Virtual Institution Research Articles

Object of illegal activity of organizing or conducting gambling games, lotteries and its place in the system of criminal law norms

The article is devoted to the study of the object of the criminal law norm on illegal activities of organizing or conducting gambling games, lotteries, the results of which proved the correctness of the location of Art. 203-2 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine in Chapter VII entitled “Criminal offenses in the sphere of economic activity”. The article analyzes the specifics of the definition of the main direct object of the criminal offense provided for in Art. 203-2 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine, which in the third form of the objective side has a controversial interpretation, in particular, it is considered as social relations of morality. In the part related to this issue, the regulatory legislation was analyzed, namely the Law of Ukraine “On State Lotteries in Ukraine” dated 09/06/2012 No. 5204-VI and the Law of Ukraine “On State Regulation of Activities Regarding the Organization and Conduct of Gambling Games” dated 07/14/2020 No. 768-IX.
 It was established that the act is provided for in the third form of the current edition of Art. 203-2 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine covers the organization and operation of the institution with the aim of providing access to gambling and lotteries. Along with this, it was found that certain types of such activities, despite the criminal law prohibition, are allowed by the regulatory legislation, in particular it was proved that the organization and ensuring the functioning of the establishment with the aim of providing access to gambling games, lotteries should be considered non-equestrian and therefore prohibited only in the case when it concerns:
 
 a physically existing establishment (Internet clubs or internet cafes);
 a virtual institution, the organization and functioning of which is carried out without the appropriate permission documents (license).
 
 Organizing or ensuring the functioning of a virtual establishment for the purpose of providing access to gambling games or lotteries conducted on the Internet in the presence of an appropriate license is not subject to a complete criminal law ban.
 This causes confusion in the definition of the object of this criminal offense, which is justified in the article to consider public relations in the sphere of economic activities related to the organization of gambling and lotteries
 In order to eliminate conflicts and inconsistencies between the current criminal and regulatory legislation, it is proposed to make changes to the current wording of Art. 203-2 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine, in particular, in the third form of the objective party, the actions described in it are justified to be described at the legislative level by the concept of “illegal”.

Catch the Open! A Gamified Interactive Immersion Into Open Educational Practices for Higher Education Educators.

Open Education (OE) opens up learning opportunities to, potentially, every person in the world. Additionally, it allows teachers, researchers, and practitioners to find, share, reuse, and improve existing resources under a dependable legal framework. Aiming to spread and foster the introduction of open policies in Higher Education (HE) institutions, the gamified interactive learning experience Catch the Open! was developed. Catch the Open! targets HE educators who wish to learn, or who wish to deepen their existing knowledge, about OE and Open Educational Practices (OEP). Within the gamified learning experience, the user becomes an educator, Alex, the game character, who receives a task from the Rector: to investigate how to best include OE and OEP in teaching and learning practice within the institution. Alex proceeds to explore and gather information in a web-based 2D virtual HE institution where students, colleagues, and guest researchers will help her to develop a comprehensive understanding of OE and the practical application of OEP. The educational content within Catch the Open! is underpinned by an OE competences framework for HE educators, developed in a previous phase of the Erasmus+ OpenGame project. In this paper, the design process to link pedagogical and technological approaches, which results in the Catch the Open! gamified web-based interactive application, is presented as well as the application itself. Moreover, two phases of piloting with 153 HE educators from six different HE institutions are presented. The obtained findings showed that the gamified environment helped in learning about OE. On the other hand, learners also suggested several improvement aspects of the gamified environment, such as the length of finishing a learning mission while playing.

Psychothérapie institutionnelle en situation de confinement : adaptation du cadre en hôpital de jour. Vers une institution mentale virtuelle

