Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wyoming, 2006. / Title from PDF title page (viewed on Dec. 20, 2007). Includes bibliographical references (p. 78-83).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 2003. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 312-319).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of North Carolina at Greensboro, 2007. / Title from PDF t.p. (viewed Feb. 29, 2008). Directed by David F. Ayers, Sam Miller; submitted to the School of Education. Includes bibliographical references (p. 229-256).

Thesis PlanB (M.S.)--University of Wisconsin--Stout, 2008. / ONLINE VERSION INCOMPLETE: APPENDIX A, P. 51; APPENDIX B, P. 52; APPENDIX I, P. 59; & APPENDIS J, P. 6 MISSING. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (MTech. degree in Business Information Systems.)--Tshwane University of Technology, 2010. / This research addresses how mobile learning by means of a virtual community of practice can facilitate interaction and knowledge sharing amongst contact university learners as they traverse varied learning environments. Using Activity theory and the theory of social presence, the research aimed to provide an informed understanding of virtual communities of practice and how they manifest in a mobile learning environment. In this dissertation, virtual communities of practice are argued to effectively facilitate personalized learning support in an environment where learning is not confined to particular places. Importantly, virtual communities of practice are fundamentally modeled by awareness of context and social presence. Informed by empirical evidence gathered through a Contextual Inquiry method, a field research framework that depends on interaction with users in the context of their work, this study shows how mobile learners in a typical South African university could be afforded personalized academic support as they traverse varied learning environments.

This research study, funded by the Leverhulme Trust as part of the CURLIEW project, explored how learners understand, construct, express, and manage identity when virtual worlds are utilized in higher education and how the virtual world itself might impact on concepts of identity. In particular, the study focused on aspects of learner identity from the physical world and learner identity in virtual worlds, the latter being a ‘translation’ of physical identity markers onto the avatar. The research builds on the experiences of 75 student participants, who employed virtual worlds as learning environments. A narrative research approach was applied to thematically analyze interview, focus group, and observational data, collected from two educational contexts at two British universities. Three themes emerged from the analysis and interpretation of these data, which are presented as narratives of Pursuit, Embodiment, and Resistance. The study makes two main contributions to existing knowledge on learning in virtual environments: firstly, it reveals that virtual worlds are ‘threshold concepts’, in which students need to be able to align their learner identities with the utilization of virtual worlds to integrate them successfully in their learning. Secondly, the study develops a five-dimensional typology of the ways in which students engage and manage identity directly in the virtual world through their avatars. This typology includes: dislocated avatars, representative avatars, avatars as toys and tools, avatars as extensions of self, and avatars as identity extensions. The study demonstrates that engagement with virtual worlds and avatars in the educational context can provide a valuable opportunity to foster critical thinking, if learner identities are given a central place in course design and delivery. Then, virtual world learning can enable students and tutors to reflect critically on what shapes, influences, and constrains identity in virtual worlds, in the physical world, in higher education, and beyond.

M. Tech. Business Information Systems / A Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) enables teaching and learning pedagogy that allows students to study without geographical barriers and time constraints. VLE promotes innovations in institutions of higher learning and encourages lecturers and students to move away from the face-to-face learning method to virtual learning pedagogy. The ability to learn anywhere, any time (which is what VLE is all about) was found to be the most appealing. Furthermore, VLE enables institutions of higher learning to enrol large numbers of students without having to worry about the size of the classroom. Global learning, as well as collaboration between leaners and lecturers is encouraged and supported through VLEs. Although institutions of higher learning spend huge amounts of money on technologies such as VLE, most VLEs are still not contextualized to cater for the needs of students in developing countries such as South Africa. This leads to the VLEs in developing countries not being effectively utilised. This study aims at designing a contextualized VL model that suits South African institutions of higher learning. The study identifies factors necessary for contextualizing VLE to fit the student's perspective in a developing country (in this case, South Africa).

<p> This thesis demonstrates the combination of virtual reality (VR) and artificial intelligence (AI) specifically exploring the practical application of Natural Language Processing (NLP) and GPT-based models in educational VR laboratories. The objective is to design a comprehensive learning environment where users can independently engage in laboratory experiments, deriving similar educational outcomes as they would from a traditional, physical laboratory setup, particularly within the realms of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) disciplines.</p> <p>Using machine learning techniques and authentic virtual reality simulating educational experiments, we propose an advanced learning platform—Virtual Reality Instructional Laboratory Environment (VRILE). A key feature of the VRILE is an AI-powered instructor capable of not only guiding the learners through the tasks but also responding intelligently to their actions in real time.</p> <p>The AI constituent of the VRILE uses the GPT-2 model for text generation in the field of Natural Language Processing (NLP). To ensure the generated instructions were contextually relevant and meaningful to lab participants, the model was trained on a dataset derived from an augmentation over user interactions within the VR environment.</p> <p>By pushing the boundaries of how AI can be utilized in educational VR environments, this research paves the way for broader adoption across other domains of engineering education. Furthermore, it provides a solid foundation for future research in this interdisciplinary field. It marks a significant stride in the integration of technology and education, encouraging more ventures into this promising frontier.</p>