• Journal of Service Research and Studies
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• v.13 no.4
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• pp.160-172
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• 2023

The metaverse, derived from the fusion of "meta" and "universe," encompasses a three-dimensional virtual realm where avatars actively participate in a range of political, economic, social, and cultural activities. With the recent development of the metaverse, the traditional way of experiencing services is changing. While existing studies have mainly focused on the technological advancements of metaverse services (e.g., scope of technological enablers, application areas of technologies), recent studies are focusing on evaluating the quality of experience (QoE) of metaverse services from a customer perspective. This is because understanding and analyzing service characteristics that determine QoE from a customer perspective is essential for designing successful metaverse services. However, relatively few studies have explored the customer-oriented approach for QoE evaluation thus far. This study conducted an online review analysis using text mining to overcome this limitation. In particular, this study analyzed 227,332 online reviews of the Roblox service, known as a representative metaverse service, and identified points for improving the Roblox service based on the analysis results. As a result of the study, nine service features that can be used for QoE evaluation of metaverse services were derived, and the importance of each feature was estimated through relationship analysis with service satisfaction. The importance estimation results identified the "co-experience" feature as the most important. These findings provide valuable insights and implications for service companies to identify their strengths and weaknesses, and provide useful insights to gain an advantage in the changing metaverse service environment.

• The Journal of the Institute of Internet, Broadcasting and Communication
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• v.24 no.1
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• pp.207-212
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• 2024

The importance of hydrogen fuel cells continues to be emphasized, and there is a growing demand for education and training in this field. Among various educational environments, metaverse education is opening a new era of change in the global education industry, especially to adapt to remote learning. The most significant change that the metaverse has brought to education is the shift from one-way, instructor-centered, and static teaching approaches to multi-directional and dynamic ones. It is expected that the metaverse can be effectively utilized in hydrogen fuel cell engineer education, not only enhancing the effectiveness of education by enabling learning and training anytime, anywhere but also reducing costs associated with engineering education.In this research, inspired by these ideas, we are designing a fuel cell education platform. We have created a platform that combines theoretical and practical training using the metaverse. Key aspects of this research include the development of educational training content to increase learner engagement, the configuration of user interfaces for improved usability, the creation of environments for interacting with objects in the virtual world, and support for convergence services in the form of digital twins.

• Knowledge Management Research
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• v.25 no.1
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• pp.155-172
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• 2024

This study investigates the effectiveness of foreign language learning through diverse treatments in virtual settings, particularly by differentiating virtual environments with three textual enhancement techniques. A 2 × 3 mixed-factorial design was used, treating virtual environments as within-subject factors and textual enhancement techniques as between-subject factors. Participants experienced two videos, each in different virtual learning environments with one of the random textual enhancement techniques. The results showed that the interaction between different virtual environments and textual enhancement techniques had a statistically significant impact on presence among groups. In examining main effects of virtual environments, significant differences were observed in flow and attitude toward pre-post learning. Also, main effects of textual enhancements notably influenced flow, intention to use, learning satisfaction, and learning confidence. This study highlights the potential of Metaverse in foreign language learning, suggesting that learner experiences and effects vary with different virtual environments.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.22 no.7
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• pp.540-547
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• 2022

Online education is a major trend in the future education change and the COVID-19 pandemic has further accelerated the process. Online education has become an important part of the modern education system because of its stability and continuity. However, the disadvantages of traditional online education can reduce users' experience, thus upgrading online education is the key to future education. Metaverse, as a new platform for online education, redefines the occurrence space of online education, changes the teaching mode and learning and evaluation methods of online education, and shows its development potential. This research analyzed the characteristics of Metaverse and its technological development status, and then proposed an intelligent online education environment construction scheme based focused on Metaverse of art education.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information and Communication Engineering
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• v.26 no.8
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• pp.1148-1157
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• 2022

In 2019, COVID-19 changed many people's lives. Among them, metaverse supports non-face-to-face services through various methods, replacing daily tasks. This phenomenon was created and formed like a culture due to the prolonged COVID-19. In this paper, the fun elements used in the existing game were organized to find out the fun factors of the metaverse, and the items and contents were reclassified according to the metaverse with five experts. Classification was classified using reproducibility, sensory fun [graphic, auditory, text, manipulation, empathy, play, perspective], challenging fun [absorbedness, challenging, discovery, thrill, reward, problem-solving], imaginative fun [new story, love, freedom, agency, expectation, change], social fun[rules, competition, social behavior, status, cooperation, participation, exchange, belonging, currency transaction], interactive fun[decision making, communication sharing, hardware, empathy, nurturing, autonomy], realistic fun[sense of unity in reality, easy of learning, adaptation, intellectual problems solving, pattern recognition, sense of reality, community], and creative fun[application, creation, customizing, virtual world].