Within the context of the SARS-Cov-2 virus epidemic, the Ambulatory Care Unit of the Toulouse University Hospital Center, offering institutional psychotherapeutic care to people with severe and/or disabling psychiatric pathologies, closed its doors to patients on the 16th of March 2020. This article aims to document the necessary adjustments to the care setting during this extraordinary period. As it was, the team had to tell patients to stay at home and to respect rules of social distancing. An inescapable paradox when our work consists precisely in de-confining, connecting, being in contact with each other. Face-to-face meetings, group workshops, the array of our mediations were suspended; the challenge for us was to bring to light what is irreducible or essential in the institutional psychotherapeutic care for psychoses, what must remain active through the confinement. These modifications of the psychotherapeutic setting will be described in terms of constructing a virtual mental institution, based on a setting twisted by the distance but not abolished, telephone consultations opening up to a speculative but not disembodied psychopathological imaginary, and finally a blog as a quasi-materialization of a virtual space. This experience led the team of the Ambulatory Care Unit to radicalize the institution to keep it in its simplest apparatus: a virtual tree structure of the mental institution. The prior interactions between caregivers and patients have been translated (and thus re-created) virtually. As to respect their singular aspects, as well as their fundamental belonging to the collective that supports our institution. This virtual mental institution can therefore maintain the framework that structures our institutional care project, and can link the before and what will be the after of the confinement. For this study, we have conducted an “on-the-spot” analysis of the concrete arrangements of our therapeutic setting from an interdisciplinary perspective: phenomenological, systemic and psychodynamic.

The virtual institution: cross-sectional length of stay in general adult and forensic psychiatry beds.

BackgroundLength of stay in psychiatric hospitals interests health service planners, economists and clinicians. At a systems level it is preferable to study general adult and forensic psychiatric beds together since these are likely to be inter-dependent. We examined whether patients were placed according to specialist need or according to their cross-sectional length of stay.MethodsA one night census of all registered mental nursing home (RMNH) beds was carried out for a defined catchment area of 1.2 m population in north London in November 1999. This included all public sector psychiatric hospital beds, independent sector and forensic beds in and outside the catchment area. Cross-sectional length of stay was defined as time since the date of admission from the community. Log rank (Mantel-Cox) Chi squared was used to test for differences between groups and hierarchical logistic regression for statistical modelling.ResultsThere were 1,085 occupied psychiatric beds. Cross-sectional LOS was greater than 365 days in 43.5%. Forensic beds had longer cross-sectional LOS than general beds. LOS increased with the level of therapeutic security from open through low, medium and high secure. Cross-sectional LOS was shorter for open hospital beds than community RMNH beds, shorter for informal patients than those detained under civil mental health law, and longest for forensic detentions. Longest cross-sectional LOS were for patients placed in RMNHs in the community, 10.7% of whom were ‘forensic’ as were 25.4% of low secure patients. Designated length of stay (acute, rehab/medium term and long term) was also associated with increasing cross-sectional LOS. In regression analysis only three variables contributed to a model of cross-sectional LOS, commissioning status (general or forensic), designated length of stay and designated level of therapeutic security.ConclusionsStudying cross-sectional LOS for whole systems (all psychiatric beds) is essential for operational health service management. At the time of this survey ‘forensic’ status was the main way of accessing long term high dependency places. This has been an organic development over time, a response to patient needs rather than the outcome of any specific policy or plan.

Collaborative interdisciplinary astrobiology research: a bibliometric study of the NASA Astrobiology Institute

This study aims to undertake a bibliometric investigation of the NASA Astrobiology Institute (NAI) funded research that was published between 2008 and 2012 (by teams of Cooperative Agreement Notice Four and Five). For this purpose, the study creates an inventory of publications co-authored through NAI funding and investigates journal preferences, international and institutional collaboration, and citation behaviors of researchers to reach a better understanding of interdisciplinary and collaborative astrobiology research funded by the NAI. Using the NAI annual reports, 1210 peer-reviewed publications are analyzed. The following conclusions are drawn: (1) NAI researchers prefer publishing in high-impact multidisciplinary journals. (2) Astronomy and astrophysics are the most preferred categories to publish based on Web of Science subject categories. (3) NAI is indeed a virtual institution; researchers collaborate with other researchers outside their organization and in some cases outside the U.S. (4) There are prominent scholars in the NAI co-author network but none of them dominates astrobiology.

