cybercampuses: design issues and future olga …web.mysites.ntu.edu.sg/assourin/public/shared...

Visual Comput (2006)DOI 10.1007/s00371-006-0042-2 O R I G I N A L A R T I C L E

Ekaterina Prasolova-FørlandAlexei SourinOlga Sourina

Cybercampuses: design issues and futuredirections

© Springer-Verlag 2006

E. Prasolova-Førland (�)Norwegian University of Scienceand Technology, [email protected]

A. Sourin · O. SourinaNanyang Technological University,Singapore{assourin, eosourina}@ntu.edu.sg

Abstract In recent years, theusage of 3D cyberworlds for edu-cational purposes has increased. Themetaphors behind the visual designof such cyberworlds are quite diverse,from replication of real universities,art museums and scientific labs tonon-existing fictitious places. Inthis paper, we focus specificallyon “cybercampuses”, i.e. virtualworlds representing real educationalinstitutions such as universities andschools. Based on the results ofa case study that we have performed,this paper provides an initial setof requirements for a cybercampusrepresenting an existing university.

In this connection, we analyze placemetaphors and associated designfeatures of the Virtual Campus ofNanyang Technological Universityin Singapore, discuss the corres-pondence between the identifiedmetaphors and associated educationalgoals, and provide directions forfurther development. Finally, weoutline the major challenges for thefuture evolution of cybercampuses inthe context of organizational, socialand technological development.

Keywords 3D educationalcyberworlds · Cybercampuses

1 Introduction

Cyberlearning has already become an important and vi-tal part of university education. It is common nowadaysto put course materials on the web, which can be fur-ther fortified by elements of interaction such as discus-sion groups and quizzes. However, the temptation to pro-vide more and more information electronically, thus farexceeding the previously used pace of teaching, may of-ten result in disorientation and exhaustion of the stu-dents, whose abilities and expectations of education mayvary significantly. Besides common lectures and semi-nars, the students are often given a large amount of extra-curricular information, which may not even be classi-fied in order of importance. Also, psychologically it maybe difficult for students to force themselves to do extrawork on the web because it appears to be not manda-tory. On the other hand, with the constantly increasing

workload, students are becoming more and more inter-ested in personalized education where, ideally, their per-sonal mentors can help with any problem. The answer maybe found in so-called active learning, which is a popu-lar trend in pedagogy. However, when teaching large andespecially distributed classes of students, this approachmay fail due to the growing student–teacher ratio. Also,active learning often requires special teaching premisesdifferent from the traditionally used lecture theatres andseminar rooms. In this connection, creating and using ed-ucational cyberworlds, rich with interactive digital media,may become an excellent teaching tool implementing ac-tive learning and personal mentoring of students at af-fordable cost. Cyberworlds are information worlds createdon the Internet. They are capable of providing a socialarena where students and teachers can meet, thus over-coming the barriers of the physical world [9, 13], as wellas learning “on-the-fly” as we acquire knowledge in reallife.

E. Prasolova-Førland et al.

The metaphors behind the design of existing virtual ed-ucational places are quite diverse, ranging from replicationof real universities to other planets. These worlds are usedfor different purposes, from demonstrations of art and sci-entific concepts to meetings between physically remotestudents. To be able to analyze different cyberworlds, themetaphors used, and their relation to the correspondingeducational goals, we have developed a characterizationframework [16] briefly presented later herein. In this pa-per, we consider educational cyberworlds resembling realeducational institutions. We will name them cybercam-puses.

The paper is structured as follows. Section 2 providesan overview of existing 3D educational cyberworlds aswell as the associated place metaphors and design fea-tures used. Section 3 presents some results from our study.These allow us to identify the expectations that universitystudents have of a cybercampus, by outlining a prelimi-nary list of requirements. Section 4 provides a case studyof a particular cybercampus according to the frameworkproposed in Sect. 2. It also includes lessons learned fromthe analysis of its features vs. the identified learner needsand expectations. Based on the lessons learned and the re-lated work, Sect. 5 outlines the major challenges of thefuture evolution of cybercampuses in the context of the or-ganizational, social and technological development. Sec-tion 6 concludes the paper.

2 3D educational cyberworlds: an overview

The following discussion is based on the exploration andobservation of many educational cyberworlds over a two-year period, which implies that some of them may nolonger be online or that their content might have changed.We will characterize these cyberworlds in terms of out-look, structure and role [16]. Many references in the fol-lowing survey are made to AWEDU – The Active WorldsEducational Universe (http://www.activeworlds.com/edu/).

2.1 Outlook of educational cyberworlds

By the outlook of a cyberworld we understand what it“looks like”, e.g. a campus or a museum. We consider out-look in terms of the following: degree of reality or abstrac-tion represented by the cyberworld, and to what extent itlooks like a frontier, i.e. lands to conquer and horizons toexpand [19].

• Real/abstract:◦ An existing, real place, either with photographic

realism (AWEDU:Klara) or artistically interpreted(AWEDU:Van Gogh’s Arles). Among the cybercam-puses, such a realistic resemblance can be found inthe virtual campus described in Sect. 4 and part-ly in EcollegE (http://people.ucsc.edu/∼pmmckerc/vc8main.html).

◦ A place that looks “real” (e.g. a museum), but with-out a counterpart in the real world (AWEDU:Globe).The majority of existing cybercampuses employthis type of outlook due to its simplicity. The ex-amples are AWEDU:WSUID (Fig. 1) representingthe Instructional Design Department of Washing-ton State University, AWEDU:PARALAW represent-ing a consortium of colleges of Midwest ParalegalStudies (Fig. 2), a set of worlds of iUni represent-ing Indiana University (http://iuni.slis.indiana.edu),and VDS – the Virtual Design Studio of The Uni-versity of Sydney [2, 6, 7]. This solution does notrequire custom-made elements, and to a great de-gree it employs standard, reusable building blocks.Such campuses are often designed either as a groupof rooms and buildings, or only as interiors. Theconnection to real campuses is often presented ina symbolic way: photos and emblems of the cam-

Fig. 1. The “medieval village” representing the Department of In-structional Design, Washington State University in WSUID worldin AWEDU

Fig. 2. A “mini-campus” of the Sauk Valley College, Midwest Par-alegal Studies, in PARALAW world in AWEDU

Cybercampuses: design issues and future directions

Fig. 3. Gene House in the SciCentr world in AWEDU

pus, photos of teachers and students and signs(Fig. 2).

