25th Annual Conference on Distance Teaching & Learning
For more resources: http://www.uwex.edu/disted/conference
Virtual Student Center: Connecting e-Learning Students to Virginia Tech Resources
Peter Macedo
Assistant Director
Institute for Distance and Distributed Learning at Virginia Tech
Ryan McMahan
Graduate Research Assistant
Institute for Distance and Distributed Learning at Virginia Tech
Overview
For the last two years The Institute for Distance and Distributed Learning (IDDL) has been fostering the
design and implementation of a Virtual Student Center (VSC). The intent of the VSC is to provide the
members of the Virginia Tech community an opportunity to access services and opportunities available
on the central Virginia Tech campus. Through funding awarded to IDDL by the Virginia Tech Parents
Fund, the VSC grew out of a student design competition. The competition accessed the talent and
expertise of students as the “subject experts”. Their task was to determine what the center should look
like and what it can offer to its users. The winning entry came from Team Spectrum. One member of the
group was provided with a graduate research position for the following year and continued on as principal
developer for the VSC.
While the Virtual Student Center project is sponsored financially by Virginia Tech’s Parents Fund and the
Virginia Tech Office of Distance Learning and Summer Sessions. The project and intellectual property is
owned by the Institute for Distance and Distributed Learning in collaboration with other university
organizations. Advisement for the project is sponsored by the VSC Advisory Committee, composed of
various representative members of the Virginia Tech community. The infrastructure sponsor for the
project is the Systems Development, Integration, and Technology unit within the Institute for Distance
and Distributed Learning. Management and leadership sponsors include Dr. Tom Wilkinson, Associate
Vice President for Distance Learning and Summer Sessions, Samuel Conn, Director of the Institute for
Distance and Distributed Learning, Peter Macedo, Assistant Director of the Institute for Distance and
Distributed Learning and Odessa Davis, Coordinator of eLearning Student Services.
System Purpose
The VSC is a central, online space that provides all Virginia Tech students an engaging place to meet
virtually and easy access to many of Virginia Tech’s services and resources, such as Career Services,
Financial Aid, Student Unions, and many more. Since it is an engaging interface, the VSC will raise
awareness of other available Virginia Tech services and resources by providing visible and easy access to
these elements of Virginia Tech. This increased awareness of available services will hopefully aid
students in obtaining the necessary information for academic, professional, and personal success. In
addition, the VSC will also allow users access to informative and entertaining activities for study breaks
and personal development times, such as an auditorium or an art museum. By providing internal
communication services, the VSC will afford all students a space to meet and collaborate with faculty and
peers, even across disciplines. This will particularly benefit online and distant learning students, who
currently have no such place, by providing a sense of belonging and connection to Virginia Tech’s
Blacksburg campus. In addition to students, other Virginia Tech affiliates will be able to use the VSC to
communicate to one another.
Copyright 2009 Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System
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25th Annual Conference on Distance Teaching & Learning
For more resources: http://www.uwex.edu/disted/conference
System Description
Conceptual Metaphor
The conceptual metaphor for the Virtual Student Center is based on the idea of the VSC being a real
building located on Virginia Tech’s Blacksburg campus. As a building, the VSC will have rooms,
hallways, elevators, stairs, and a lobby located on the first floor. These spaces will be furnished and
decorated, as are rooms in real Virginia Tech buildings. As a building located on Virginia Tech’s
Blacksburg campus, occupants and visitors of the VSC will be quickly and closely informed of campus
activities and news. This design will further promote a sense of connection to Virginia Tech’s Blacksburg
community, especially for online and distance learning students.
Potential Features
Like a physical building, there are many potential features that can be incorporated into the VSC. While
some of these potential features are listed below, not all are planned to be developed and implemented for
the first iteration of the project. Several potential features are slated for future updates and expansions of
the project.
Navigation. Users will be able to navigate the VSC and interact with it from an egocentric point of view.
Two methods of navigation, manual and automatic, will be available to users. With manual navigation,
simple pointing and rotation icons will allow the user to move to desired destinations and change the
viewpoint of the building. With automatic navigation, a directory can be used to click on a desired space
and the user automatically travels to that location from the user’s current location. To afford automatic
navigation from any location within the VSC, the directory will be accessible via an icon on the user’s
display.
Lobby. The lobby will host miscellaneous features that do not require their own room. The welcome desk
has a virtual attendant at the welcome desk that will help answer any questions the user may have or
redirect the user to a Virginia Tech staff member through real time chat. An announcement board will
provide users a space to post their own announcements and flyers, through a curator, for other users to
view. The calendar will allow users to view the VT Calendar and any events specific to the VSC. A
newspaper dispenser provides access to the Virginia Tech student newspaper, the Collegiate Times. A
radio directs users to the Virginia Tech student radio station WUVT’s online broadcast.
Lounges and meeting rooms. These spaces will provide users the ability to communicate with each other,
as real world lounges do. Communication will be text-based only and similar to a standard chat room
application. Potential lounges include faculty lounges, staff lounges, and student lounges. Similar to
lounges, meeting rooms will allow particular groups of users to communicate via text chat. In addition, a
whiteboard is available to enhance these communications through visual components. Meeting rooms
could potentially support classes, faculty conferences, and student meetings. A reservation system will be
used to avoid scheduling conflicts and provide privacy.
