<Emphasis Type="Bold">Impact of object manipulation,customization and social loafing on competencies management in 3D Virtual Worlds</Emphasis>

3D Virtual Worlds (VW) are rich and promising collaboration tools limitedly introduced to support competence management, yet, extensively used to enhance knowledge sharing (KS) and support knowledge application (KA). Nevertheless, KS and KA represent a challenging medium to leverage individual as well as organization’s competencies. Characterized by a realistic visual dimension in representing work environment and a growing capacity of simulation, 3D platforms facilitate and value competence formation. Present study analyzes role of 3D VW technology unique characteristics (i.e. object manipulation and avatar and 3D environment customization) and specific personal character social loafing, on competencies acquisition. Individual performance and organizational performance were measured to assess individual and organizational competences. Answers from 144 users of 3D VWs were analyzed. Results show that social loafing has significant negative effect on knowledge sharing. Customization and object manipulation have significant, yet small moderating effect on 3D VW technology use and knowledge sharing. KS subsequent effect on KA, individual and organizational competencies are significant. Limitations and new research directions are presented.     

The Impact of Flow Experience and Personality Type on the Intention to Use Virtual World

Virtual World (VW) had gained and lost its popularity over the past decades. Although people were initially excited about the potential of such technology, the original excitement has not been maintained and the VW has lost its reputation. We design an experimental study to learn about the factors that impact the intention to use or not use VW (i.e., Second Life, SL). Our proposed model is based on the Theory of Reasoned Action, Technology Acceptance Model, Embodied Social Presence theory, Flow theory, and Jungian personality theory. Over 160 students participated in this study and the results support our proposed model, where a positive flow experience with VW influences the attitude towards VW, in turn influencing intention to use VW. Furthermore, VW flow experience can itself be impacted by personality of the individuals behind the avatars in VW, perceived peer influence, perceived usefulness, and familiarity with VW.     

Spatial structuring,cinematic mediation,and evocative narrative elements in the design of an RT 3D VE: The Common Tales Project

The practice-based research project Common Tales investigates and formulates methods of spatial structuring, cinematic mediation, and evocative narrative elements in the design of a meaningful Real Time 3-Dimensional Virtual Environment (RT 3D VE). It is a collaboration between the Digital Studios (University of Cambridge), the National Film and Television School (NFTS), and Sony Computer Entertainment Europe (SCEE), and combines the know-how of the industry partner (SCEE) with academic expertise (Digital Studios) and practical knowledge of film-making (NFTS). The unique inputs into the project of the three partners combine to provide and shape insights and outcomes impossible for any of the three individually to have produced, and provide a sound template for collaborative research.     

The case for virtual teaming systems

Virtual teaming systems (VTS) can provide your organization with new capabilities that will enhance its competitiveness. Our company, Ventana Corp., markets GroupSystems, the first virtual teaming system. The ideas behind GroupSystems came from years of rigorous academic research into the ways people collaborate. A VTS applies computing technology to team work, using automation to accelerate collaborative thinking, consensus building, decision making, and planning. It also provides the seed for a knowledge base of organizational expertise     

Interaction design studio learning in virtual worlds

The paper suggests that virtual worlds (VWs) have many unique advantages for supporting interaction design studio activities, provided that they are designed to include appropriate workplaces and interactive tools to foster collaboration and creativity. We present an approach for employing VWs that proposes the use of prospective tools and workplaces throughout the following key activities of interaction design studio courses: design brief, design thinking, design practice (conceptual and detailed), the desk crit, design review and user evaluation. Then, we describe a blended interaction design studio course on the basis of this approach, which ran through a whole semester. We found that the VW design studio is an engaging and constructive experience for students: In the VW environment, students and tutors held many online meetings, and students constructed several models about their design project, developed a digital prototype and conducted a remote usability evaluation. In addition, the persistence of the environment and the developed VW tools helped students and tutors to achieve careful feedback and reflection during the design project lifetime. Nevertheless, a number of challenges remain for wider implementation: the refinement of the instructional design approach, the usability of VW tools, further integration of VWs to professional design tools and the conduction of other full-scale VW design studio courses.     

