Processes In Virtual Environments Research Articles

Research methodologies in social sciences new ways of constructing knowledge in the virtual world

Introduction: With the arrival of the pandemic, educational centers, universities, institutes, have had to adapt to the trend of virtual education in its various modalities, face-to-face, blended or hybrid, due to the limitations imposed by illness, travel or geographical distance, an aspect of greater prevalence today, which has imposed changes in the ways of carrying out daily activities that have included even the development processes to achieve new knowledge.Objective: To explore trends in virtual education research methodologies.Method: Documentary review.Results: Despite the haste imposed by the situation, there are options that deserve to make viable the continuity of research as an academic activity; according to the information gathered, it requires some adjustments or adaptations according to the training characteristics of each institution.Conclusions: Changes in society have prompted adjustments in institutional training processes, posing demands towards an adaptation that fosters interaction and meaningful learning. The pandemic accelerated the transition to virtual education, challenging educational institutions to find innovative solutions, which has also affected research, which has had to adapt to virtuality. There are positive experiences that can be shared and replicated to strengthen training and research processes in virtual environments and promote academic development in the social sciences.

Designing and psychometric analysis of an instrument to assess learning process in a virtual environment

BackgroundToday, methods that enable students to benefit from online programs to the fullest and learn independently and self-directed are of critical importance. Many scales have been developed to measure self-directed learning in the physical classroom. This study was conducted to design and assess the psychometric properties of an instrument to assess learning process in a virtual environment.Materials and methodsA questionnaire for assessing s learning process in a virtual environment was developed following six steps. The process began with a systematic search for related articles. A qualitative study was then conducted to identify self-directed learning strategies and processes in virtual environments. The identified strategies were then compared with those from a literature review, and the scale items were developed accordingly. Expert validation, exploratory factor analysis, and reliability analysis were conducted to ensure questionnaire validity and reliability. This study included online postgraduate students from Iranian medical science universities in 2019.ResultsThe scale consisted of 5 factors and 44 items. In exploratory factor analysis, five subscales explained 90% of the total variance. Cronbach’s alpha was 0.91 for the total scale. The interclass correlation coefficient between the test and retest was 0.77.ConclusionA questionnaire designed to assess learning process in a virtual environment for postgraduate virtual students has reasonable psychometric properties, including reasonable internal reliability and construct validity.

EDUCACIÓN SOCIAL MEDIATIZADA CON TECNOLOGÍAS EN UNA RED VIRTUAL DE DESARROLLO

Objetivo: identificar y relacionar aspectos de la educación social mediada por TIC para fortalecer los procesos de enseñanza y de aprendizaje en ambientes virtuales. Metodología: investigación cualitativa de tipo exploratorio, la cual permite abordar con pertinencia el proceso formativo mediado con TIC en entornos no reales, sus necesidades y falencias frente a la construcción de conocimiento y generación de aprendizajes significativos. Hallazgos: el acercamiento al foco de interés dejó ver las potencialidades que ofrece la interacción social y la democratización del conocimiento, y reconocer la relación intrínseca entre el aprendizaje dado en una red virtual de desarrollo y la dimensión social de los partícipes. Conclusiones: se ratifica la necesidad de posibilitar un aprendizaje libre y abierto, que democratice el conocimiento y fomente la participación proactiva, al igual que llevar a cabo procesos de investigación que potencien el valor social, técnico y didáctico de las TIC. De ahí, que una red virtual de desarrollo permite la interacción desde las habilidades sociales del sujeto, y el planteamiento de marcos conceptuales y tecnológicos que cualifiquen el e-learning y la gestión del conocimiento.

Performance Implications of Extended Page Tables on Virtualized x86 Processors

Managing virtual memory is an expensive operation, and becomes even more expensive on virtualized servers. Processing TLB misses on a virtualized x86 server requires a twodimensional page walk that can have 6x more page table lookups, hence 6x more memory references, than a native page table walk. Thus much of the recent research on the subject starts from the assumption that TLB miss processing in virtual environments is significantly more expensive than on native servers. However, we will show that with the latest software stack on modern x86 processors, most of these page table lookups are satisfied by internal paging structure caches and the L1/L2 data caches, and the actual virtualization overhead of TLB miss processing is a modest fraction of the overall time spent processing TLB misses. We show that even for the heaviest workloads, a welltuned application that uses large pages on a recent OS release with a modern hypervisor running on the latest x86 processors sees only minimal degradation from the additional overhead of the two-dimensional page walks in a virtualized server.

