Abstract
Today a wide variety of virtual worlds, cities, and gaming environments exist and become part of life of their human inhabitants. However, our understanding of how technology influences the way people can use these virtual places to access information, expertise, to socialize, etc. is very limited. Previous work [1-4] introduced a tool set that generates visualizations of user interaction data to support social navigation, aid designers of virtual worlds in the evaluation and optimization of world content and layout as well as the selection of interaction possibilities, and enables researchers to monitor, study, and research virtual worlds and their evolving communities. This paper applies an advanced version of this tool set to visualize and analyze local and global usage patterns in a virtual learning environment called LinkWorld. Resulting social visualizations have been used to inform a set of netiquette and reporting procedures, to fine tune training material and moderation guidelines, to analyze and report the progress of the LinkWorld project, and to create a ”social compass” for teachers, moderators and students who collaborate in this unique environment.
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Börner, K., Penumarthy, S., DeVarco, B.J., Kerney, C. (2005). Visualizing Social Patterns in Virtual Environments on a Local and Global Scale. In: van den Besselaar, P., Koizumi, S. (eds) Digital Cities III. Information Technologies for Social Capital: Cross-cultural Perspectives. Digital Cities 2003. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 3081. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/11407546_19
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/11407546_19
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