In this book several concepts with respect to the development and reusability of multimedia content in web-based learning systems are introduced. More specifically, the development of a component-based framework that enables developers to employ reusable software components enhanced with metadata, creating complete instructional visualizations for a given subject and integrating these visualizations in an appropriate learning context, is discussed. Two activities for making stand-alone visualizations group-aware are addressed: transparent sharing of the same instructional visualization with...

The term "haptics" refers to the science of sensing and manipulation through touch. Multiple disciplines such as biomechanics, psychophysics, robotics, neuroscience, and software engineering converge to support haptics, and generally, haptic research is done by three communities: the robotics community, the human computer interface community, and the virtual reality community. This book is different from any other book that has looked at haptics. The authors treat haptics as a new medium rather than just a domain within one of the above areas. They describe human haptic perception and...