◦ Fantasy/abstraction: the place or its elements havelittle or no resemblance to reality, may defy phys-ical laws as well as have abnormal proportionsand “unusual” designs (AWEDU: SciCentr, Fig. 3).Some cybercampuses use a fantasy-like design andoutlook themes such as “medieval village” inAWEDU:WSUID (Fig. 1). Moreover, the classroomsand offices can have an “unrealistic” outlook such aspalaces and “fairy tale” houses.

• Frontiers:◦ The frontier growth direction can be defined explic-

itly by the outlook, namely the landscape, architec-ture, realism of a cybercampus, etc. (e.g. empty “sea”areas for building virtual islands [14]).

◦ No indication or rules of the actual limits and possi-bilities of the growth are imposed (e.g. “open hori-zon” without any clues on where construction is al-lowed) other than what can be limited by the moder-ator, server capacity, cost of license, etc.

2.2 Structure of educational cyberworlds

By structure we understand the mutual relations betweenthe different parts of the virtual environment identifyingthe following dimensions:

• Rigid vs. free structure. This defines to what extent theusers can alter the structure by adding new parts orchanging existing parts such as rooms and buildings.

• Structure generation method. In some places such asAWEDU:Viras [14], students are very actively engagedin forming the structure, while in other cybercampusesit is predefined by the teachers/developers for certainteaching purposes. Moreover, the structure can be gen-erated and altered automatically by agents dependingon such factors as the size of the audience [5].

• Structure-defining factors. The structure of a virtualworld may be formed according to many definingfactors such as social connections between people(AWEDU:Viras), course structure (AWEDU:Linkworld),and educational themes (AWEDU: Gene house – Fourierfountain in SciCentr). In cybercampuses, such definingfactors are normally related to either the physical or theorganizational structure of the real campus, or both. Thestructure is also often based on the courses taught andthe educational projects run on the cybercampus (e.g.:iUni (http://iuni.slis.indiana.edu), VDS [7]).

• The components of the structure. We can identify thefollowing major structural components, which can oftenreflect and supplement each other:◦ The “physical” structural components consisting of

“visible” elements, such as rooms and buildings, and“invisible” elements, e.g. virtual teleportation links.

◦ The components of the “social” structure of theplace, such as the ownership of different parts of theplace and traces of social activities.

◦ The organizational structure of the place, whichrelates to the mutual connections between differ-ent administrative units and courses represented(AWEDU:EcollegE, Virtual High School).

2.3 Role of educational cyberworlds

Cybercampuses and the associated place metaphors canplay one major role or several overlapping and inter-leaving roles. In many cases, the cybercampuses that areintended to play a certain role do not actually succeedin doing so due to an inadequate design or various so-cial factors. For example, a meeting place started by thestudents often becomes more popular than an “official”meeting place established by the teacher. Therefore, foreach role, we identify the creator, who can be a teacher,a student or an agent. Teachers or administrators designthe world and publish course-related demonstrations andinformation there. Students shape the world according totheir needs and enrich it with different products of theirlearning activities, such as project presentations. Finally,agents modify and adapt the world according to the cur-rent educational situation, such as changing the size of anauditorium [5]. The role of a virtual place is also definedby the design, available facilities, and artifacts containedthere, such as announcements and pictures. We classifythe roles in terms of specific purposes and associateddesign features into meeting place, information space, vir-tual stage, demonstration/exhibition, and workplace. Foreach role we specify its purpose and the correspondingfacilities/design elements.

2.3.1 Meeting place

This is the most common metaphor and can appear in var-ious flavors.


• Purpose:◦ The target audience of the meeting place: local users,

distant users, or both.◦ The predominant meeting activity: work on assign-

ments, discussions, socializing, regular classes, etc.• Facilities/design:

◦ Specialized meeting facilities, e.g. shared whiteboardor slide-show, generation of awareness informationof other users, e.g. status and activities, schedule in-formation.

◦ Design features supporting this role, e.g. outlookof a classroom or lecturing hall, table and chairs,probably recreating the real meeting rooms(AWEDU:EcollegE).

2.3.2 Information space

The elements of this metaphor are normally present inmost cybercampuses; however this metaphor is quite rarein its pure form.• Purpose:

◦ Presenting materials in certain courses and students’projects (e.g. AWEDU:Linkworld).

◦ Creating a place as a storage of common informationresources, including educational and administrativeones (e.g. AWEDU:VBI).

◦ Presenting personal information of students for find-ing cooperation partners (e.g. AWEDU:Viras).

• Facilities/design:◦ Modes of information presentation may include

text/images; linked digital multimedia sources of in-formation; 2D and 3D artistic/symbolic means ofinformation expression and information visualization(e.g. chemical molecules in AWEDU:Cheemet); re-alistic representation of information (e.g. documentson the table, books in a “library” or tomato beds inAWEDU:SciCentr, Fig. 3).

◦ Observation of information: mechanisms for infor-mation access management in different parts of theplace to certain user groups and facilities for individ-ualized views and information search.

◦ Structuring of information and navigation can bespatially organized in a hierarchy of rooms, build-ings and islands designated to certain topics or ad-ministrational units. Cyberworlds may have virtualpaths connecting a sequence of course materials (e.g.Archeology Timeline Walk in AWEDU:Edutopia) aswell as the virtual objects and places associated withinformation resources.

◦ Cyberworlds may have interactive facilities allowingthe users to post and update information.

