezultatais sudarytas reikiamų funkcijų sąrašas bei jų realizavimui atrinkti ir įdiegti Moodle papildiniai. Darbe pateikiamos papildinių įdiegimo ir naudojimo instrukcijos, sudaryti kiekvieno papildinio privalumų ir trūkumų sąrašai. Prie kai kurių funkcijų pateikta daugiau nei viena alternatyva. Darbas baigiamas sukonkretintomis išvadomis. Remiantis šiuo magistriniu darbu, sistemą bus pasiūlyta naudoti jau egzistuojančioje Vytauto Didžiojo Universiteto Informatikos fakulteto virtualioje mokymo aplinkoje (VDU IF Moodle), taip patenkinant dirbančiųjų dėstytojų esamus poreikius. / The nowadays students think of distance or blended learning studies very positively, so the lecturers are forced to prepare their teaching material in virtual learning environments (VLE). The aim of the study is to adapt virtual learning environment for studies of Informatics. The objectives of the study are to analyze the needs of lecturers; to examine the needs’ realization by standard Moodle tools and additional modules; to formulate experimental VLE Moodle with installed additional tools; to create the typical group subject prototypes for VLE Moodle. The study analyses the problem: VLE with standard functions does not fulfil the real, specific needs of lecturers. In order to find the problem solution, 2 surveys of lecturers were performed, survey results were analyzed and summarized. Based on the surveys’ results, the list of necessary functions was created and additional VLE Moodle tools were analyzed, chosen and installed. The instructions of tools installation and usage are described; lists of advantages and disadvantages of each additional tool are created. Some of the functions have more than one alternative suggested. The study is finalized with concrete conclusions. Based on this study, the existing VDU IF Moodle (VLE of the Informatics faculty, Vytautas Magnus University) will be suggested to be updated in order to fulfil the existing needs of Informatics faculty lecturers.

Virtual physical education (VPE) offerings have grown for over a decade in the United States, but there has been little empirical knowledge shared, specifically regarding the design of courses to support and validate these expanding programs (Buschner, 2006; Mohnsen, 2012a; b; Mosier, 2012; Mosier & Lynn, 2012). Most VPE research has been conducted at the Florida Vir- tual School (FLVS), but few studies have been completed regarding VPE in Georgia (Watson Pape, Murin, Gemin, & Vashaw, 2014). Due to the lack of research along with the growth in VPE (Daum, 2014; Mosier, 2012; Watson et al., 2014), the purpose of this study was to perform an initial, descriptive examination of a district virtual personal fitness course in Georgia and determine the degree to which its design aligns with the criteria established by the National Association of Sport and Physical Education (NASPE) Initial Guidelines for Online Physical Education (PE) (2007). This study aimed to answer the following overarching research question: To what degree does the design of the virtual personal fitness course align with the NASPE Initial Guide- lines for Online PE? A thorough document analysis of the course website and student activity tracking data along with semi-structured interviews and electronic virtual personal fitness student and teacher anonymous survey questionnaires provide a detailed description of the course and illustrate the degree to which its design aligns with the 10 guidelines. Triangulated results of this study indicate superficial strong alignment with eight of the 10 guidelines, and moderate alignment with two of the 10 guidelines, but more evidence is needed to confirm alignment in practice. The researcher concludes that revisions to the guidelines are necessary to better capture evidence of alignment to further promote quality, optimal student learning and best practice in single district virtual personal fitness environments. The results of this study contribute to the over- all knowledge base of single district virtual personal fitness programs and set the stage for future research endeavors to investigate this phenomena and add to the literature in this area.

Purpose: This research considers the design and operation of a non-modular professional doctorate to meet the needs of professionals working in the built environment who wish to obtain a doctoral qualification. It seeks to identify the essential components and support mechanisms to provide an alternative to other forms of doctorate which draws on their strengths while addressing some of their shortcomings. It answers questions regarding the suitability of a programme which can successfully operate within a reasonable timeframe. Research Design: The research is set in a real-life phenomenological paradigm concerning the experience and development of candidates registered for a professional doctorate. The conceptual framework governed both the design of the research and the design of a two-stage curriculum. Regular intervention and evaluation using action research methodology was used to improve practice. The research produced findings through multiple sources of evidence. Data were collected from course documentation, online discussion forums, focus groups, individual reflections and interviews. Findings: The work found that a community of practice consisting of candidates and staff, specifically focused on learning and the continuous development of candidates, provides a suitable vehicle for professional doctorate work. Candidates benefit from engaging in carefully constructed summative and formative assessment with prompt feedback. The assessment informed regular workshops containing an active learning format supplemented through additional support from a virtual learning environment. Crucially, all three components are required to support each other by drawing on their individual strengths. Conclusion: This action research project made a modest but significant contribution to curriculum development at doctoral level. The research developed a model which enabled academic practice to help candidates improve their professional practice. Self-motivated candidates with appropriate supervisory support can complete a professional doctorate within a realistic timeframe when there is carefully constructed synergy between their doctorate, its supporting mechanisms and their own professional practice.