Realidad Virtual (HMD) e Interacción desde la Perspectiva de la Construcción Narrativa y la Comunicación: Propuesta Taxonómica

<p>La realidad virtual es un término popularizado por varios autores a partir de los años 80 y 90 para definir los rasgos de los entornos inmersivos generados de manera artificial por medios digitales. Desde las primeras tentativas de desarrollo de entornos sensorialmente inmersivos como Sensorama (1962), los primeros simuladores de vuelo de los 60 o el experimento Aspen Movie Map, la inmersión en entornos virtuales se ha transformado, dando lugar a experiencias que exploran nuevas posibilidades en ámbitos de la comunicación y la narrativa. El artículo realiza una revisión sistemática de la literatura científica de estos fenómenos, y del surgimiento de áreas interdisciplinares como el diseño de interacciones o la experiencia de usuario, para proyectar una clasificación taxonómica de los elementos que conforman la dimensión narrativa en el uso de la realidad virtual, generando modelos que complementen la configuración de los actuales. La propuesta taxonómica supone un paso cualitativo en el estudio de las dimensiones interactivas entre la tecnología, la persona, y el medio.</p>

Aprender y enseñar en entornos virtuales: actividad conjunta, ayuda pedagógica y construcción del conocimiento

The paper proposes a theoretical approach to the learning and teaching processes in virtual environments based on the principles of socio-cultural constructivism. Three key ideas are discussed: learning in virtual environments as a process of knowledge construction, teaching in virtual environments as a process of continuous and sensible assistance to knowledge construction, and teacher-students joint activity as the basic unit of analysis of learning and teaching processes in virtual environments. Implications of these ideas for the design and evaluation of virtual learning environments and learning objects are considered and examined.

Virtual empathy as digital competence in education 3.0

The social and interactive dimension has taken on particular relevance with the appearance of new technologies in education, making the capacity for virtual empathy a key competence for promoting learning processes in virtual environments. Therefore, we conducted a study based on a survey with 704 students who were training as teachers, to whom we applied an adaptation of the empathy scale designed by Gorostiaga et al. (Revista de Educacion 364, 12–38, 2014). The study shows a valid and reliable measure of virtual empathy. Results indicate that only 10 % of the sample reached a high level of virtual empathy and, for this reason, we believe it should be included in teacher education syllabuses.

Performance Implications of Extended Page Tables on Virtualized x86 Processors

Managing virtual memory is an expensive operation, and becomes even more expensive on virtualized servers. Process- ing TLB misses on a virtualized x86 server requires a two-dimensional page walk that can have 6x more page table lookups, hence 6x more memory references, than a native page table walk. Thus much of the recent research on the subject starts from the assumption that TLB miss processing in virtual environments is significantly more expensive than on native servers. However, we will show that with the latest software stack on modern x86 processors, most of these page-table lookups are satisfied by internal paging structure caches and the L1/L2 data caches, and the actual virtualization overhead of TLB miss processing is a modest fraction of the overall time spent processing TLB misses. In this paper, we present a detailed accounting of the TLB miss processing costs on virtualized x86 servers for an exhaustive set of workloads, in particular, two very demanding industry standard workloads. We show that an implementation of the TPC-C workload that actively uses 475 GB of memory on a 72-CPU Haswell-EP server spends 20% of its time processing TLB misses when the application runs in a VM. Although this is a non-trivial amount, it is only 4.2% higher than the TLB miss processing costs on bare metal. The multi-VM VMmark benchmark sees 12.3% in TLB miss processing, but only 4.3% of that can be attributed to virtualization overheads. We show that even for the heaviest workloads, a well-tuned application that uses large pages on a recent OS release with a modern hypervisor running on the latest x86 processors sees only minimal degradation from the additional overhead of the two-dimensional page walks in a virtualized server.

Virtual Laboratory of Bottling Process with Temperature Control in an Autoclave

Technological advances in the area of virtual laboratories in recent years, have made possible the implementation of industrial processes in virtual environments for different purposes, such as monitoring and control of these processes, and as a didactic aid in the education field at professional level. This development offers the capability to navigate and control a graphical environment of a bottling process in the brewery industry. As well as being accessible from any virtual platform with internet access.