Representative Model of the Learning Process in Virtual Spaces Supported by ICT

This paper shows the results of research activities for building the representative model of the learning process in virtual spaces (e-Learning). The formal basis of the model are supported in the analysis of models of learning assessment in virtual spaces and specifically in Dembo´s teaching learning model, the systemic approach to evaluating virtual learning by Badrul H. Khan, and the Cybernetic model for evaluating virtual learning environments. The e-Learning model is systemic and of feedback by nature. The model integrates the society, Institution of Education, virtual training platform, virtual teacher and students, and finally the assessment of student learning in virtual learning spaces supported by ICT. The model consists of fourteen processes. Processes are defined taking into account the following dimensions: identification, academic, pedagogical, educational, formative, evaluative, assessment of virtual learning and technological. The model is fundamental to the management of e-learning supported by ICT, justified by the fact that it is an operative model of the teaching-learning process in virtual spaces. The importance of having an operative model in virtual education is to project the management and decision in virtual education. Then the operational, administrative and decision phases will allow the creation of a set of indicators. These indicators will assess the process of virtual education not only in students but also in the virtual institution.

The effectiveness and experiences of blended learning approaches to computer programming education

AbstractAt the nexus of education and technology, blended learning is growing rapidly. Integrating face‐to‐face and online learning, blending can enhance learning and optimize seat time. This paper describes the use of the blended e‐learning model in a course “Data Structures and Algorithms” given at the Afyon Kocatepe University, Turkey. This model is realized as a combination of a face‐to‐face environment and online learning, using the University's Learning Management System (LMS) named @KU‐UZEM. The LMS consists of many applications in accordance with SCORM standards, such as, student records, user roles, courses, exams security applications, student affairs, counseling services, internal communication, director processes and evaluation. It provides whole software infrastructure by a virtual academic institution and is currently used in Afyon Kocatepe University. This paper describes both the technology for course design and programme redesign adopted a blended learning approach with both face‐to‐face and online learning aimed at enhancing the students' control over their own learning. According to the obtained results with the performed experimental evaluation, the realized blended learning model provided more effective and efficient educational experience rather than traditional, face‐to‐face learning. A survey conducted at the end of the course also showed that students were satisfied with the pedagogical approach, and their academic achievements were also better than expected. Particularly important is that the dropout rate was greatly diminished, which could be related to students' satisfaction with the support they received from the teacher and the system. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Comput Appl Eng Educ 21: 328–342, 2013

Execution infrastructure for normative virtual environments

Virtual Institutions (VIs) have proven to be adequate to engineer applications where participants can be humans and software agents. VIs combine Electronic Institutions (EIs) and 3D Virtual Worlds (VWs). In this context, Electronic Institutions are used to establish the regulations that structure interactions and support software agent participation while Virtual Worlds facilitate human participation. In this paper we propose Virtual Institution eXEcution Environment (VIXEE) as an innovative communication infrastructure for VIs. Using VIXEE to connect Virtual Worlds and EI opens EI to humans, providing a fully operational and comprehensive environment. The main features of the infrastructure are (i) the causal connection between Virtual Worlds and Electronic Institutions, (ii) the automatic generation and update of the VIs' 3D visualization and (iii) the simultaneous participation of users from different virtual world platforms. We illustrate the execution of VIXEE system in a simple eAuction house example and use this example to evaluate the performance of our solution.

A System for Governmental Virtual Institutions based on Ontologies and Interaction Protocols

The authors believe that the adoption of virtual worlds is suitable for electronic government applications as it can increase the capillarity of public services, facilitate the access to government services and provide citizens with a natural and immersive experience. They present a Government Virtual Institution Model (GVI) for the provision of public services that satisfies relevant issues such as: adaptability to different citizen education level and to heterogeneous government systems; alignment with government services requirements related to security, privacy, reliability and scalability; and government interoperability requirements. The model of the GVI, the government services and the information flow across the GVI are formally described using the JamSession platform (Correa da Silva, 2011). The model of the GVI uses an architecture based on governmental patterns (including ontologies for information representation) to deal with the connections to the governmental systems, and 3D virtual world simulation systems to interact with citizens.