2.3.3 Virtual stage

Although this metaphor seldom exists in a “pure” form,its elements are present almost everywhere because users

in cyberworlds always “play” a certain role. They expresstheir identity in a different way than in reality and are “dis-guised” behind avatars and nicknames.

• Purpose:◦ “Occasional” role-playing in “person” or through

substitutes such as created artifacts and programmedagents.

◦ Intentional role-playing, e.g. as a part of a historysubject. Demands of specifically designed surround-ings, e.g. AWEDU:Linkworld.

◦ Virtual stage design, e.g. AWEDU:Cybergen,AWEDU:Vdrama.

• Facilities/design:◦ Outlook of the place, creating appropriate atmo-

sphere for role-playing (e.g. historical sceneries as inAWEDU:Linkworld).

◦ Possibilities for flexible scene modification.◦ Templates of artifacts/agents with programmable be-

havior as substitutes.

2.3.4 Demonstration and exhibition

This metaphor is often used, since 3D cyberworlds pro-vide rich possibilities for demonstrations of scientific con-cepts and art.

• Purpose:◦ Exhibiting real, historical and fictional places for use

in history classes, excursions, role-playing, show-casing a university or a school to prospective stu-dents, etc. (e.g. old Stockholm in AWEDU:Klara andAWEDU:Virtual High School).

◦ Demonstration of art by known artists or students(AWEDU:Van Gogh, Artshow).

◦ Demonstration of scientific concepts, experiments,and equipment, with possible interactive elements/simulations (e.g. genetics demo in Fig. 3).

◦ Mixed realities, e.g. real city of Arles in AWEDU:VanGogh.

• Facilities/design:◦ Outlook design creating an “atmosphere”, e.g. mu-

seum, exhibition hall, historical places or concretereal places, such as a university.

◦ Clear structuring of exhibitions (e.g. guided tour).◦ “Building blocks” to create new exhibitions.◦ Agents and scripts for interactivity and simula-

tion running (e.g. genetics simulation in AWEDU:SciCentr).

◦ A number of features of “information space” meta-phor apply here as well.

2.3.5 Workplace

This is the most common metaphor because educationalworlds are usually used for different kinds of schoolassignments and projects. This metaphor often overlaps


with other metaphors, such as exhibitions and informationspaces.

• Purpose:◦ Synchronous vs. asynchronous collaborative work.◦ Working activities: meetings and discussions or con-

struction of an environment (e.g. exercise in architec-ture and design computing at VDS [7]).

• Facilities/design:◦ The outlook of the place, creating a working atmo-

sphere: a classroom, a laboratory (AWEDU:Cheemet),or an auditorium (VDS [7]).

◦ Facilities for performing work tasks, e.g. buildingelements, links to informational resources (iUni),laboratory equipment (AWEDU:SciCentr).

◦ Facilities for mediating workplace awareness, e.g.leaving messages on the message wall, automaticevent notification of users, visualized overview ofothers’ activities.

3 Requirements for a cybercampus

To identify the expectations that learners have of a cy-bercampus, we performed a case study among 16 groupsof students at the Norwegian University of Science andTechnology (NTNU). The students were given an exercisewhere they were supposed to explore a range of 3D edu-cational worlds aiming to analyze the different design fea-tures used, including various types of cybercampuses. Thestudents were also asked to discuss how they would havedesigned a cybercampus representing NTNU in the mostappropriate way. In another exercise in the same course,the students were engaged in a cyberworld construction atViras in AWEDU.

The results were quite interesting. Three of the groupssuggested using a variant of the “Archipelago” metaphor,which is described in more detail in [14]. This metaphorwas used in the design of AWEDU:Viras, where vir-tual islands were meant to represent social units suchas groups and individual students, while bridges androads between islands represented social connections be-tween the corresponding entities. The variant of thismetaphor, adopted by the three groups, proposed to rep-resent different departments of the university as virtualislands with buildings/rooms representing courses. Theislands were to be joined by bridges/roads representingthe cooperation directions and areas between differentfaculties and research environments. In addition, it wassuggested to use the metaphor of a “cruise ship” andan “air balloon” floating above islands to denote inter-disciplinary courses and cooperation areas. One of thegroups also noted that the usage of this metaphor wouldemphasize the “self-governing” nature of the depart-ments.

Two other groups suggested solutions mainly focusingon organization and not resembling the real campus. Theyproposed an implementation that could be a building withfloors representing different student years/classes withcorresponding information or specific areas/buildings/rooms dedicated to administration, different departmentsand subjects. The buildings could also represent courses,while lecture rooms the individual lectures. All the othergroups suggested a resemblance to the real campus ofNTNU. The following suggestions were given:

• In the majority of essays, the resemblance of the realcampus was considered as a major “theme” or “shel-l” to include additional features as well as effectivenavigation, laboratories and private rooms. It was alsomentioned that while the overall structure of the cam-pus should be more rigid and regulated by administra-tors, students and employees should have an opportu-nity to extend and develop the campus within the overallguidelines, especially in terms of private areas, studentand leisure activities, e.g. developing a virtual repre-sentation of a student club. Some students suggesteddifferent looks for local and distant visitors, i.e. photo-realistic for the local and more abstract, organization-focused for the foreign students to maximize the learn-ing effect.

• The students proposed realistic implementations ofcanteens, auditoriums and staff offices where teacherscould be met for consultations. On many occasions, thestudents suggested using such areas also for socializingand informal meetings. They also suggested a virtualreplica of the real bus stop as a virtual teleportationpoint between the sub-campuses.

• There were suggestions of “shortcuts” in navigation,for example maps with information about destinations,teleportation links between buildings and faculties, aswell as some modifications to the internal structure ofthe campus. This included the “collocation” of the dis-tributed sub-campuses, additional areas for meetingsand exchange between different research environments,and faculty-driven “libraries” with important links andresources.

• There were also requests for rooms for specific top-ics/experiments like AWEDU:SciCentr, and advanceddemonstration areas and laboratories that can take ad-vantage of the possibilities for safe and cheap experi-ments and 3D simulations.

