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Workshop on VRtools for Education/Training (VRtoolsEd 2017)

Scope

The synergy of education and technology can transform the world we live in. A virtual experience is usually achieved by feeding sensory information to a user via virtual displays (head mounted displays, 360 screen displays, etc.), and sounds. Along with this, it is also important for the user to provide an interaction to the virtual world. An important part of any virtual reality project is the level of detail and immersion that the user can experience. In previous generations of VR technology, the visual experience from the virtual world was limited due to hardware limitations and it was very difficult to simulate the world realistically. With the advances in computer graphics technology available today, we have access to technology that can easily simulate things in the real world. VRtoolsEd will complement the target of the SIMUtools conference by bringing together academic and industry researchers from the area of building simulation and virtual reality tools for educational purposes. Although education might have not changed over the years in terms of teaching approaches and techniques, todays’ millennial students have been using online learning and virtual reality is the next technology to be enabled and utilised worldwide. It has already been noted that:

 

  • Collaboration in VR classrooms fosters social integration of learners;
  • Virtual reality makes the impossible in reality possible, in terms of constructivism and game-based learning;
  • Virtual game-based experience increases students’ motivation;
  • Virtual reality introduces a new approach to rewards;
  •  Virtual platforms and headsets are the new tools for inspiring creative learning.

Following the success of the workshop during SIMUtools 2015, VRtoolsEd will be running every two years to address the current and future trends in VR hardware, techniques and practices in different application domains (automotive industry, medicine, education etc.) with the aim to identify how new developments in VR over the last couple of years have allowed a rethink into what is possible to simulate in VR for Training, Education and Shared Collaborative Virtual Environments. We invite submissions that discuss the future of Virtual Reality in Education in terms of technical and practical issues within different domains that utilise Virtual Reality for education/training.

 

Submission

We invite submissions that discuss the future of Virtual Reality in Education in terms of technical and practical issues within different domains that utilise Virtual Reality for education/training. Papers must be written in English and must not exceed 6 pages. Authors should submit papers via the easychair workshop submission website in PDF format,  complying with the ACM conference proceedings style.  Submitted papers must not have been submitted for review or published (partially or completely) elsewhere. Every paper will be peer-reviewed by at  least three reviewers. Papers will be assessed based on originality, correctness, relevance, and quality of writing. You can visit the VRtoolsEd2017 submission page here.

 

Papers need to comply with the ACM conference proceedings style and act as the anchors to set the background to a discussion panel entitled “The future of Virtual Reality Simulations in Education”.  The discussion panel will be opened by a keynote speaker from the industry sector.

All papers presented at the conference will be published in the proceedings of the conference and submitted to ACM Digital Library.
Indexed in EI, Scopus, CrossRef, Google Scholar, DBLP, MAS, EBSCO, as well as EAI’s own EU Digital Library (EUDL).

 

Suggested topics include but are not limited to:

  • VR technology for education/training
  • Methodologies for VR development in education/training
  • Applications/Case studies of VR in education/training in medicine and surgery, cultural heritage, education, entertainment, arts, military and space, automotive industry etc.
  • HCI with VR tools for education/training
  • Evaluation techniques for VR tools for education/training
  • Vision for futuristic VR tools in education/training

Important deadlines

  • Workshop paper submission: 9 June 2017
  • Author notification: 23 June 2017
  • Camera-ready deadline: 10  July  2017
  • Workshop (Over 2 days of the Conference: 11-13 September 2017)

Workshop organizers

Dr Abraham Campbell is a Computer Science Assistant Professor from University College Dublin (UCD) Ireland, who is current teaching in Beijing-Dublin International College, a joint initiative between UCD and BJUT. As well as lecturing, he is an active researcher in the fields of Augmented Reality, Human Computer Interaction, and Sensor Web technologies, Human Computer Interaction and telepresence in which he has published over a dozen peer reviewed papers. Abraham’s PhD work was conducted in 2012 entitled “AuRA: Defining, Developing and Evaluating Augmented Reality Agents”. Abraham is also a founder of Meetingroom.IO in 2017 , a start-up in VR that aims to revolutionise online meetings. He has been a reviewer for the IEEE I n t e r n a t i o n a l Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality as well as ACM/IEEE Virtual Reality International Conference and Computers in Entertainment. He previously completed a Bachelor of Science Honours Degree specialising in Computer Science and a Postgraduate diploma in University Teaching in 2013. Abraham has also been involved as a founding Volunteer of CAMARA, a charity that teaches IT skills to disadvantaged school children in Africa. As well as charity work, Abraham is also known as a Tech Advocate for the use of Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality technologies to change the world , in this role he has appeared on TV, Radio and newspapers discussing the effect of these futurist technologies in both Ireland and in China.

 

Dr Eleni Mangina is an Associate Professor in the School of Computer Science and Informatics at UCD since 2002 and the Deputy VP International for College of Science since January 2017. Assoc. Prof. Eleni Manginahas been an associate faculty member within SMARTlab in UCD, for collaborative projects for Creative TechnologyInnovation for Real Social Change. She has a PhD from the Electronics and Electrical Engineering Department atStrathclyde University in Scotland, a M.Sc. in Artificial Intelligence from the Department of Artificial Intelligence atUniversity of Edinburgh in the UK and an MSc in Agricultural Science from the Agricultural University of Athens in Greece.
Dr. Mangina has a track record of more than 100 publications in national and international peer reviewed workshops and conferences and international journals. The last couple of years she has focused on research in Robotics, Remotely Piloted Aircraft Systems and Virtual Reality applications in education through simulation. In 2014 she was certified from the Robotics Academic Training from Carnegie Mellon University Robotics Lab. Assoc. Prof. Mangina’s research has been focused on the virtual reality applications and utilises the latest technology available in the market. Dr Mangina has an enthusiasm and a vision to go beyond the state of the art in education and professionals’ training by bringing together her prior knowledge in data interpretation and extensive data analytics through intelligent techniques (area specialised during the PhD studies) and the emerging technologies now worldwide. She has extensive knowledge in terms of applied Artificial Intelligent projects, and her current research in virtual/augmented learning environments will drive the ICT sector in education towards marketable innovative actions. Her research interests and contributions are in the areas of: elearning; Learning Management Systems; educational data analytics; Virtual Learning Environments; Mobile e-learning; Big Data; Applications of Multi-agent systems in education; Educational modelling and simulations; Internet of Things.