Using Virtual Worlds in Educational Settings

Making Learning Real

Lisa Jacka

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9781351395120
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

The building of communities outside of the traditional brick-and-mortar base of a school or university is at a significant point in time; virtual worlds bridge the gap between 2D web spaces online and 3D physical spaces of the classroom, providing teachers and students alike with opportunities to connect and collaborate in ways that were previously unimaginable. Providing insight into this new age of teaching, Using Virtual Worlds in Educational Settings presents a collection of practical, evidence-based ideas that illustrate the capacity for immersive virtual worlds to be integrated successfully in higher education and school settings.

Examining research and stories from more than 1,000 students and six faculty members who introduced virtual worlds into their teaching and learning, this book contains practical examples of how virtual worlds can be introduced and supported, as well as reflections from faculty and students about their response to virtual worlds. This research will help teachers understand how to approach such a fundamental shift in pedagogy, how to liberate themselves from teacher-focused instruction and how to help students to develop their skills through collaboration.

Outlining how and why virtual worlds could be the shift in pedagogy that teachers have been waiting for, Using Virtual Worlds in Educational Settings is an accessible, practical resource for educators to support their use of virtual worlds in teaching.

1 Virtual worlds

1.1 Introduction

The definition of virtual worlds has been consistently evolving in response to the changes that have occurred in virtual world applications, computer hardware and networking capabilities. Bell (2008) described virtual worlds as ‘a synchronous, persistent network of people, represented as avatars, facilitated by networked computers’ (p. 2) while Warburton (2009) identified virtual worlds as having six distinct features:

1 Persistence of the in-world environment

2 A shared space allowing multiple users to participate simultaneously

3 Virtual embodiment in the form of an avatar (a personalizable 3D representation of the self)

4 Interactions that occur between users and objects in a 3D environment

5 An immediacy of action such that interactions occur in real time

6 Similarities to the real world, such as topography, movement and physics that provide the illusion of being there

(p. 245)

Both definitions relate to the virtual worlds that were most commonly being used in 2008/2009, such as Second Life. Gregory et al. (2013) defined virtual worlds as ‘a computer-based, immersive, 3D multi-user environment that simulates real (or imaginary) life, experienced through a graphical representation of the user’ (p. 314). This definition was agreed upon after some discussion between members of the Australia and New Zealand Virtual Worlds Working Group (VWWG). This group was established in 2009 and represents over 200 faculty that are either using or are interested in using virtual worlds in higher education. During these discussions, it became clear that faculty were using a range of virtual worlds that displayed different characteristics; however, there were common factors that helped to identify the specific genre of virtual world that these faculty were using; primarily Second Life and OpenSim worlds in which the user could create content.

Some of the issues that arose from the discussion included whether the virtual world is the opposite of the real world or whether the virtual world can be considered real. Of concern was whether virtual learning environments (VLEs), such as the LMS that most universities use (e.g. Blackboard or Moodle), are virtual worlds or whether online applications such as Facebook, Google Earth or Google Sketch Up are also virtual worlds. The most significant difference between these applications and the types of virtual worlds that most members of the VWWG were using is the ‘experience through a graphical representation of the user’ (i.e. an avatar). The inclusion of the avatar is significant as it promotes the synchronous experience that is similar to being with a group of people (students and faculty) in an ‘on-campus’ or ‘real’ environment.

1.2 Evolution

Computer-mediated environments that facilitate immersion of the user in a 3D space have been written about since the 1950s (Bradbury, 1951; Knight, 1952) and were rudimentarily pioneered in the 1960s with the design and development of Heilig’s Sensorama and Sutherland and Sproull’s The Sword of Damocles head-mounted display (Sutherland, 1965, 1968). In broad terms, these experiences have been labelled virtual reality (VR). Today the terms VR and virtual worlds are often interchangeable; however, VR is more commonly used to refer to experiences in which the user is physically immersed in a computer-simulated environment and virtual world is more likely to include environments in which the user is embodied as an avatar and interacts within the space through a mouse (or other handheld device such as a ‘joy stick’), keyboard and screen (computer or TV monitor).

Development of VR continues with discoveries and developments informing much of the current popular entertainment experiences, such as the Kinect, Wii, Xbox, Google Cardboard and Oculus Rift. The entertainment industry has helped to spearhead the development of VR and virtual worlds; however, the potential for the application to education has been consistently noted. In 1962, Heilig, as part of his patent for Sensorama, mentioned that he believed that his device could meet the ‘increasing demands today for ways and means to teach and train individuals without actually subjecting the individuals to the hazards of particular simulations’ (cited in Heilig, 1992, p. 292).

The range of VR experiences and environments can be classified in a variety of ways. Tice and Jacobson (1992, p. 281) suggested three types of implementation – immersive, desktop and third-person.

Immersive VR requires the user to wear equipment that facilitates the immersive experience by blocking out the real world and projecting image and audio through head mounted displays, gloves, position tracking devices and 3D sound systems.

Desktop VR is experienced through a ‘window’ as the user looks onto the VR space and steers themselves through that space.

Third-person VR is one in which the user sees themselves within the space and steers their persona while viewing from the aspect of a third person.

The three categories proposed by Tice and Jacobson in 1992 can still be applied to today’s VR, yet the way the user interacts with VR has changed to become smaller, faster and more immersive, even within a desktop or third-person environment. With the rapid development of consumer-level technology that delivers high-speed processing, high-definition audio-visuals and high-speed Internet connectivity, access to VR is now a reality for most users at home, work, school or university. This level of access has significant implications for the way that we use VR and the pressing need to integrate VR in education.