Effects of Applying the Site Map Principle in an Online Learning Environment in Higher Education

Web interfaces play a very important role in teaching-learning processes in virtual environments, since this is how students carry out their activity. This paper describes a web interface for online learning based on a graphic map that orients learners, tries to reduce cognitive overload, gives access to learning resources and personalizes learning. The interface was designed to guide the learning process in accordance with Shapiro’s “site map principle”. The objective of this article is to analyze the impact of such web interface on students' satisfaction with the learning process and on their academic performance. We conducted experimental research. The experiment tested the goodness of the interface among students enrolled in a Multimedia Degree in an open university. We used the T-Test, the Chi-square Test and the Kendall correlation Test. The results showed that the interface had a positive impact on students’ satisfaction and performance. It also encouraged students to take a more proactive role in their learning activity than with the “normal” interface. These results are in keeping with the features the site map principle has shown in face-to-face environments.

Neuroelectric adaptations to cognitive processing in virtual environments: an exercise-related approach.

Recently, virtual environments (VEs) are suggested to encourage users to exercise regularly. The benefits of chronic exercise on cognitive performance are well documented in non-VE neurophysiological and behavioural studies. Based on event-related potentials (ERP) such as the N200 and P300, cognitive processing may be interpreted on a neuronal level. However, exercise-related neuroelectric adaptation in VE remains widely unclear and thus characterizes the primary aim of the present study. Twenty-two healthy participants performed active (moderate cycling exercise) and passive (no exercise) sessions in three VEs (control, front, surround), each generating a different sense of presence. Within sessions, conditions were randomly assigned, each lasting 5 min and including a choice reaction-time task to assess cognitive performance. According to the international 10:20 system, EEG with real-time triggered stimulus onset was recorded, and peaks of N200 and P300 components (amplitude, latency) were exported for analysis. Heart rate was recorded, and sense of presence assessed prior to and following each session and condition. Results revealed an increase in ERP amplitudes (N200: p < 0.001; P300: p < 0.001) and latencies (N200: p < 0.001) that were most pronounced over fronto-central and occipital electrode sites relative to an increased sense of presence (p < 0.001); however, ERP were not modulated by exercise (each p > 0.05). Hypothesized to mirror cognitive processing, decreases of cognitive performance's accuracy and reaction time failed significance. With respect to previous research, the present neuroelectric adaptation gives reason to believe in compensative neuronal resources that balance demanding cognitive processing in VE to avoid behavioural inefficiency.

Diseño funcional y propuesta de implementación de una herramienta de apoyo a la construcción colaborativa de conocimiento

Este artículo describe el proceso de conceptualización y diseño funcional de un foro electrónico, que se propone facilitar aquellos procesos de aprendizaje que toman como base la comunicación, pero también la colaboración y la construcción de conocimiento, así como su seguimiento y evaluación. La experiencia se basa en un proyecto de innovación que implicó el diseño, el desarrollo y la implementación piloto de esta herramienta de comunicación asíncrona, en el contexto del campus virtual de la Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC). El diseño de la herramienta parte del análisis de distintos modelos de referencia en lo que respecta al apoyo tecnológico de procesos de aprendizaje colaborativo y de construcción social de conocimiento. En paralelo, y tras analizar algunos modelos para el estudio de la construcción colaborativa de conocimiento en entornos virtuales, se presenta una propuesta de análisis y evaluación de este tipo de procesos mediados por herramientas de comunicación asíncrona similares a la diseñada.

OPTIMIZATION TECHNIQUES FOR ASSEMBLY PLANNING OF COMPLEX MODELS IN LARGE-SCALE VIRTUAL ENVIRONMENTS

Evaluation and planning of assembly processes in virtual environments, especially large-scale virtual environments, have attracted much attention in the engineering community. However, the planning of complex assemblies in virtual environments is still hindered by limitations like insufficient frame rates, unnatural user interaction, as well as deficiencies in the processing of assembly constraints. This paper discusses some optimization techniques for the assembly planning of complex assemblies in a large-scale virtual environment such as CAVE. Specifically, the real-time display of complex assemblies, the natural and intuitive assembly operations, and a real-time collision detection algorithm for the assembly applications are presented.

The Creative Product and the Creative Processes in Virtual Environments

The effects of information technology on the creative performance in groups and individuals were examined. An experimental 3 × 2 design was used in order to assess the effects of computer‐mediated and face‐to‐face interaction on creative performance. Forty‐eight groups, divided into individuals or small three‐person groups, worked on a heuristic task during three sessions. Creativity was operationalized in terms of the creative product and the creative process. The results regarding the creative product indicated that small groups had a higher flexibility than individuals. The small groups also proved to have significantly more incubations. Regarding the creative process, the face‐to‐face group showed a better flow, and this was especially valid in respect of the preparation phase. This study suggests that, providing there is a fully understood and well‐prepared problem, attained or strengthened through face‐to‐face interaction; GCSS may serve as an important arena for exchanging and developing ideas.