Supporting social awareness among university students in 3D CVEs: benefits and limitations

For effective cooperation, sharing of resources, a good social climate and therefore better learning, students need to maintain awareness of the social situation in a group or a community, or social awareness (SA). This paper proposes using 3D Collaborative Virtual Environments for social awareness support among university students and presents requirements for a CVE providing such support. A virtual world, Viras, designed according to these requirements, has been evaluated in case studies involving university students, to identify benefits and limitations of this approach.