Virtuelle Proxemik: Konzeption, Implementierung und Evaluation einer Komponente zur Bereitstellung proxemischer Information im e-Learning

For human beings it is important to know who is around in the direct environment especially the location of humans in proximity and their activity is a socially important information to us. Information about people, places and activities in direct proximity is used by humans to orient, navigate and to adjust behavior to the situation. One example of such behavior is the initiation of communication and other forms of interaction. Today's e-Learning solutions do not satisfy the social need of humans for such information. There does exist a deficit of 'awareness' and 'presence' in virtual settings. One reason might be the missing proxemic information: where other people are and what they are doing in the virtual setting.A possible solution might be to create and provide the missing proxemic information artificially and to enhance the awareness and presence of participants of each other in a virtual setting like e-Learning. To challenge this social-technical deficit might be a way to increase satisfaction of participants with e-Learning and to increase acceptance and overall quality of e-Learning solutions.