https://blogs.va.gov/VAntage/94636/virtual-reality-collaboration-transforming-veteran-health-care/
Augmented reality can be a valuable therapeutic tool for Veterans. Through a previous three-year evaluation of Veterans using Waya Health’s VR tools in inpatient and long-term care settings at the Western North Carolina VA Health Care System (WNCVAHCS), in Asheville, N.C., 84 percent of Veterans reported reduction in discomfort, 89 percent reported reduction in stress, 96 percent reported enjoying their experience, and 97 percent said they would recommend it to their peers.
Snobal launches VR collaboration app for remote working and studying
https://itbrief.com.au/story/snobal-launches-vr-collaboration-app-for-remote-working-and-studying
Snobal co-founder and chief executive officer Murray James says, “Over the last 18 months we have seen a huge shift in where and how people work and study.
“The shift to a distributed workforce, along with the growth of hybrid and remote working, means business leaders are focussed on what digital tools they can best use to foster more effective workplace collaboration.”
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more on VR collaborartion in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=vr+collaboration
Campfire announces summer Demo Days to allow companies to experience its AR and VR platform
https://www.auganix.org/campfire-announces-summer-demo-days-to-allow-companies-to-experience-its-ar-and-vr-platform/
Space is limited so enterprise guests can register here to request an invitation for the below events:
- July 14, Brooklyn, 9AM – 7PM
- August 11, Austin, 9AM – 7PM
- September 8, San Francisco, CA 9AM – 7PM
Campfire brings a new approach to AR/VR collaboration with innovative devices and applications designed to visualize and collaborate with 3D models and data. The company states that the resulting experience helps to advance the visual experience, ease-of-use, and workflow integration for users. Features of the Campfire platform include:
- The Campfire Headset, which has a 92° diagonal field-of-view in AR, and a new level of comfort in VR;
- The Campfire Console acts like a holographic projector to bring the intuitiveness and robustness of traditional monitors to shared holographic experiences;
- The Campfire Pack turns a phone into a hand held controller to reduce the learning curve of dedicated controllers and gestural interfaces;
- The Campfire Scenes app enables users to create, share, and control scenes composed from 40+ types of CAD/3D files;
- The Campfire Viewer app enables users to work within 3D scenes alone or during video calls using a Campfire Headset, tablet, or phone.
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more on immersive in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=immersive
New release of Glue VR collaboration platform supports third-party apps including Office 365 and Google Workspace
https://www.auganix.org/new-release-of-glue-vr-collaboration-platform-supports-third-party-apps-including-office-365-and-google-workspace/
he new release integrates several popular enterprise tools, allowing users to bring their existing digital workflows into VR during virtual meetings on Glue. The full list of third-party apps that are supported includes:
- Gmail
- Google Sheets
- Google Docs
- Google Drive
- Google Slides
- Google Calendar
- Jira
- Miro
- MURAL
- Office 365 (Word, Excel, Powerpoint, OneDrive, OneNote, Sharepoint and Teams)
- Salesforce
- Slack
- Trello
Another feature of the new release includes an improved avatar configurator.
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more on virtual worlds in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=virtual+worlds
9 Universities to Collaborate on Digital Credentials Initiative
By Rhea Kelly 04/23/19 https://campustechnology.com/articles/2019/04/23/9-universities-to-collaborate-on-digital-credentials-initiative.aspx
he institutions involved are Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, Harvard UniversityDivision of Continuing Education, Hasso Plattner Institute at the University of Potsdam in Germany, MIT, Tecnológico de Monterrey in Mexico, Technical University of Munich in Germany, University of California, Berkeley, University of California, Irvine and the University of Toronto in Canada.