Himalayan glaciers: The big picture is a montage

Unusual miscarriages of science (1, 2) recently rocked climate change science and glaciology. An infamous paragraph, uncharacteristic of the rest of the contribution of Working Group II to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fourth Assessment, claimed that Himalayan glaciers would disappear by 2035 (1). In such a monumental report, errors can be expected. However, this error, explicated in ref. 3, shredded the reputation of a large and usually rigorous international virtual institution. The gaffe by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change helped to trigger a global political retreat from climate change negotiations, and it may prove to have been one of the more consequential scientific missteps in human history. An equally incorrect claim, on a different timescale, was that large Himalayan glaciers may be responding today to climate shifts 6,000–15,000 y ago (2). However, both mistakes (1, 2) and some solid scientific reporting on Himalayan glacier dynamics (4–10) highlight large gaps in the observational record. In PNAS, Fujita and Nuimura (11) competently reduced the knowledge gap.

E-education in pathology including certification of e-institutions

E–education or electronically transferred continuous education in pathology is one major application of virtual microscopy. The basic conditions and properties of acoustic and visual information transfer, of teaching and learning processes, as well as of knowledge and competence, influence its implementation to a high degree. Educational programs and structures can be judged by access to the basic conditions, by description of the teaching resources, methods, and its program, as well as by identification of competences, and development of an appropriate evaluation system. Classic teaching and learning methods present a constant, usually non-reversible information flow. They are subject to personal circumstances of both teacher and student. The methods of information presentation need to be distinguished between static and dynamic, between acoustic and visual ones. Electronic tools in education include local manually assisted tools (language assistants, computer-assisted design, etc.), local passive tools (slides, movies, sounds, music), open access tools (internet), and specific tools such as Webinars. From the medical point of view information content can be divided into constant (gross and microscopic anatomy) and variable (disease related) items. Most open access available medical courses teach constant information such as anatomy or physiology. Mandatory teaching resources are image archives with user–controlled navigation and labelling, student–oriented user manuals, discussion forums, and expert consultation. A classic undergraduate electronic educational system is WebMic which presents with histology lectures. An example designed for postgraduate teaching is the digital lung pathology system. It includes a description of diagnostic and therapeutic features of 60 rare and common lung diseases, partly in multimedia presentation. Combining multimedia features with the organization structures of a virtual pathology institution will result in a virtual pathology education institution (VPEI), which can develop to a partly automated distant learning faculty in medicine.

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.

Design principles of web-based distance education system and sample application in Afyon Kocatepe University

In recent years, number of web-based distance education systems has rapidly increased as a result of improvements in the Internet. Universities have an important role in this situation. Having substantial infrastructures in point of accessing the Internet, permanent education staff and system design team has made distance education more attractive for universities. Distance education systems have begun to make their education activities by using tools and services such as electronic books, electronic mails and conference calls. With the increasing number of these methods and by developing them consistently, the structure that covers the whole system was named the web-based distance education system (WBDES). Although there are many data and information about these systems, there is no detailed information about the software-preparing process and obtained experiences. In this study, a universal WBDES that can be used by all distance education entities has been designed. This WBDES is compatible with any institution or organisation and suitable for universal SCORM standards. It includes many features and functions such as student account creation, user roles, lessons, examinations, security applications, student affairs, counselling services, internal communication, executive functions and assessment, etc. With designed systems, a software infrastructure that is necessary for a virtual academic institution is provided. The system is currently used in Afyon Kocatepe University. While designing the system, MS SQL Server 2005, ASP.NET and C#.NET programming languages were used for the database, web interfaces and programming, respectively. Studies and experiments in designing the system were explained in detail.

From virtual slides to virtual pathology institution: the future of tissue-based diagnosis?

In this paper, we describe an augmented reality tool for collaborative work called the MagicBoard. The MagicBoard is based on an ordinary white board which has been enhanced by a video-projector and a steerable camera. A supervisor coordinates the cooperation of several modules including gesture recognition, finger tracking and white board scanning for digitalisation of the content. The gesture recognition module uses an approach based on local spatio-temporal appearance of activities. The tracking module is designed for use with cluttered backgrounds and variable lighting conditions. The white board scanner eliminates global luminosity differences by adaptive thresholding and the result can serve to digitise the content of the board. The supervisor is based on a rule-based architecture and is easily extendable. The selected modules fit together to a compact system, that largely increases the functionality of a white board and makes it a useful tool in the future office environments.