• Some students found it important to have models of ex-isting lecturing halls dedicated to keeping resources inspecific courses or used for “live” lecturing, with such“unrealistic” features as visualization of students whoneed help and clarification from the teacher.

• An important point stressed in several essays was thenecessity to have private group and student rooms,something not feasible in a real university. These roomsshould have different facilities for group work, such as


document manipulation and a whiteboard, as well asfeatures “ensuring” privacy. A related suggestion wasdifferentiated modes of communication: broadcastingversus buddy-lists.

We also conducted a survey among a group of studentsat the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore tounderstand their attitude towards the use of cybercam-puses in education and socializing. Based on their ex-perience of using the Virtual Campus of NTU, the ma-jority of the students positively evaluated the use of cy-bercampuses resembling the real university. However, notall students found a 3D navigation in cybercampuses aseasy and convenient as browsing conventional web pages.Moreover, many students wanted to see more online 3Dgames and activities not available in real life in additionto curriculum-related activities, information sources, andvirtual replicas of real life.

Based on the survey made and the discussion above,we propose the following requirements for a 3D cyber-campus representing a real university:

R1. The cybercampus should clearly represent the admin-istrative, scientific and pedagogical-related featuresand structure of the university.

R2. There should be, if feasible, a possibility of provid-ing different views of the campus for different groupsof students and educational/social situations, depend-ing on their needs, e.g. a simplified 2D view of theorganizational structure of the university, and a 3Drealistic representation, with multiple links and in-terconnections between the two systems. Differentviews also imply customizing the presented informa-tion and different modes of communication.

R3. The outlook of the cybercampus and the major struc-ture should, at least partially, resemble the real uni-versity. The degree of resemblance and the part of thecampus recreated would depend on the concrete situ-ation and the user’s needs. It may range from an exactcorrespondence to the overall recognizable “theme”,to help create a safe and familiar atmosphere andto support the “identity”. The outlook of differentparts should be differentiated according to the typesof activities performed there (work/socializing). Thelower elements of the “hierarchy” (e.g. lecture hallsand workrooms) might not benefit from the realityresemblance, or deliberately exhibit unrealistic fea-tures/designs if this be necessary for an enhanced andmore effective educational experience.

R4. The major structure should be rather rigid and con-trolled by the administrators, while the hierarchicallylower structures can be developed by the students orteachers to ensure flexible and dynamic developmentof the cybercampus according to the current needs.There should be corresponding tools available, aswell as mechanisms for keeping such development inaccordance with the adopted rules and design themes.

R5. The navigation in the cyberampus should be facil-itated by shortcuts/teleportation links, menus andmaps with logical and understandable structure,shorter distances, simplified walking paths and ad-ditional navigational modes such as “flying”. Cus-tomized information (e.g. about locations or thewhere-about of friends) should be provided to assistthe user in navigation.

R6. The cyberampus should contain resources and toolsto support the broad variety of activities normallypresent on a university campus, including informa-tion resources (virtual “libraries”), groupware toolsand interactive simulation facilities. Besides these,some fun activities should be supported.

4 The Virtual Campus of NTU in Singapore

4.1 A case study

In this section, we will consider in detail one of the mostphoto-realistic 3D cybercampuses: the Virtual Campusof the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore(http://www.ntu.edu.sg/home/assourin/vircampus.html). Itcan be accessed from any Internet-connected personalcomputer running MS Internet Explorer. The integratedweb-enabled interactive communication environment(Fig. 4) includes:

• a window with a 3D scene that the user can walk or flythrough, as well as interact with the objects,

• a communication window, where text messages can beexchanged, and

• information windows with the links to communicationand private areas, and user information.

A 3D scene is a shared virtual world built with the vir-tual reality modeling language (VRML) and the blaxxunCommunication Platform (http://www.blaxxun.com). It in-

Fig. 4. Real and virtual campuses of NTU


Fig. 5. Various scenes of the Virtual Cam-pus of NTU

cludes VRML models of the land, buildings, interiors,avatars, and texture images resembling the real campusof NTU. The VRML files and textures load to the user’scomputer progressively, depending on what place in theVirtual Campus they are visiting. This allows a smoothwalk-through and gives the user an illusion of a contin-uous place despite the fact that it consists of separate

distributed files. In addition to the exterior of the univer-sity buildings, there are also interiors of the main places,tutorial rooms and student hostels (Fig. 5). All these inte-riors can be used for virtual meetings, classes and otheractivities. There is a large set of predefined private housesas well as different household items that can be obtainedfrom the virtual shopping mall.


Fig. 6. Collaborative Shape Modeling Laboratory

Many visitors to the Virtual Campus are computergraphics students who come to study concepts of virtualreality and shape modeling. This is a mandatory part oftheir course and the Virtual Campus is used during lec-tures as well as after classes for consultations. The stu-dents go to their favorite places, meet with friends in theirhostel rooms, and attend collaborative modeling sessionsin the virtual shape modeling laboratory (Fig. 6). They canalso watch educational videos in the tutorial rooms, attendvideo lectures in the lecture theatres or watch the univer-sity’s television channel. Visitors from around the worldusually just wander around and chat, adding an interna-tional flavor to this place. The Virtual Campus often servesas a guide for foreign students considering studying at theuniversity.

Many bots (robots) populate the Virtual Campus.These are avatars of students and professors who walkback and forth between lecture theatres, libraries, and stu-dent hostels. There are also birds hovering in the sky andcars driving on the roads. The avatars are programmedto behave realistically for visitors. Some of these activi-ties are stochastic, and some follow the real class time-tables.

Visitors can talk to each other. The Blaxxun contactcommunication platform allows text-to-voice synthesis, sothat the visitors can hear their computer-simulated voices.These chats may involve all visitors, real and bots, and canbe organized into private chat groups. For example, a talk-ing bot greets a visitor immediately upon arrival (Fig. 7).This bot is an avatar of one of the project students. Its“brain” is developed using AIML language, ALICE files(http://www.alicebot.org), and computer graphics termsfrom the text book that this bot is advertising to the currentcomputer graphics students. Besides maintaining a con-versation, this cyberinstructor can answer questions oncomputer graphics and virtual reality.