A Virtual World Grammar for automatic generation of virtual worlds

Hybrid systems such as those that combine 3D virtual worlds and organization based multiagent systems add new visual and communication features for multiuser applications. The design of such hybrid and dynamic systems is a challenging task. In this paper, we propose a system that can automatically generate a 3D virtual world (VW) from an organization based multiagent system (MAS) specification that establishes the activities participants can engage on. Both shape grammar and virtual world paradigms inspired us to propose a Virtual World Grammar (VWG) to support the generation process of a virtual world design. A VWG includes semantic information about both MAS specification and shape grammar elements. This information, along with heuristics and validations, guides the VW generation producing functional designs. To support the definition and execution of a Virtual World Grammar, we have developed a so named Virtual World Builder Toolkit (VWBT). We illustrate this process by generating a 3D visualization of a virtual institution from its specification.     

基于多Agent的虚拟企业结构与信息交互

虚拟企业具有分布性、自主性，互操作性，开放性等特点，传统的企业信息系统已经不能满足虚拟企业的这些特殊要求，在分析了多代理技术在虚拟企业中应用的必要性和可行性基础上，将多代理技术引入到虚拟企业信息系统中，构造了一个基于市场机制（Agora）的多Agent虚拟企业体系结构，在此基础上给出了Agent间的合作与协商模型，并描述了Agent之间的信息交互过程，最后对支持虚拟企业生命周期的原型系统的实现过程及信息交互过程进行了描述。     

虚拟会议空间的研究与实现

支持协同工作的虚拟环境是当前虚拟现实技术研究的热点,虚拟会议空间能提供无缝的会场环境、眼神接触、凝视感知等普通多媒体会议系统不具备的虚拟协同工作环境。介绍了已成功鉴定的虚拟空间会议系统VST中虚拟会议空间的构造模型与实现方法。     

Design of a multimedia object-oriented DBMS

The emerging multimedia information (such as video, image, voice, graphics) services have imposed many new requirements and research considerations on the design of database management systems (DBMSs). Conventionally, a multimedia DBMS is designed by developing a multimedia presentation layer on top of a pre-existing object-oriented DBMS (which can be truly object-oriented or relational-based), such that the core of the DBMS was developed earlier independent of the design of the multimedia presentation layer. Due to the fact that multimedia capabilities are not actually embedded in the DBMSs, such systems tend to provide only a rather limited set of functionalities in multimedia and are not satisfactory in supporting multimedia applications. This paper describes some key features of a multimedia object-oriented DBMS that is currently being developed. In this system the DBMS is carefully redesigned to provide special multimedia capabilities, such that the mismatch between the DBMS and the multimedia application layer can be eliminated. In particular, this paper will focus on unique multimedia capabilities including multimedia object modeling, video data management, and distributed collaboration. This project was supported in part by Rome Laboratory, U.S. Air Force under the contract no. F30602-94-C-0090     

From Profiles to Patterns: A New View of Task-Technology Fit

Continuing advances in the capabilities of communication and information technologies provide a wide array of interesting ways for people to collaborate across space, time, cultures, and organizational boundaries. While the use of collaboration technologies spreads, researchers seek answers to understanding how best to match different technology capabilities with the tasks that teams need to accomplish. Different theories of task-technology fit have been promoted and these theories help to identify key issues of interest to both researchers and practitioners who seek the answer to the best technology support for collaboration. We examine existing theories of fit for collaboration technology and propose a new view, using the theoretical frame of patterns. We argue that this fresh perspective is particularly relevant in the virtual contexts that are so important in the dynamic life of organizations today.     

Educational virtual environments: A ten-year review of empirical research (1999–2009)

This study is a ten-year critical review of empirical research on the educational applications of Virtual Reality (VR). Results show that although the majority of the 53 reviewed articles refer to science and mathematics, researchers from social sciences also seem to appreciate the educational value of VR and incorporate their learning goals in Educational Virtual Environments (EVEs). Although VR supports multisensory interaction channels, visual representations predominate. Few are the studies that incorporate intuitive interactivity, indicating a research trend in this direction. Few are the settings that use immersive EVEs reporting positive results on users’ attitudes and learning outcomes, indicating that there is a need for further research on the capabilities of such systems. Features of VR that contribute to learning such as first order experiences, natural semantics, size, transduction, reification, autonomy and presence are exploited according to the educational context and content. Presence seems to play an important role in learning and it is a subject needing further and intensive studies. Constructivism seems to be the theoretical model the majority of the EVEs are based on. The studies present real world, authentic tasks that enable context and content dependent knowledge construction. They also provide multiple representations of reality by representing the natural complexity of the world. Findings show that collaboration and social negotiation are not only limited to the participants of an EVE, but exist between participants and avatars, offering a new dimension to computer assisted learning. Little can yet be concluded regarding the retention of the knowledge acquired in EVEs. Longitudinal studies are necessary, and we believe that the main outcome of this study is the future research perspectives it brings to light.     

