Virtual collaboration has come of age in the last decade, with industry and academia using the latest web-based collaborative software to bring together groups of workers to work on common tasks. Most innovations result from collaborative efforts between groups of workers who are often geographically dispersed. Academic leaders now seek the synergies that result from collaboration between their research faculty and others. Web 2.0-based research portals have emerged that allow knowledge sharing and lowering of social barriers between researchers. These tools allow researchers in both industry and academia to extend their range and reach, gain synergies between dispersed groups, and increase research efficiency and effectiveness. The present chapter aims to understand the drivers, motivations, and constraints in virtual research collaboration across borders or geographical locations. It will also help to identify the fit between these infrastructures and organizational e-research collaboration needs.
Top1.Introduction
The advent of modern communication technologies such as the Internet has accelerated the rate of global shrinking. This rapidly shrinking world and the impact of the globalized economy have created research issues that have global impacts. Furthermore, many research projects at university, national, or international levels involve researchers from geographically distributed research groups. This naturally demands collaboration among researchers who are geographically distributed so that they can focus on tackling shared challenges (Yang and Allan, 2006; Yang and Allan, 2007). Managing any collaboration demands extensive resources and proper infrastructure. With the advancements of modern information and communication technologies, the internet, in particular, has extended the possibilities of meeting such demands through a virtual research environment (Yang and Allan, 2007; Singh, 2008; Ansari & Singh, 2023). Augmented reality and virtual reality usage increased during the period of COVID-19 especially apart from mobile technology which is also an exceedingly important tool for hotels to provide booking-related information and also creates a great opportunity for innovative services and experiences for customers (Ansari & Singh, 2023). A virtual learning environment (VRE) in its simplest form is a set of web applications intended to enable collaborative research activities beyond geographical barriers. The current status of development for VREs seems to be largely focused on technological aspects. The majority of current literature on VREs discusses how modern technologies can be used to develop VREs to establish the resource base and the infrastructure to conduct collaborative research. To ensure proper take up of the VRE concept within research communities, it is essential to assess the potential of VREs to address the issues and challenges faced by modern research collaborations. However, the issue of how VREs can be used to overcome the challenges of research collaborations has not been addressed adequately in the current literature. Accordingly, the research presented within this paper aimed at addressing this gap through an assessment of how modern VREs can address the issues and challenges of collaborative research initiatives. To achieve this aim, this paper presents the outcomes of an action research study conducted within the European and Asian Infrastructure Advantage – EURASIA research collaboration to investigate how the challenges faced by the project could be overcome through the use of a custom-built VRE. Virtual reality has long been touted for its potential to revolutionize education, with myriad advantages cited: access to remote experts, access to experiences that depend on scarce or access-limited resources (e.g. going to the moon), and access to experiences that are physically impossible (e.g. Such as standing inside a molecule), to name a few. A new generation of consumer hardware has made this vision more in-reach than ever (Ansari & Singh, 2023). In this symposium, our interest is to understand what advantages of virtual reality in an educational context could or should bring it into practice in the classroom, and what factors will determine when and how this will happen. Advantages named for collaborative virtual environments fall into two broad categories: those focused on the interaction with other humans, and those focused on the environment. The human interaction may be novel because of who one can interact with (e.g. remote people), or how one can interact (e.g. taking on a different physical appearance). The environment may be novel because it is based on a physical place that only a few people can goto or because the experience it provides is inherently virtual (e.g. standing inside a molecule). In this symposium, we present research that sheds light on past, present, and future efforts to realize these advantages in different contexts. The first presentation will provide a brief history of virtual reality and its applications to learning, culminating in the most recent wave of technology (Ansari & Singh, 2023). The presentation of Cobb et al. will describe the application of non-immersive collaborative virtual environments to the education of students with autism. In this case, the virtual environment provides a novel kind of interaction that is “safe” and structured in ways that the physical world is not, and this is leveraged to train social competencies such as collaboration. In the era of big science, research collaboration has become the primary method of knowledge innovation and a critical factor in promoting scientific progress. With the continuous development of Internet technology, virtual academic communities (VACs) meet the diversified needs of researchers’ academic exchanges. VACs make up for the shortcomings of the traditional research collaboration model, which gradually become essential platforms for researchers to exchange knowledge and transfer technology. Many scholars search, acquire and contribute professional knowledge in VACs, and find research partners in them. Researchers will produce many research results after participating in collaborative research in VACs. Only successful transformation and application of scientific and technological achievements can promote economic and social development. The potential use of Web 2.0 tools as the basis for the creation of a virtual research environment. Specific features of the Web 2.0 world are explored because of their suitability for this purpose. Web 2.0 is defined and the theoretical merits of using Web 2.0 tools are considered against the key components required for the successful implementation and operation of a VRE in the context of the UK academic sector. The most relevant Web 2.0 tools are considered on a brief, individual basis before being mixed to construct a desktop‐based VRE based on a web browser. The final sections explore the role of the librarian in this user‐led environment and whether the approach described has global application. A VRE based on Web 2.0 technology is not only viable but a certainty. However, some desirable features of a VRE may have to wait until Web 3.0 tools become available. Research limitations/implications There is very limited literature describing operational applications of a Web 2.0 approach to the development of a VRE.