Fig. 7. Avatars and bots

With reference to the Virtual Campus, we shall analyzethe chosen metaphors and design features according to theframework presented in Sect. 2.

Outlook. The Virtual Campus is a very typical example ofa “photographic” resemblance of a real place. Also, someadditional elements not having counterparts in reality areadded to the Virtual Campus for enhanced functionality.Examples are the Virtual Collaborative Shape ModelingLaboratory, the Virtual Shopping Mall and virtual homes.The “frontier element” is clearly less prominent here be-cause the possible expansion and modifications, althoughnot limited in terms of technology, are bound by the phys-ical layout of the university represented by the VirtualCampus. However, this metaphor does not limit modifica-tions in elements “low” in the hierarchy, such as individualstudent rooms.

Structure. The structure of the Virtual Campus is ratherrigid. It is mostly created by the teacher and can to a verysmall extent be altered by the students. Inclusion of anynew place developed by the student requires approval andsome actions from the teacher. The major structural com-ponents include the buildings of the campus. They areconnected through the “physical” doors, walks and roads,as well as with a set of teleportation links.

Role. As mentioned before, most educational cyberworldscan play many roles at once, some major and other periph-eral ones. The most prominent role of the Virtual Campusis demonstration and exhibition both of the campus it-self as well as the possibilities and concepts of computergraphics and virtual reality. The role of the meeting placeis quite prominent. The meeting places are designed by theteacher (tutorial rooms and laboratories) for educationalpurposes, as well as by the students (“virtual homes” inthe so-called “parallel world”) for socializing. The role ofa workplace is also quite prominent for students workingon computer graphics projects and courses. This is im-plemented as the virtual shape modeling laboratory and


talking cyberinstructors. The role of the information spaceis rather peripheral. The Virtual Campus can be seen asthe place displaying general information about the cam-pus organization, probably for new students, and other-wise containing some community resources such as linksto lectures and materials in the computer graphics course,including student projects. The educational buildings arealso linked to the respective university web pages. The vir-tual stage role is present only to the extent how it “normal-ly” exists in most virtual worlds, as mentioned in Sect. 2,since users can freely choose or design their appearance,thus expressing their identity in a different way than in re-ality.

4.2 Lessons learned and discussion

The Virtual Campus meets the majority of the require-ments given in Section 3, although with a number of lim-itations. It provides a realistic consistent outlook, withareas for both work and socializing, reflecting the realone (R3) with a rigid outer structure controlled by theteacher (R4). It partially allows for extension and devel-opment of units lower in hierarchy, such as the designof student dormitories and project presentations (R4). Itrepresents the main administrative structure by providingvirtual places/buildings for different units and departmentsof the university (R1). To a certain degree, the 3D VirtualCampus is backed up by the alternative view of the univer-sity, represented by the linked university web pages and itshtml-based e-learning platform (R2). The provided nav-igation modes are simplified compared to the real ones,as one can both “walk” and follow the teleportation links(R5). Moreover, the Virtual Campus includes a numberof tools for different purposes such as tutorial rooms, theShape Modeling Laboratory and agent-consultants (R6).

However, not all the requirements are fully met. Due tothe restricted audience of users (mostly computer graph-ics students), the range of supported student activities andcourses is rather limited, which is also reflected in therange of available tools and informational resources. Also,there is less flexibility in the development and extensionof the campus than in similar systems, mostly due to thelimitations of the blaxxun platform. The chosen metaphorsand design features of the Virtual Campus provide a goodcorrespondence to its major educational goal, which isa demonstration of concepts and possibilities of virtual re-ality, as well as of the teaching of computer graphics.

Although the adopted design facilitates extensivemeeting and information sharing activities, these function-alities are currently not exploited fully due to the limitedstudent “attendance” and involvement of the different re-search and educational environments of the university. Toattract more students, it could be suggested to place moreeducational, informational and entertainment resourcesinto the Virtual Campus. Also, the limited flexibility andsimplicity of the development can be an inhibiting factor

for the use of the Virtual Campus by the broader studentmasses. Possible solutions could be to add a more exten-sive library of objects and more templates of private placesfor expanding the Virtual Campus by visitors.

The preceding discussion provides a starting point forupdating the initial requirements. As we can see, theadherence to the requirements in Sect. 3 does not auto-matically lead to active attendance and usage. On theother hand, this example shows that a realistic cybercam-pus does not necessarily serve the main purpose of beinga place for taking courses, communicating with tutors andpeers and accessing educational resources. Also, as dis-cussed in Sect. 2, a cybercampus does not have to be real-istic to meet its goals. Therefore, the requirements shouldbe adjusted and differentiated by taking into account thedifferent roles that cybercampuses might play in everyspecific situation. This observation supports the adopteddivision between outlook and roles in the characterizationframework for place metaphors.

5 Challenges and future directions

In the preceding sections, we provided an overview ofmany existing 3D cybercampuses to show in a systematicway the variety of different approaches and design solu-tions. We have also performed a study to investigate thegeneral needs and expectations of the primary user groupof cybercampuses – university students. Then, one of thecybercampuses, which we consider to be a representativeexample, was examined in detail to discuss the design fea-tures vs. the identified user needs. Based on this discussionand the related work in educational technology, we outlinethe major challenges of adopting cybercampuses as a toolfor learning, socializing and complementing traditionalmodes of education. These challenges can be summarizedas follows:

• Technological challenges◦ The hardware issues. Building cybercampuses does

not require any special hardware and even one per-sonal computer can be used as a server. They can bebuilt on shared distributed virtual worlds that requirea frequent exchange of digital media as well as syn-chronized real-time communication, interaction andcollaborative work. The challenge in this context isto find the balance between the cost and visualizationefficiency.