航空制造业虚拟企业协作平台设计研究

航空制造业虚拟企业的生产计划和控制有赖于联盟企业的信息协作。虚拟企业协作平台使航空制造业生产网络内部不同企业主体之间的知识与技术的传递与转移机制与路径得以实现。本文设计的CSSCM平台提供的企业服务和项目服务,主要功能有保障全局信息与共享信息的传递与转移,内部信息的控制和维护,同时其协同管理的功能能将分布式协同项目管理与协作支持技术进行有机的结合,有力地保障航空制造业虚拟企业间信息的处理与传递。     

How cues of what can be done in a virtual world influence learning: An affordance perspective

What we know about learning outcomes for collaborative tasks in virtual environments is a confusing set of results. Many organizations have been hesitant about their use of virtual environments for this reason. Virtual worlds (VWs) have received attention as environments for learning, yet little is known about their attributes, or how they affect learning in collaborative tasks. James Gibson proposed a theory of affordance to explain how cues in an environment are perceived and lead to some course of action. Based on his theory, we developed a model to describe how cues of what can be done in a VW influence learning. In doing so, we focused on the situativity afforded by VWs through context and social facilitation. We showed how VW artifacts and cues make it easier for users to understand the conditions and interactions in a VW.     

Supporting collaborative engineering using an intelligent web service middleware

Collaborative Engineering tasks are difficult to manage and involve a high amount of risk - as such, these tasks generally involve only well-known pre-established relationships. Such collaborations are generally quite static and do not allow for dynamic reactions to changes in the environment. Furthermore, not all optimal resource providers can be utilised for the respective tasks as they are potentially unknown. The TrustCoM project elaborated the means to create and manage Virtual Organisations in a trusted and secure manner integrating different providers on-demand. However, TrustCoM focused more on the VO than on the participant, whereas the BREIN project is now enhancing the intelligence of such VO systems to support even providers with little business expertise and provide them with capabilities to optimise their performance. This paper analyses the capabilities of current VO frameworks on the example of TrustCoM and identifies the gaps from the participant’s perspective. It then shows how BREIN addresses these gaps.     

Collaboration Challenges: Bridging the IT Support Gap

The more collaborative enterprises are, the better they perform. However, current collaboration technologies do not contribute as much as expected to collaboration quality. Collaboration technology seems to be stuck in just overcoming the limitation of people not being in the same place at the same time. Real time communications are supported through such things as web-conferencing and instant messaging, while email, wikis, and web-based repositories provide the electronic equivalent of the shared file cabinet. Although some technologies support workflow and project management to a degree, there is little support for the joint development lifecycle of planning, creating, evaluating, negotiating, and consolidating group work. Focusing broadly on collaboration challenges highlights limitations of current technology and can help provide direction for the kinds of information technology that will be needed to bridge the IT support gap to meet current and future collaboration challenges.     

Perceived enablers of 3D virtual environments for virtual team learning and innovation

Virtual teams consist of geographically distributed employees working with a common goal using mostly technology for communication and collaboration. Virtual teams face a number of challenges, discussed in the literature in terms of communication through technology, difficulty in building trust, conveying social cues, and creating awareness, as well as cultural differences. These challenges impact collaboration, but also learning and innovation. This research focuses on how a social medium, the 3D virtual environment, is perceived to enable learning and innovation in virtual teams. We study this through a qualitative study based on interviews of distributed work managers’ perception of VEs. The major findings are that VEs are perceived to create collaborative learning atmospheres for virtual teams in terms of enabling engagement, a shared context awareness, and support in social network building. Another finding is that VEs are perceived to enable team learning, knowledge development, and collaboration through persistence of content, information sharing, learning through role-plays and simulations, and visualization. Furthermore, VEs enable the development of co-created content as well as new ways of working in virtual teams.     