• Knowledge Management Research
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• v.24 no.1
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• pp.1-29
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• 2023

The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated digital transformation across all industries and daily life. Edutech is spreading in the education field, also bringing changes in university education. Non-face-to-face online-only classes at universities have spread after the COVID-19 pandemic physical distancing started. Online-only or real-time online classes showed diverse educational imitations. 'Metaverse' started to attract attention as a learning space and community activity support platform that may solve the limitations of online education and communication. It is time to prepare an introduction strategy for the actual application of education using metaverse. This study, first, by examining previous studies and cases of metaverse application, and second, establishing a metaverse introduction framework based on the technology lifecycle model and the innovation diffusion theory. Finally, we provide an introduction strategy in steps, a specialized introduction plan according to the main users is established and presented as a scenario. We expect that this study will provide the theoretical background of the new technology introduction and the spread of metaverse research. Also, we present an efficient introduction strategy, the basis for a service model, and a practical basis for the university's value-added strategy.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.42 no.4
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• pp.591-604
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• 2023

This study investigated the impact of elementary science classes using metaverse on the academic achievement, positive experience in science, and digital literacy of elementary school students. In addition, we examined their perceptions. The respondents were derived from two classes in the sixth grade at an elementary school in Gyeonggi-do, who were selected designated as the experimental (n=29 students) and comparative (n=29) groups, respectively. Across five lessons under the "Plant Structure and Function" unit, the experimental group conducted science classes using the metaverse, whereas the comparative group conducted general textbook-based classes. To investigate instructional effects, the study performed ANCOVA using the pre-test score as a covariate, a survey on the perception of students about science classes using metaverse, and conducted interviews with a number of subjects. The result demonstrated that science classes using metaverse exerted no significant effect on scientific academic achievement and digital literacy. However, the study observed a statistically significant effect on science learning emotion which is a sub-element of positive experiences in science. The students were positively aware of science classes using metaverse in terms of interesting and diverse activities, and free expression of inquiry results and perceived the instability of smart devices and network connections as regrettable. Finally, the study posed the implications of the use of metaverse in science classes.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.106-117
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• 2022

In 2021, AI basics were introduced in the high school curriculum. There are many worries that the problem of utilization-oriented education will be repeated with the introduction of artificial intelligence education rather than the principles that occurred when ICT was applied to education in the past. Most of the existing AI education platforms focus only on the use of AI. For artificial intelligence education of middle school students, there are difficulties in learning about the process by which artificial intelligence derives results and learning the principles of artificial intelligence algorithms. Recently, as the educational application of metaverse has become a hot topic, research has been started to improve learning achievement by arousing students' immersion and interest. This research developed educational game contents about decision tree algorithm using metaverse as educational contents that can be used in middle school AI education. By applying games to education, it was intended to increase students' interest and immersion in artificial intelligence, and to increase educational effectiveness. In this paper, the educational effectiveness, difficulty, and level of interest were analyzed for pre-service teachers regarding the developed game content. Based on this, a future principle-oriented artificial intelligence education method was suggested.

• Journal of the Korea Society of Computer and Information
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• v.27 no.3
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• pp.53-61
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• 2022

Recent years have drawn a great attention to generation MZ and Metaverse, due to 4th industrial revolution and the development of digital environment that blurs the boundary between reality and virtual reality. Generation MZ approaches the information very differently from the existing generations and uses distinguished communication methods. In terms of learning, they have different motivations, types, skills and build relationships differently. Meanwhile, Metaverse is drawing a great attention as a teaching method that fits traits of gen MZ. Thus, the current research aimed to investigate how to increase the use of Metaverse in Educational Technology. Specifically, this research examined the antecedents of popularity of Gather Town, a platform of Metaverse. Big data of news articles have been collected and analyzed using the Bigkinds system provided by Korea Press Foundation. The analysis revealed, first, a rapid increasing trend of media exposure of Gather Town since July 2021. This suggests a greater utilization of Gather Town in the field of education after the COVID-19 pandemic. Second, Word Association Analysis and Word Cloud Analysis showed high weights on education related words such as 'remote', 'university', and 'freshman', while words like 'Metaverse', 'Metaverse platform', 'Covid19', and 'Avatar' were also emphasized. Third, Network Analysis extracted 'COVID19', 'Avatar', 'University student', 'career', 'YouTube' as keywords. The findings also suggest potential value of Gather Town as an educational tool under COVID19 pandemic. Therefore, this research will contribute to the application and utilization of Gather Town in the field of education.

• KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems (TIIS)
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• v.17 no.11
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• pp.3121-3144
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• 2023

As interest in the metaverse has grown, there has been a demand for avatars that can represent individual users. Consequently, research has been conducted to reduce the time and cost required for the current 3D human modeling process. However, the recent automatic generation of 3D humans has been focused on creating avatars with a realistic human form. Furthermore, the existing methods have limitations in generating avatars with imbalanced or unrealistic body shapes, and their utilization is limited due to the absence of datasets. Therefore, this paper proposes a new framework for automatically transforming and creating stylized 3D avatars. Our research presents a definitional approach and methodology for creating non-realistic character avatars, in contrast to previous studies that focused on creating realistic humans. We define a new shape representation parameter and use a deep learning-based method to extract character body information and perform automatic template mesh transformation, thereby obtaining non-realistic or unbalanced human meshes. We present the resulting outputs visually, conducting user evaluations to demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed method. Our approach provides an automatic mesh transformation method tailored to the growing demand for avatars of various body types and extends the existing method to the 3D cartoon stylized avatar domain.