The Virtual Interactive Relationship Between BIM Project Teams: Effective Communication to aid Collaboration in the Design Process

Building Information Modelling (BIM) provides a shared source of information about a built asset, which creates a collaborative virtual environment for project teams. Literature suggests that to collaborate efficiently, the relationship between the project team is based on sympathy, obligation, trust and rapport. Communication increases in importance when working collaboratively but effective communication can only be achieved when the stakeholders are willing to act, react, listen and share information. Case study research and interviews with Architecture, Engineering and Construction (AEC) industry experts suggest that synchronous face-to-face communication is project teams’ preferred method, allowing teams to socialise and build rapport, accelerating the creation of trust between the stakeholders. However, virtual unified communication platforms are a close second-preferred option for communication between the teams. Effective methods for virtual communication in professional practice, such as virtual collaboration environments (CVE), that build trust and achieve similar spontaneous responses as face-to-face communication, are necessary to face the global challenges and can be achieved with the right people, processes and technology. This research paper investigates current industry methods for virtual communication within BIM projects and explores the suitability of avatar interaction in a collaborative virtual environment as an alternative to face-to-face communication to enhance collaboration between design teams’ professional practice on a project. Hence, this paper presents comparisons between the effectiveness of these communication methods within construction design teams with results of further experiments conducted to test recommendations for more efficient methods for virtual communication to add value in the workplace between design teams.

Adaptación de Materiales de Literatura Hispanoamericana al EEES y a Internet: MOOC y Open Courseware

Los estudios de Literatura Hispanoamericana en la Universidad de Alicante cuentan con una importante tradición, con un grupo estable de profesorado, la publicación de distintas colecciones y la defensa de tesis doctorales cada curso académico. Además suelen participar en distintos proyectos de investigación y cada curso se organizan múltiples actividades (Congresos, cursos y conferencias). De este grupo podemos destacar importantes propuestas como el Centro de Estudios Iberoamericanos Mario Benedetti y muchos de los materiales recogidos en la Sección Americana de la Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes. Para continuar con la difusión de la investigación y la creación de materiales didácticos específicos esta red quiere, en primer lugar, desarrollar un MOOC dentro del proyecto de la Universidad de Alicante Educación del Futuro, centrado en la presencia de la poesía latinoamericana en la Cervantes Virtual. En segundo lugar, el objetivo es digitalizar muchos de los materiales educativos para ofrecerlos en el Repositorio de la Universidad de Alicante (RUA) a través de cursos articulados en el OpenCourseWare (OCW).

An Interactive Model to Teach Motor Skills

There has been a tremendous increase in our knowledge of hum motor performance over the last few decades. Our theoretical understanding of how an individual learns to move is sophisticated and complex. It is difficult however to relate much of this information in practical terms to physical educators, coaches, and therapists concerned with the learning of motor skills (Shumway-Cook & Woolcott, 1995). Much of our knowledge stems from lab testing which often appears to bear little relation to real-life situations. This lack of ecological validity has slowed the flow of information from the theorists and researchers to the practitioners. This paper is concerned with taking some small aspects of motor learning theory, unifying them, and presenting them in a usable fashion. The intention is not to present a recipe for teaching motor skills, but to present a framework from which solutions can be found. If motor performance research has taught us anything, it is that every individual and situation presents unique challenges. By increasing our ability to conceptualize the learning situation we should be able to develop more flexible and adaptive responses to the challege of teaching motor skills. The model presented here allows a teacher, coach, or therapist to use readily available observations and known characteristics about a motor task and to conceptualize them in a manner which allows them to make appropriate teaching/learning decisions.

JAABA: interactive machine learning for automatic annotation of animal behavior

We present a machine learning-based system for automatically computing interpretable, quantitative measures of animal behavior. Through our interactive system, users encode their intuition about behavior by annotating a small set of video frames. These manual labels are converted into classifiers that can automatically annotate behaviors in screen-scale data sets. Our general-purpose system can create a variety of accurate individual and social behavior classifiers for different organisms, including mice and adult and larval Drosophila.

The development of UTCS/NETSIM/ICG: an integrated urban traffic control system - network simulation - interactive computer graphics program. Final report.

Transportation Department, Office of University Research, Washington, D.C.

Interactive simulation of the fate of hazardous chemicals during land treatment of oily wastes : RITZ user's guide /

Mode of access: Internet.

Development of an interactive system to study sub-lethal effects of pollutants on the behavior of organisms /

"Grant no. R803244."

Data base analyzer and parameter estimator (DBAPE) interactive computer program user's manual /

Mode of access: Internet.

A user's guide to ISRP : the Interactive Survey Reduction Program /

"November 1984."

Analytical modeling of driver response in crash avoidance maneuvering. Volume II: an interactive tire model for driver/vehicle simulation. Final report.

National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, Washington, D.C.

OPTREG - an interactive computer program for optimization and regression. Final report.

National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, Washington, D.C.

Conceptual plan for an interactive highway safety design model. Final report.

Federal Highway Administration, Office of Safety and Traffic Operations Research and Development, McLean Va.

Biofuels impact on crop and food prices : using an interactive spreadsheet /

Mode of access: Internet.

Automatic curve fitting for interactive display /

"AEC report no. C00-2383-002."