◦ Integration with groupware tools, LMS (learningmanagement systems) and intranet. There is evi-dence [15, 22] that the user adoption of cyberworldsin an educational context is closely related to theirability to be as undisruptive to the students’ exist-ing educational practices as possible. This impliesan ability to support the tools used by students intheir social life and educational projects, such as


shared document editing, instant messaging and theprevailing LMS used at the particular educationalinstitution. When all deliveries and the official com-munication with the teacher happen through sucha system, it is especially important to provide map-pings/linking between the resources available in thecybercampus and those provided at the intranet ofa university or a school. Integration of such toolswill contribute to increasing user satisfaction andwidening the spectrum of tasks that the students canperform within the cybercampus.

◦ Mobility. The recent trend shows a greater focus onmobile technology in learning. Some mobile solu-tions in connection to cyberworlds have also be pre-sented [8]. The possibility for students to access a cy-bercampus and attend events there via widely useddevices such as cell phones and PDAs might con-tribute to a greater involvement of the users. This im-plies the necessity of developing specific interfacesfor mobile devices adjusted for the particular usagescenarios and technical characteristics of the devicessuch as simplified graphics and navigation, commu-nication protocols, and interaction facilities.

◦ Combination of different media. As shown in e.g. [3],3D virtual space provides a more “wholesome” learn-ing experience for a student as opposed to a 2D webpage. To exploit this strength fully and to be attrac-tive to students, a cybercampus needs to provide anenriched, stimulating multimedia environment, witha smooth and unobtrusive transition between differ-ent media layers.

◦ Flexibility. It is complicated to attract a broad useraudience at a university if the construction effort re-quires additional access rights and advance graphicsmodeling skills. Therefore, to function as a “livingorganism”, a cybercampus should provide supportfor a flexible and dynamic development, thus reflect-ing the development of its real prototype.

◦ Artificial intelligence issues. Creating virtual teach-ers requires study and development of graphics andbehavioral models of avatars in cyberworlds. Muchresearch has been carried out in the field of “virtualhumans”, e.g. [10, 11, 21], but the scope of this paperdoes not allow us to go into detail here. In the con-text of cybercampuses, the relevant issues include 3Dbody and head visualization, face expressions, talk-ing head models, text-to-speech generation, speech-related movements, complex patterns of movements,human behavior modeling, emotional reactions andcognitive functions, including general knowledgebases and extracting knowledge from data.

◦ Immersive technologies. Most existing cybercam-puses are desktop applications. Immersive technolo-gies are also used in educational contexts, but mostlyfor the purpose of demonstrations, such as visualiza-tion of scientific phenomena as described in e.g. [24].

Still, technological development and the decreasingcost of the corresponding equipment will make itmore feasible to use such technologies for cybercam-puses in the future, to provide a higher degree ofpresence, especially for distant students.

• Social challenges◦ “Critical mass”. Many cybercampuses experience the

so-called “critical mass problem”. When there areonly a few users, it is not very motivating to come on-line or contribute to the cybercampus. Without a sig-nificant critical mass on a regular basis, a cybercam-pus risks becoming a “ghost” campus or being usedsporadically for certain courses and assignments. Inthe following, we elaborate on some challenges es-sential for a cybercampus to function satisfactorily inthe social context of a university or a school.

◦ Integration in the existing social structure.♦ Providing appropriate and competitive communi-

cation tools and integration with the existing toolsfor social interaction. At the moment, cybercam-puses have many limitations in terms of support-ing short-term awareness of the social situationin the community, i.e. who is around, active andready to be contacted as follows from the casestudies described in e.g. [15]. Generally, using 3Dcyberworlds for groupwork can in a some cases beproblematic as discussed in [12]. For example, theusage of a cybercampus can appear “disruptive”to a student’s social communication, as one hasto specifically enter a 3D world to contact usersthere, while it is usually not possible to transferone’s MSN contacts there. To overcome these lim-itations, a cybercampus should support advancedcommunication facilities such as video and audio-conferencing. Also, it should allow a seamless in-tegration with widely-used tools such as MSN andmobile phones.

♦ Providing virtual places for socialization, supple-menting the existing real ones and supporting theexisting social formations. One of the major chal-lenges and success factors for a cybercampus is toprovide attractive virtual places for social activi-ties. First, to facilitate continuation in the socialactivities of the users, the virtual places of a cyber-campus can resemble and naturally augment thephysical spaces of the real campus where socialevents usually occur, providing easily recogniz-able meeting points. Second, a cybercampus canprovide supplementary, alternative virtual placesfor socialization not existing in reality, such aslocations for private student parties or receptionhalls raised for a special occasion and easily de-constructed afterwards. It is important to take intoaccount the existing social structures when design-ing places for socialization, for example recreatingdifferent student clubs and societies.


◦ Supporting the development of virtual community,across geographical distances and different cultures.One of the major roles of a cybercampus is to pro-mote and illustrate the physical campus for potentialdomestic and foreign students. To support this role,special attention should be paid to providing targetedinformation and guidance to visitors of the cyber-campus who are not familiar with the correspond-ing real environment. Making foreign visitors feel“at home” on the campus may stimulate social en-counters and contact with local students. Moreover,teachers should actively pursue and support such en-counters by actively inviting teachers and studentsfrom other institutions/countries and organizing jointevents as e.g. described in [22].

◦ Deployment for social activities, entertainment. Toencourage active usage of a cybercampus, the facultyand the teachers meet the challenge of being proac-tive in arranging and facilitating various social eventsin connection to classes and campus life in general, asdescribed e.g. in [9]. To make such “virtual parties”attractive, the designers of the cybercampus shouldprovide enough entertaining elements, including in-teractivity, gaming elements, web links to leisure por-tals, music and video clips, pictures, “funny” avatarsand a stimulating, “relaxing” design.

• Organizational challenges◦ Integration into the organizational infrastructure of

the university♦ Deployment in a wide range of courses and admin-

istrative contexts. A successful adoption of a cy-bercampus in a school or university education re-quires a broad deployment at different levels of theorganization to create a sufficient “critical mass”,ensure active participation and motivate the usersto use the campus on the daily basis, thus leadingto the possibility of additional activities.

