#LIVING IN A VIRTUAL CITY SOFTWARE#

In the case study we did the direct observation, collected statistics and students’ feedback in form of essays and questionnaires.Norwegian students were also asked to make suggestions how they would have designed a virtual campus representing NTNU and a virtual city of Trondheim.

They were given an exercise where they were supposed to explore the Virtual City, analyze different design features and discuss the usage of virtual worlds for learning and socializing. In the case study we had 34 Norwegian and 5 Russian students. In this virtual city we have performed a case study to identify the expectations that present-day students have of a virtual campus and of a virtual city as well as to investigate what functionality and content are needed for such a system.

#LIVING IN A VIRTUAL CITY SOFTWARE#

Second: Integrate Social software tools investigating how they can support the community and social activities in the city context. It is a non-commercial research project where we: First: Study how a virtual city context can facilitate educational process. Virtual Yoshkar-Ola provides an accurate recreation of the central part of the real city. In reality Yoshkar-Ola is a city in the Volga region in Russia.

Using a ‘city’ metaphor, we have developed a 3D virtual world VCYO enriched with social and educational tools.

Trying to solve these problems we run the project that includes tools for learning and socializing as well as a city context. And the lack of learning and socializing support in virtual cities (Virtual worlds that represent the physical world in a very direct and realistic way do not have satisfactory support of learning and socializing). Our motivation can be defined as: The lack of connecting virtual and real in social virtual worlds (Such worlds like Second Life resemble only little parts of real world).

Our idea is a concept of an educational virtual city.

Virtual cities are often created within bigger virtual worlds such as Second Life, using their advantages, but also being restricted by their limitations. The most known virtual cities are made for: Geo-navigation, such as Google Earth Heritage preservation, such as, Rome Reborn Others for gaming and socializing, for example Citypixel. ‘City’ is a powerful metaphor and used in a number of virtual world projects.

A city context can extend the possibilities of a virtual campus to support learning and socializing.

This work is a result of the collaboration between NTNU in Norway by me and Ekaterina Prasolova-Forland and MarSTU in Russia by Mikhail Morozov and Alexey Gerasimov. In the paper we also report the results of a case study that we performed to examine our initial ideas. In our work we are developing the concept of a Virtual Campus and in this paper we present one of our ideas – the integration a virtual campus into the context of a virtual city. I am a PhD-student at NTNU and I’d like to present you our paper.

Good afternoon! My name is Mikhail Fominykh.

Living in a virtual city