Reconfiguring Faculty Roles for Virtual Settings

In 1995 several Western governors decided to create a virtual postsecondary institution to confer competency-based degrees. Several issues motivated these governors. Enrollment demand threatened to exceed the physical capacities of their higher education institutions. Constructing new physical facilities to meet this demand was fiscally unfeasible. In addition, online delivery of learning opportunities potentially would make higher education accessible to students in remote rural locations that typify the western regions of the United States. Harnessing the power of the Internet to deliver instruction seemed to offer the economies of scale to meet both objectives. Also, competency-based education with third-party certification of what graduates know and can do made sense in an employment climate where it is commonplace to question what it means to have a degree. Other less obvious reasons for gubernatorial and corporate support for what became Western Governors University (WGU) include a variety of political interests, a desire to foster innovation in higher education institutions, and a need to actively address business requirements for competent graduates. When the idea of WGU was first introduced, little was known about the costs of technology-based instruction and at what point economies of scale might be achieved. WGU's development was a manifestation of forces working imperceptibly within most of higher education. These forces are now much more apparent. Costs of education, particularly instructional costs per student, are a concern as budgets tighten. Similarly, the cost effectiveness of various educational approaches and technologies are of growing interest (for more on technology costs see Ehrmann & Milam, 1999; Finkelstein, Frances, Jewett, & Scholz, 2000; Jewett, 2000; Jones, 2000; Jones & Jewett, 2000; Twigg, 2000). The technology-driven competency-based form of postsecondary education envisioned for Western Governors University required reconceptualizing the role. Recent business and medical practices of disaggregating complex activities into component parts suggested that WGU roles be unbundled. That is, rather than incorporating the responsibility for all technology-and competency-based functions into a single concept of faculty member, WGU disaggregated instructional activities and assigned them to distinct professionals. This article draws on several years of experience by key staff at the National Center for Higher Education Management Systems (NCHEMS) and the Western Cooperative for Educational Telecommunications (WCET) in building the academic and technical infrastructures for Western Governors University. The concept of in higher education was introduced as early as the mid-1970s by a law professor who suggested that higher education violated the Sherman Antitrust Act by bundling impartation of information, counseling, credentialing, coercion, and membership (Wang, 1981). Wang defined these activities as follows: Impartation of information was the actual classroom interaction of and students. Counseling referred to both academic advising and personal interventions. Credentialing consist[s] of grading the work of students and awarding degrees (p. 56). Coercion reflects the pressure to do well academically brought to bear on individual students by interacting with faculty, administrators, and peers. Finally, club membership referred to the (then) exclusivity of college attendance and the specialized interactions, both academic and social, that attendance brought with it. About the same time, Troutt (1979) applied the idea to community colleges by suggesting that instruc tional time be deconstructed into three areas: direct instruction, assessment of student learning, and academic advising. Since then the term unbundling has been infrequently used in reference to work. Recently, it has been resurrected to describe how to assign costs associated with discharging distinct aspects of instruction. …

Enabling Student Accomplishment Online: An Overview of Factors for Success in Web-Based Distance Education

Student success in Web-based degree programs depends on an individual's course learning experience as well as the academic and administrative services provided by a virtual institution throughout the degree. This article explains essential factors found in recent research for online student accomplishment and how these can be facilitated in the course level through instructional design, teaching, and technical assistance. Then it examines academic and administrative services at the institutional level. Online academic services include counseling and advising, prior learning assessment, discussion support, career facilities, and access to academic resources such as libraries and bookstores. Online administrative services include admissions, enrollment and registration, assistance service, financial aid, and records. Factors at both levels are explained with examples provided from several institutions offering online distance education.

Distance learning and interaction: Toward a virtual learning institution

This paper considers distance learning at ail levels, learning that can occur anywhere. Most education today in schools, universities, and companies is dependent on students being at a particular location, such as a university. The major distance learning institutions today are in Europe, but the potential for this type of learning is great as we reach out to serve greater numbers of students. The following factors are critical in forming a distance learning institute today: the quality of learning provided to each student; whether courses work for very large numbers of students; and the cost per student hour, for both development and delivery. Many delivery technologies are possible today. We examine them from the standpoint of these factors. The conclusion is that highly interactive multimedia learning units, either CD ROMs or (in the near future) broadband networks, provide the best delivery system today for distance learning. The paper concludes with a brief review of strategies for developing the curriculum units needed to support distance learning.