♦ Mapping to the organizational structure and cor-responding resources. Ensuring a regular, every-day usage of the cybercampus, attracting a consid-erable amounts of students and faculty, assumesproviding a rich selection of informational and ed-ucational resources, such as those ordinarily avail-able at the intranet and the web pages of the cor-responding faculties. This also includes adminis-trative resources, such as timetables, activity plans,rules and regulations. To make the search for suchresources more intuitive, a cybercampus should re-semble the organizational structure of the univer-sity, so that a student can easily find the resourcesor links to them in the virtual building of the cor-responding faculty. Moreover, in such places it willbe easier for students to meet staff from the par-ticular faculty.

◦ Faculty commitment to the technology. A wide de-ployment, as mentioned above, is not possible with-

out a broad faculty commitment to the technol-ogy. Adequate financial support, consistent poli-cies encouraging educational and social activitiesin the cybercampus and the provision and regu-lar updating of resources and information are ne-cessary in order to avoid the situation of “ghostcampuses”.

◦ Level of expertise in technology and training. Theintroduction of new technologies used in cybercam-puses may often require a certain degree of trainingamong the staff who are going to use it for lectures,and involve distributing course materials and meet-ings with the students. Therefore, interfacing withcybercampuses should be made as easy and intuitiveas possible.

• Pedagogical challenges: supporting different modes oflearning◦ Guided learning and individual tutoring. A cyber-

campus can support guided learning by providingpossibilities for online meetings with remote instruc-tors in virtual environments. Another possibility is toprovide individualized tutoring by intelligent agents.The challenges in connection with artificial intelli-gence aspects were mentioned earlier, and an addi-tional challenge in this context would be to developa bank of virtual instructors with basically the same“brain” but different appearances, e.g. different gen-der, voices, paces of speech, etc. to suit different au-diences and cultural backgrounds.

◦ Role playing. As mentioned before, an essential fea-ture of cybercampuses in general is “role playing”,since in cyberworlds the users construct their vir-tual identity themselves through the choice of avatar,communicational history, objects created and so on,as shown in e.g. [4, 15, 20]. A cybercampus shouldsupport such role playing in general because it al-lows students to behave more uninhibitedly, daring toask “stupid” questions, making the educational pro-cess more informal and relaxed. This can be done byproviding a wide choice of avatars, with possibilitiesfor modification, and rich communication facilities.If necessary, a cybercampus should also facilitate roleplaying in more specific contexts, such as in theatre,history and foreign language courses, by providingspecial “stages” or training arenas as is done e.g. inAWEDU:Linkworld and [22].

◦ Problem-based learning. Cybercampuses have beenused as environments where students can developtheir projects (AWEDU: Sci-Fair, Euroland and VDS( [6, 7]) and construct their own meaning [2]. To sup-port such activities, it is important for a cybercampusto provide a stimulating atmosphere (in terms of de-sign) and appropriate tools to unleash the students’creativity. The second challenge is for the teacher tochoose projects suitable for a 3D environment and toprovide encouragement to the students.


◦ Group and collaborative learning. To facilitate suchlearning, a cybercampus should provide the facilitiesdescribed in Sect. 2 under the meeting and work-place metaphors. This includes support for efficientcommunication tools and document sharing, possiblyintegrated with tools used by the students in their ev-eryday lives. A cybercampus can also provide facili-ties that do not exist in reality, such as tailored work-rooms for individual student groups. A challenge forthe teacher would be to actively arrange and encour-age the students’ online collaborative activities, espe-cially involving distant students.

◦ Collaboration facilities for cross-cultural pedagogy.Special care should be taken when designing a cyber-campus for cross-cultural pedagogical activities. Inaddition to providing educational material in English,it is necessary to provide culturally-unbiased avatarsand building blocks, since in existing systems, suchas AWEDU, most of the predefined library objectsare based on the Western culture [4, 22]. This canlimit the expression means for Asian and African stu-dents. Also, as shown in e.g. [22], cultural barrierscan be crossed easier if a cybercampus is supportedby additional communicational means such as videoconferencing.

◦ Exploratory learning, visualization and simulation.As mentioned in Sect. 2, cybercampuses are particu-larly suitable for such types of learning. To providean efficient support for exploratory educational activ-ities, it is important that a cybercampus provide high-quality, well-functioning demonstrations and simula-tions that are accessible and run on a regular basis.The demonstrations should engage the students’ cu-riosity and provoke their wish to learn more of thesubject. Another challenge is to provide demonstra-tions over a wide range of courses and topics taughtat the university, so that visitors are not limited to,e.g., only technology or art students, thus allowing a“cross-disciplinary” exchange between different en-vironments. Moreover, students need some kind ofguidance to their exploration, in accordance to cur-riculum and educational programs, such as humanteachers, agents or textual in-world instructions.

◦ Self-paced learning. University education today is toa significant degree based on the fact that studentstake control of their own learning and study at theirown pace. Since this is especially relevant to distanceeducation, the role of a cybercampus is very import-ant in this context. The major challenge here is toprovide the materials of a course in a well-structuredand balanced manner, exploiting fully the advantagesof 3D presentation and visualization of information(as discussed in e.g. [1]), with interactive elements. Inaddition, a cybercampus should facilitate the learn-er’s encounters with peer students and consultationswith teachers by providing, e.g., meeting locations

like teachers’ offices, facilities for scheduling ap-pointments, exchanging messages, etc. A cybercam-pus should also provide the means for learner assess-ment and guidance, e.g. in the form of interactivequizzes and intelligent agents.

◦ “Edutainment”. One of the greater advantages of 3Dcollaborative virtual environments in general and cy-bercampuses in particular is their entertainment valuein relation to other tools such as web forums and tra-ditional LMS, as is shown e.g. in the case studies de-scribed in [17, 18]. This feature may attract studentsinto the cybercampus and motivate them to spendmore time learning the content placed there. To beattractive in this context, a cybercampus should pro-vide an appealing design, a rich specter of interactivefacilities, some gaming elements and easy to use in-terfacing.

