Continuous Presence in Collaborative Virtual Environments: Towards a Hybrid Avatar-Agent Model for User Representation

This paper is concerned with the evaluation of user embodiments in educational collaborative virtual environments by exploring an important aspect of interaction in virtual environments, namely the degree of 'presence' experienced by participants. Firstly, the influence of different avatar styles is examined using a specially designed prototype virtual art gallery. The choice of experimental procedure, together with analysis and interpretation of the results are presented and discussed. A second possible factor influencing presence, namely the continuous representation of users is examined within the same prototype environment, but this time using a hybrid avatar-agent model featuring an animated conversational agent to control the avatar during absence of its underlying user. The consequences of continuous presence in a collaborative virtual environment, particularly in respect of possible benefits for learning environments, are discussed and a forthcoming set of experiments to evaluate the effect of such an agent on users' experience of presence is outlined.

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