Related items
Showing items related by title, author, creator and subject.
-
Investing in ephemeral virtual worlds: an educational perspectiveThe increased demand for the use of virtual worlds in higher education has led many educators and researchers in in-depth analysis and evaluation of a number of different virtual environments, aiming to highlight their potentials. Until recently, Second Life was one of the most widely used virtual worlds for educational purposes. However, the decision of Linden Lab to stop offering the educational discount, the rumours around its future and the emergence of a novel technology called OpenSim challenged institutions’ decisions to keep using Second Life. In a try to identify the way institutions make their decision to use a virtual world, 34 interviews have been conducted with university educators. The results of this study reveal that both the cost and the persistence of a virtual world play an important role on this decision. However, there are still some unique benefits offered by each world affecting to a great extent the educators’ decision. We conclude the paper by advocating the use of a cross-institutional hypergrid.
-
Objects, worlds, and students: virtual interaction in educationThe main aim of this study is to form a complete taxonomy of the types of interactions that relate to the use of a virtual world for engaging learning experiences, when blended and hybrid learning methods are to be used. In order to investigate this topic more accurately and effectively, we distinguish four dimensions of interactions based on the context in which these occur, and the involved parts: in-world and in-class, user-to-user and user-to-world interactions. In order to conduct investigation into this topic and form a view of the interactions as clear as possible, we observed a cohort of 15 undergraduate Computer Science students while using an OpenSim-based institutionally hosted virtual world. Moreover, we ran a survey where 50 students were asked to indicate their opinion and feelings about their in-world experience. The results of our study highlight that educators and instructors need to plan their in-world learning activities very carefully and with a focus on interactions if engaging activities are what they want to offer their students. Additionally, it seems that student interactions with the content of the virtual world and the in-class student-to-student interactions, have stronger impact on students’ engagement when hybrid methods are used.
-
How interactive is your virtual world?: examining student engagement on virtual learning activitiesThis paper is part of our ongoing research on the ways interaction affects student immersion within a virtual world and, consequently, student engagement with the educational activities that take place within it when a hybrid learning method is used. We confirm and further enhance our hypothesis investigating student feelings and thoughts about the interaction taking place within a virtual world when that is used in higher education. Specifically, 111 university students, both at undergraduate and postgraduate level, who used our "in-house" OpenSim virtual world for roughly 8 weeks, were asked to indicate their opinion and feelings about the virtual world and the various kinds of interaction they had. The results of this study validated our initial hypothesis that interaction plays a crucial role in student engagement, underlying that the nature and the design of the educational activities substantially affects student engagement.