• Pedagogical challenges: learning content◦ Choosing appropriate high-quality learning content

for presentation. A cybercampus should serve only asa supplement to its real prototype and the correspond-ing educational and administrative facilities such asLMS and intranet. Moreover, recent research [12, 17,18] shows that not all types of content are suitablefor presentation in a 3D environment, such as textdocuments and abstract concepts. Therefore, the de-signers of a cybercampus should not seek to recreatethe entire curricula offered by a university or schoolon the cybercampus. The challenge in this context isin choosing educational topics and concepts where3D visualization and simulation will have clear ad-vantages compared to the more traditional presen-tation modes such as slides, articles and diagrams.In addition to the educational role, a cybercampus issuitable for displaying social and administrative in-formation such as a creating a “virtual home” or “of-fice” where one can have meetings, display workingplans or schedules of activities happening in a par-ticular department or student group (Fig. 8). In thisway, the bonds between the place and activities thereare strengthened, which is in line with the corres-ponding research in human psychology [23].

◦ Choosing appropriate way of presentation of the con-tent. Once the suitable educational or administrativecontent for presentation in the cybercampus is cho-sen, it is crucial to select the appropriate presen-tation means according to the goals. We have pro-posed a number of guidelines for presenting educa-tional content in a 3D cyberworld [17, 18]. The ma-jor challenge here is to provide a good overview ofthe presented resources, with intuitive navigation andmetaphors. Other aspects include clear separation oftopics, not overcrowded with elements misleading at-tention and providing clear associations between theoutlook and the content. Another challenge in thiscontext is the balance and proper connection between


Fig. 8. A workroom for student group meetings in Viras world inAWEDU

the 2D and 3D elements. It is often not feasible topresent large amounts of text inside a cybercampusdue to the limited view angle of the user, etc. Most ofthe textual material should, therefore, be made avail-able outside the cybercampus via pop-up windowsor by links to web pages. The links to such exter-nal materials are associated with 3D objects insidethe cybercampus, which makes it important to ensurethat the connection is apparent to the viewer.

◦ Content development, maintenance costs and stan-dards. Developing content in a 3D environment mayin many cases be more costly and time-consumingthan placing the corresponding educational content inthe form of texts, slides and images on a web page.Also, such a development often requires additionalskills in computer graphics and programming. There-fore, in each particular case the cost should be eval-uated against the potential gain. Also, to minimizethe costs and the development time, there should be

the possibility of an extensive reuse and exchangeof components, as well as flexible modification andtailoring of existing ones to suit a particular purposeor situation. Such a reuse is impossible without com-monly accepted standards, also across the differentplatforms used for developing such cybercampuses.This does not apply only to 3D objects as such. Thetrue challenge concerns reusable “learning objects”for use in the cybercampuses. An associated chal-lenge is the proper maintenance of the content, fromdeveloping and improving 3D visuals to elementaryupdating of weblinks inside the world, to keep thecybercampus attractive for visitors.

6 Conclusions

In this paper, we have introduced the concept of the cy-bercampus, which is a cyberworld representing a real ed-ucational institution. We have provided an overview ofa number of existing cybercampuses and associated de-sign features. We have also proposed a preliminary set ofrequirements for an “ideal” cybercampus. One cybercam-pus, representing a real campus, was analyzed in depth, interms of metaphors used and corresponding educationalgoals. This discussion allowed us to elaborate on the chal-lenges in connection with introducing cybercampuses assupplementary learning tools. These challenges are notonly technology-related but also include organizational,social and pedagogical issues. Generally, the usage of suchcyberworlds for educational purposes should be consid-ered and tailored individually in every specific case. It isalso important to remember that the success of a cyber-campus does not depend on one but rather many intercon-nected factors

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DR. EKATERINA PRASOLOVA-FØRLAND iscurrently a researcher and project coordinatorat the Program for learning with ICT, Norwe-gian University of Science and Technology(NTNU). She received her MSc degree inTechnical Cybernetics and her PhD degree inComputer Science from NTNU in 2000 and2004, respectively. Since 2000 she has beenworking as a researcher at NTNU. Her researchinterests include educational and social as-pects of 3D collaborative virtual environmentsand augmented environments as well as vir-tual universities. More details are available athttp://www.idi.ntnu.no/∼ekaterip/CV.doc.

DR. ALEXEI SOURIN is on the faculty of theSchool of Computer Engineering at the NanyangTechnological University (NTU), Singapore.He received his MSc and PhD degrees in Com-puter Science (Computer Graphics) from theMoscow Engineering Physics Institute (MEPhI)in 1983 and 1988, respectively. From 1983to 1993 he was a researcher at MEPhI andsince 1993 he has been a professor at NTU.His research interests are computer graphics,shape modeling, virtual environments, webvisualization, and electronic education. Heis a member of the IEEE Computer Societyand ACM SIGGRAPH. He is on the steer-ing committee of international conferenceson cyberworlds. More details are available athttp://www.ntu.edu.sg/home/assourin.

DR. OLGA SOURINA is an assistant professorat the School of Electrical and Electronic En-gineering at Nanyang Technological University(NTU), Singapore. She received her MScdegree in Computer Science from the MoscowEngineering Physics Institute(MEPhI) in 1983 and her PhD degree fromNTU in 1998. From 1983 to 2000 she workedas a researcher at MEPhI, the Institute of Com-puting for Physics and Technology (Russia)and NTU. Since 2001 she has been a professorat the NTU. Her research interests include datamining, computer graphics, web visualisation,and virtual reality. She is a member of theIEEE Computer Society. More details areavailable at http://www.ntu.edu.sg/home/eosourina.

cybercampuses: design issues and future olga …web.mysites.ntu.edu.sg/assourin/public/shared...

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