Computer Science and Information Technology Vol. 2(2), pp. 100 - 107
DOI: 10.13189/csit.2014.020207
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A Collaboration Facilitator Model for Learning Virtual Environments

Adriana Peña Pérez Negrón ^*
CUCEI of the Universidad de Guadalajara, Guadalajara, Jalisco, México

ABSTRACT

In virtual environments most pedagogical virtual tutors or facilitators supervise or guide the learning activity; they are task-oriented. In contrast, the here proposed facilitator is strictly about monitoring some aspects of collaboration and offering advice in this regard. In a multiuser virtual environment, that is, a Collaborative Virtual Environment, oral communication is chosen over written communication in order to enhance the feelings of presence, co-presence, and immersion for the user; but oral communication analysis presents a high resource overhead. As an alternative, the monitoring activity of this facilitator is based on two nonverbal cues of interaction: talking-turn patterns and object manipulation. An empirical study to validate this approach was conducted based on the participants’ perception regarding the suitability of the facilitator’s messages; the results showed that the students’ accepted a significant number of generated advice.

KEYWORDS
Virtual Tutor, Virtual Facilitator, CVE for Learning, Nonverbal Interaction

Cite This Paper in IEEE or APA Citation Styles
(a). IEEE Format:
[1] Adriana Peña Pérez Negrón , "A Collaboration Facilitator Model for Learning Virtual Environments," Computer Science and Information Technology, Vol. 2, No. 2, pp. 100 - 107, 2014. DOI: 10.13189/csit.2014.020207.

(b). APA Format:
Adriana Peña Pérez Negrón (2014). A Collaboration Facilitator Model for Learning Virtual Environments. Computer Science and Information Technology, 2(2), 100 - 107. DOI: 10.13189/csit.2014.020207.