Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
4
The Users' Avatars Nonverbal Interaction in
Collaborative Virtual Environments for Learning
Adriana Peña Pérez Negrón 1 , Raúl A. Aguilar 2 and Luis A. Casillas 1
1 CUCEI-Universidad de Guadalajara
2 Universidad Autónoma de Yucatán-Mathematics School
Mexico
1. Introduction
In a Collaborative Virtual Environment (CVE) for learning, an automatic analysis of
collaborative interaction is helpful, either for a human or a virtual tutor, in a number of
ways: to personalize or adapt the learning activity, to supervise the apprentices' progress, to
scaffold learners or to track the students' involvement, among others. However, this
monitoring task is a challenge that demands to understand and assess the interaction in a
computational mode.
In real life, when people interact to carry out a collaborative goal, they tend to communicate
exclusively in terms that facilitate the task achievement; this communication goes through
verbal and nonverbal channels. In multiuser computer scenarios, the graphical
representation of the user, his/her avatar, is his/her means to interact with others and it
comprises the means to display nonverbal cues as gaze direction or pointing.
Particularly in a computer environment with visual feedback for interaction, collaborative
interaction analysis should not be based only on dialogue, but also on the participants'
nonverbal communication (NVC) where the interlocutor's answer can be an action or a
gesture.
Human nonverbal behavior has been broadly studied, but as Knapp and Hall pointed out
on their well-known topic (2007): “…the nonverbal cues sent in the form of computer-generated
visuals will challenge the study of nonverbal communication in ways never envisioned”.
Within this context, in a CVE each user action can be evaluated, in such a way that his/her
nonverbal behavior represents a powerful resource for collaborative interaction analyses.
On the other hand, virtual tutors are mainly intended for guiding and/or supervising the
training task, that is, they are task-oriented rather than oriented to facilitate collaboration.
With the aim to conduct automatic analyses intended to facilitate collaboration in small
groups, the interpretation of the users' avatars nonverbal interaction during collaboration in
CVEs for learning is here discussed. This scheme was formulated based on a NVC literature
review in both, face-to-face and Virtual Environments (VE). In addition, an empirical study
conducted to understand the potential of this monitoring type based on nonverbal behavior
is presented.
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