基于S2SH的在线项目管理平台的设计与实现

首先对现状作分析,然后简单介绍S2SH(S2SH,Struts2+Hibernate+Spring)框架技术,在分析UML建模技术的基础上,提出基于S2SH的在线项目管理平台。该平台采用Struts2+Hibernate+Spring Web框架和SQL数据存储技术,实现项目管理、人员管理、任务列表和消息板等多个模块,为项目成员开展网上远程协作提供服务。     

ICT capabilities for supporting collaborative work on business processes within the digital content industry

The digital content industry requires the integration of specialized information and communications technology (ICT) capabilities to support collaborative work for planning and executing its business processes. In particular, this knowledge-intensive industry lacks for adequate control on product documentation, inter and intra organizational resources management, and process monitoring which is required for supporting the high demand of projects typically constrained in time, costs, and quality. This paper presents a defined maturity model named DigiCoMM to assess collaboration and interoperability capabilities that are specific to pre-production, production, and post-production processes within the digital content industry. It also presents MONO, a computer-supported collaborative work (CSCW) software for supporting the incremental transition of companies through the different levels of the maturity model. MONO was developed in the context of the DAVID research project (Strategic Programme for the Research and Development of the Colombian Animation and Video Games Industry), during the period of 2012–2015. This model and software were used to assess and support the collaborative capabilities of several animation and video game companies in Colombia.     

Traffic analysis and synthetic models of second life

Virtual Worlds (VW), such as Massive Multiplayer Online Social Games, have been gaining increasing attention in the last few years, mainly due to the new way users interact with them. However, little effort has been devoted to understand their traffic profile and the implications to the traffic management area. With the current growing rate of VWs’ usage, their traffic demand could eventually impose a significant burden on the operation of a typical Internet Service Provider (ISP) network. In this paper, we seek to understand the traffic behavior of an increasingly popular VW application, namely Second Life (SL), from both the connection and network level perspectives. We also show results of a traffic analysis of a SL client, when an avatar performs different actions in the VW, at different places and under different network conditions. Our results show that SL makes intensive use of network resources (mostly bandwidth), since the capacity needed for having a full SL experience (listening to live music) may reach 500 kbps. We then extend the traffic analysis work on SL by providing analytical models for its traffic profile. We aim at helping the network management and planning area to estimate the impact of an intense use of such VW on access links or core networks. Such synthetic models are also useful to the networking research community for the use in network simulations.     

Selecting manufacturing partners in push and pull-type smart collaborative networks

The idea of Collaborative Manufacturing, also known as the Production Networks or Social Manufacturing, has been around for more than 25 years. It is a production concept based on non-hierarchical collaboration among enterprises often referred as Virtual Enterprise (VE). Despite many scientific research and projects with this topic, it is difficult to find an example of fully operational non-hierarchical production network anywhere in the world. However, that fact could be changed very soon. Namely, the new industrial revolution, called Industry 4.0, encourages industrial enterprises to adopt information-communication technology (ICT) and Internet of Things (IoT) into their production systems, thus creating Cyber-Physical Production System (CPPS). From the aspect of production networks, CPPS represents crucial infrastructure, or a missing link between enterprises. Now, with CPPS in place, non-hierarchical networking and collaboration becomes possible through Smart Collaborative Production Networks. In this research, the concept of information system for Smart Collaborative Production Networks was developed and called ‘VENTIS’. Although the idea of the concept is to manage the collaboration inside Virtual Enterprise, in this research, a special focus has been put on manufacturing planning phase in which optimization problem known as the Partner Selection Problem (PSP) occurs. Since the PSP in manufacturing phase is far more complex than partner selection during the collaborative product development phase, new research premises regarding the Virtual Enterprise type have been set. Two types of Virtual Enterprise business models – Push-type and Pull-type – have been defined in this research. If VE is Push-type, HUMANT algorithm is used to solve PSP that occurs in that case. If VE is Pull-type, a special procedure, inspired by phenomenological reduction, has been established in which set of a priori created VEs is compared with theoretically ‘the best’ VE and theoretically ‘the worst’ VE. Enterprises’ data of production network from Dalmatia (Split-Dalmatia County, Croatia) is used as a Case Study to present ‘VENTIS’ concept and to present the procedure for creation of sustainable Virtual Enterprise.