Researchers from the universities plan to build on pioneering efforts such as MIT’s Blockcerts pilot, to create a trusted, distributed and shared infrastructure that will allow learners to:
- Maintain a verifiable record of lifelong learning achievements (including badges, internships, bootcamps, certificates, MicroMasters and stackable credentials, as well as traditional degrees);
- Receive credentials digitally and safely;
- Share credentials with employers or other institutions;
- Own their credentials forever, without having to ask or pay their institution for a transcript; and
- Compile and curate credentials received from multiple educational institutions.
“Alternative digital credentials fill an important gap between learning and work-relevant skill verification. The adoption of an ADC system will allow universities to achieve greater alignment with the demands of both students and local economies, making universities more accountable for what they produce,” commented Gary W. Matkin, dean of Continuing Education and vice provost of Career Pathways at UC Irvine. “Young adults are demanding shorter, relevant education that they can put to immediate use. Industry hiring practices will increasingly depend on digital searches for job candidates and ADCs will make those competencies easier to discover.”
“Digital credentials are like tokens of social and human capital and hold tremendous value for the individual. The crucial opportunity we have today is to bring together institutions that share a commitment to the benefit of learners, and who can act as stewards of this infrastructure,” said Philipp Schmidt, director of learning innovation at the MIT Media Lab.
“Our shared vision is one where academic achievements, and the corresponding credentials that verify them, can open up new pathways for individuals to become who they want to be in the future,” said José Escamilla, director of TecLabs Learning Reimagined at Tecnologico de Monterrey.
For more information, visit the Digital Credentials project website.
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more on microcredentialing in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=microcredentialing
‘Collaboration’ Creates Mediocrity, Not Excellence, According to Science
Far from being a productivity panacea, a collaborative culture will drive your top performers away.
My note: what about the quest for consensus? A former library director claimed as foremost goal to improve the work of the librarians – consensus. To the point, when I had to write the library director: consensus in this library means the codification of mediocrity.
A recent study published in Applied Psychology has now confirmed that a collaborative work environment can make top performers–the innovators and hard-workers–feel miserable and socially isolated.
The problem is that rather than seeing a top performer as a role models, mediocre employees tend to see them as threats, either to their own position in the company or to their own feelings of self-worth.
Rather than improving their own performance, mediocre employees socially isolate top performers, spread nasty rumors about them, and either sabotage, or attempt to steal credit for, the top performers’ work. As the study put it: “Cooperative contexts proved socially disadvantageous for high performers.”
open-plan offices, with all their interruptions, distractions, and noise pollution, are productivity sinkholes. My note: and if these sinkholes are avoided, the PSEUDO-democracy of faculty meetings can assure the ostracizing of those who think differently and assert the rule of meritocracy in a “democratic” way.
This is not to say that teamwork is a bad thing, per se. Indeed, most complex projects require a team to successfully complete. For teams to be effective, though, they need leaders who can swiftly squelch any attempt to isolate or denigrate a top performer.
International Survey of Research University Faculty: Means of Scholarly Communications and Collaboration (ISBN No:978-157440-446-3 )
http://www.primaryresearch.com/AddCart.aspx?ReportID=397
The survey data is based on a survey of more than 500 scholars drawn from more than 50 major research universities in the USA, Canada, the UK, Australia, New Zealand and Ireland. Data is broken out by various criteria, such as type of university, scholar’s country, gender, political views, academic subject specialty, academic title and other criteria.
- 50.69% of respondents are currently collaborating or coordinating research with scholars or other researchers from other universities or colleges outside of their country.
- Web based meetings were most common in the Engineering, Mathematics, Computer Science, Physics, Chemistry and other Science and Technology fields, 33.70, and least common in the Literature and Languages fields, 2.92.
- 7.72% of respondents routinely use Adobe Connect to communicate with scholars at other locations.
- 87.52% of respondents have co-authored a journal article with one or more other authors. Co-authorship was most common in Australia/New Zealand, 96.77%, followed by Canada, 93.10%, and the UK/Ireland, 89.83%. It was least common in the USA, 85.07%.
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more on collaboration in academia in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=collaboration