Duplicating a time series study done by Kuhlthau and associates in 1989, this study examines the applicability of the Information Search Process (ISP) Model in the context of a virtual learning environment. This study confirms that students given an information seeking task in a virtual learning environment do exhibit the stages indicated by the ISP Model. The six-phase ISP Model is shown to be valid for describing the different stages of cognitive, affective, and physical tasks individuals progress through when facing a situation where they must search for information to complete an academic task in a virtual learning environment. The findings in this study further indicate there is no relationship between the amount of computer experience subjects possess and demonstrating the patterns of thoughts, feelings, and actions described by the ISP Model. The study demonstrates the ISP Model to be independent of the original physical library environments where the model was developed. An attempt is made to represent the ISP model in a slightly different manner that provides more of the sense of motion and interaction among the components of thoughts, feelings, and action than is currently provided for in the model. The study suggests that the development of non-self-reporting data collection techniques would be useful in complementing and furthering research to enhance and refine the representation of the ISP Model. Additionally, expanding the research to include the examination of group interaction is called for to enhance the ISP Model and develop further applications that could potentially aid educational delivery in all types of learning environments.

Esta pesquisa aborda a questão da acessibilidade e da usabilidade em ambientes virtuais de aprendizagem que tem como foco o desenvolvimento da aprendizagem de estudantes surdos. O problema de investigação centra-se no seguinte questionamento: Que princípios um ambiente virtual de aprendizagem deve ter para que o estudante surdo possa desenvolver a aprendizagem? Temos como objetivo analisar o ambiente virtual de aprendizagem utilizado pela instituição lócus da pesquisa, bem como descrever e avaliar a efetividade do ambiente no desenvolvimento da aprendizagem do estudante surdo. Esta pesquisa possui uma abordagem qualitativa realizada por meio de revisão bibliográfica e de pesquisa empírica com base na análise de entrevistas semiestruturadas realizadas com estudantes surdos, os intérpretes de libras, a coordenação do Núcleo de acessibilidade da universidade lócus da pesquisa, como também a análise do ambiente virtual de aprendizagem utilizado pela universidade. No intuito de pesquisarmos a questão da acessibilidade e da usabilidade de ambientes virtuais de aprendizagem no que diz respeito ao desenvolvimento da aprendizagem de estudantes surdos, elaboramos quatro capítulos. Os conteúdos presentes nos capítulos dizem respeito à trajetória da educação à distância no Brasil e no mundo, os conceitos de acessibilidade e de usabilidade, bem como o perfil de acesso de estudantes surdos à educação, aspectos relacionados à educação de surdos, a identidade surda, aspectos da aprendizagem e a cognição visual como possibilidade de aprendizagem. Além disso, discutimos os ambientes virtuais de aprendizagem e como a acessibilidade e a usabilidade se constituem concretamente nesses ambientes, principalmente em relação à aprendizagem de estudantes surdos, enfatizando a linguagem visual como possibilidade para o desenvolvimento da aprendizagem de estudantes surdos e o percurso metodológico delineando os sujeitos da pesquisa, caracterizando o lócus da pesquisa e analisando os dados coletados nas entrevistas. Como considerações finais, são propostos delineamentos relativos às ações de acessibilidade e de usabilidade dos ambientes virtuais de aprendizagem; a utilização destes ambientes por estudantes surdos bem como no processo, desenvolvimento e efetivação da aprendizagem de tais estudantes no âmbito da educação a distância; a compreensão do papel da cognição visual na construção do conhecimento do sujeito surdo e a ações relacionadas ao protagonismo do sujeito surdo nas instituições de ensino considerando as necessidades deste grupo, advindas do próprio sujeito. / This research addresses the issue of accessibility and usability in virtual learning environments that focuses on the development of learning for deaf students. The research problem focuses on the following question: What principles should a virtual learning environment have in order for the deaf student to develop learning? We aim to analyze the virtual learning environment used by the research institution, as well as to describe and evaluate the effectiveness of the environment in the development of deaf student learning, This research has a qualitative approach carried out by means of bibliographical review and empirical research based on the analysis of semi-structured interviews with deaf students, the interpreters of pounds, the coordination of the Accessibility Center of the university locus of the research, as well as the analysis of the virtual learning environment used by the university. In order to investigate the accessibility and usability of virtual learning environments with regard to the development of learning of deaf students, we have elaborated four chapters. The contents present in the chapters relate to the trajectory of distance education in Brazil and in the world, the concepts of accessibility and usability, as well as the access profile of deaf students to education, aspects related to education of the deaf, deaf identity, aspects of learning and visual cognition as a learning possibility. In addition, we discuss the virtual learning environments and how accessibility and usability are concretely constituted in these environments, especially in relation to the learning of deaf students, emphasizing the visual language as a possibility for the development of the learning of deaf students and the methodological path delineating the research subjects, characterizing the research locus and analyzing the data collected in the interviews. As final considerations, proposals are outlined regarding the accessibility and usability actions of virtual learning environments; the use of these environments by deaf students as well as in the process, development and effectiveness of the learning of such students in the scope of distance education; the understanding of the role of visual cognition in the construction of knowledge of the deaf subject and actions related to the protagonism of the deaf subject in educational institutions considering the needs of this group, coming from the subject itself.