Service and organization rooms. These rooms will provide customizable features for services and
organizations to promote themselves and to provide information about their own resources. Features
include a reception desk, banners, posters, electronic kiosks, and an internal meeting room. These rooms
are intended to make up the bulk of the rooms available for user access.
Auditorium. These features will accommodate watching videos related to various aspects of Virginia
Tech, including but not limited to concerts, productions, professional seminars, and any speaker series.
Auditoriums will be accessible with tickets purchased (often for free) at nearby ticket booths.
Copyright 2009 Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System
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25th Annual Conference on Distance Teaching & Learning
For more resources: http://www.uwex.edu/disted/conference
Sports lounge and Game Zone. This space will involve delivery of videos related to Virginia Tech
sports. Similar to other lounges, users will be able to communicate and discuss sports. Game Zone is a
counterpart to the Virginia Tech BreakZone located in Squires Student Center, this space will afford
access to various types of online, recreational games to promote relaxation break and socializing.
Art gallery and technology museum. Users will be able to submit artwork for approval, both 2D and 3D,
to a curator for exhibition in this space. Other users will then be able to view the exhibited artwork.
Similar to the art gallery, the technology museum will exhibit technological creations and inventions from
Virginia Tech.
Stores. Like other Virginia Tech buildings, the VSC could host stores and restaurants for advertising their
goods and offering online coupons and catalogs.
Project Feasibility
Technical Feasibility
Finally, the VSC is designed to be accessible by nearly all Virginia Tech computer users.
The VSC uses Adobe Flash for its delivery in order to support browsers of various Microsoft Windows
editions, Mac OS X, and many Linux distributions. This ensures that the VSC is a widely available
resource for a majority of end users.
The technical feasibility of developing and implementing the described Virtual Student Center relies on
the ability to produce a convincing virtual environment from model snapshots with Adobe Flash and the
ability to support the Adobe Flash functionality required by the virtual spaces. The virtual environment
for the VSC will be created in Autodesk 3DS Max. The virtual environment will be a model of a student
center building with rooms, hallways, elevators, and stairs. Autodesk 3DS Max will then be used to
render still images or snapshots from within the model, as if the user is walking around the virtual
environment. Any human representation in the model will be created with Smith Micro Poser.
The interactive application for the VSC will be created in Adobe Flash, using the rendered snapshots from
the modeled student center building. Using Adobe Flash, the images can be connected together in
animations to create the appearance of walking around the VSC. Features, such as communication and
watching videos, will also be supported by Adobe Flash to provide a highly interactive and engaging
application. When an end user enters the VSC website, the interactive application will be downloaded to
the user’s computer. As the user interacts with this Adobe Flash application and the application needs
external data, the application will utilize the data hosted on the IDDL infrastructure.
Organizational Feasibility
The VSC has the ability to support multiple spaces or rooms. The VSC will also have the ability to
support various interactive features such as textual chats, electronic whiteboards, virtual assistants,
videos, and online games. These features will be enabled by the Adobe Flash implementation’s abilities to
upload, download, and process data. Considering the Virtual Student Center will have the aforementioned
capabilities the VSC will be used as a viable system by whoever resides in a space within the center. Just
as various stakeholders utilize the spaces in Virginia Tech student unions for various services, we
envision the VSC being used similarly.
Copyright 2009 Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System
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25th Annual Conference on Distance Teaching & Learning
For more resources: http://www.uwex.edu/disted/conference
Summary
Development of the technology is only one aspect of the project completion. The coordination and
planning put in place was critical to the effective integration of the large number of resources, services
and stakeholders that reside at Virginia Tech. The VSC centralized access point has the potential to
increase the awareness of services and opportunities. Internal communication included in the VSC
affords all students a space to meet and collaborate with faculty and peers. This provides online and
distant learning students a sense of belonging and connection to Virginia Tech's Blacksburg campus. In
its implementation, all students regardless of location will be afforded a chance to participate to their
fullest in the Virginia Tech community.
Author Summaries
Peter Macedo has been with IDDL since Spring 2003 and has been working in distance education
programs since 1995. He has worked with informal educators, K-12 and university programs with a focus
in online instruction. Some of the organizations he has worked with include: The US Army, NASA,
Baltimore County public schools, The Council of State Science Supervisors, The National Association of
Science Teachers, The Institute for Connecting Science Research to the Classroom, the Networking for
Leadership, Inquiry and Systemic Thinking group, the Center for Instructional Technology, and a large
number of departments throughout Virginia Tech.
Address: Institute for Distance and Distributed Learning Virginia Tech
3120 Torgersen Hall
Blacksburg, VA 24061
Email: pmacedo@vt.edu
URL:
http://vto.vt.edu
Phone: 540 231-5004
Fax:
540 231-2079
Ryan McMahan works with the Institute for Distance and Distributed Learning as a Graduate Assistant
since Summer 2008. He is the principle investigator for the Virtual Student Center and is responsible for
planning document creation and primary development of the system. His experience in Virtual
Environments and Human Computer Interaction (HCI) have been essential to the creation of a well
structured and effective system. Ryan also contributes by assisting with HCI reviews of IDDL websites.
Address: Institute for Distance and Distributed Learning Virginia Tech
3120 Torgersen Hall
Blacksburg, VA 24061
Email: rymcmaha@vt.edu
URL:
http://vto.vt.edu
Phone: 540 231-4127
Fax:
540 231-2079
Copyright 2009 Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System
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