Many of the virtual worlds marketed at children, such as Club Penguin and Moshi Monsters, promote themselves as having educational content to attract parental consent. They include structured educational games within the open-ended worlds and entice the children to play the games with rewards of points that can be used to buy products within the virtual world. The ability to chat can be prevented if the parent chooses that level of restriction. The child can be given options of dialogue to choose, such as ‘hello’ or ‘how are you?’, to remove the potential for any chat that might be of an inappropriate nature, such as adults posing as children and grooming children. These concerns about virtual worlds from the adult’s perspective are significant when virtual worlds are being utilized in a classroom setting. The publicity surrounding virtual worlds as spaces that can be inhabited by adults using avatars to portray a certain persona and interacting in anti-social behaviour presents a barrier that is not encountered when other new technology is first introduced in a classroom setting.

Despite the negative publicity, higher education institutions have primarily used the virtual world Second Life. The concerns that parents have in relation to their children using these spaces is not applicable to those that are part of the adult learning environment. However, adult students have still expressed some concerns about the safety of Second Life. Helmer (2007) proposed several reasons why Second Life was worth investigating for teaching and learning in higher education, including that it has a pre-existing engine (hosted technical infrastructure), a global reach, a wide range of interest groups/communities and augmented capability (users can teleport, fly, see around corners), it is media rich and links externally to the 2D web, and it has easy-to-use building tools, a rapidly evolving platform and user-created content. One of the benefits of Second Life for education is the user-created content that forms an extensive network of ready-made immersive environments and objects that can be visited, copied, modified and transferred for specific teaching and learning scenarios. Second Life has no pre-defined goals or levels to achieve and participants can create any in-world environment they imagine with the available in-world tools.

Until 2011 Second Life was the ‘most popular virtual world used by faculty’ (Farley, 2011, p. 382). However, with the removal of the education tiered pricing, in January 2011, and a reduction in the creative and technical support for faculty, many started to look at other platforms. OpenSimulator (OpenSim) is one platform that has proven popular due, in part, to the ability to host the virtual world locally or to purchase parcels of land (server space) relatively inexpensively on pre-formatted servers (e.g. JokaydiaGRID or Kitely). In response to the loss of educators to other virtual world platforms, Linden Labs reinstated the education discount in 2013; however, the shift to more education-friendly spaces appears to have already occurred, with the number of regions in OpenSim tripling between 2010 and 2013 (Kariuki, 2017).

OpenSim is an ‘open source multi-platform, multi-user 3D application server. It can be used to create a virtual environment (or world) which can be accessed through a variety of clients, on multiple protocols’ (OpenSimulator, 2017, para. 1). OpenSim virtual worlds have similar characteristics to other content creation virtual worlds such as Second Life, making them an ideal platform to transfer to from Second Life. However, they do require a higher level of technical knowledge if the user is to set up a server and host an OpenSim environment.

Second Life has never been an option in K-6 schools due to age restrictions imposed by Second Life (minimum age of thirteen) and networking restrictions imposed by Departments of Education. Prior to 2011, Second Life hosted a teen grid on which faculty and children aged 13–18 could design and use learning activities. However, the Second Life teen grid was removed in January 2011. As a result of these restrictions, some K-12 schools set up locally hosted OpenSim environments. This has only been possible in schools that have the technical and financial support to do so.

To overcome the barriers of technical expertise and access to networked servers, Sim-on-a-Stick (SoaS) was developed by a team of interested computer programmers. SoaS is based on the OpenSim architecture with the added capacity to be accessed from a USB flash drive with no requirement for an Internet connection. The virtual world spaces are hosted on a USB flash drive (or similar non-networked device) and uses MySQL as the server. When the user first enters SoaS, they are provided with one or more flat regions on which they can build. Ready-made environments and objects can be freely acquired from several OpenSim creators and loaded into individual spaces. If a teacher or student has built an environment, or objects, that they wish to share they can export their builds to be imported into other users’ sims. While some of these functions require more expertise than others, there is a strong community of OpenSim users who provide information. All of these features have made SoaS a viable option for K-12 and university environments in which the networked social virtual worlds can present issues for students and teachers.

1.3 Affordances

As educational researchers have attempted to identify the ways in which technology can offer a different teaching and learning experience, the concept of affordance has provided the language to describe unique features. Once an affordance of a technology is identified, the educator is better able to provide concrete reasons why they would choose to use the technology in lieu of a previously accepted educational tool, resource or technique. They may also find that the affordance that the technology was first intended for is not as they end up using it as they imagine ways to extend both their pedagogical approach and the limitations of the technology.

The term ‘affordance’ was coined by Gibson (1979) and has been appropriated in various contexts, with subtly different meanings. Gibson first suggested that an affordance was inherent within an object. The affordance was that which the object was designed to do (e.g. a ball was designed to be thrown). On the other hand, Norman (1988) used the term affordance to include that which the user may perceive the object could be used for. His idea was one of ‘perceived affordance’ and focused on the usability of an object (e.g. a ball may be designed to be thrown but a person may choose to sit on the ball and use it as a seat). Norman’s work was influential with those involved in human computer interface (HCI) design as he stressed that, while objects are designed for a purpose, the user may interact with objects in unintended ways. As such the designer of a HCI must at first approach the object as having the affordance most likely to be considered by the user, but may end up with the user finding a different purpose.

This use of ‘affordance’ was applied by Bower (2008) in his discussion of the usefulness of considering affordances of educational technology in the design process; he suggested, ‘determining technological affordances before considering tasks can lead to unnecessary analysis’ (p. 9). He recommends that the educational designer should consider the affordance requirements of the task with knowledge of the affordances of the technology to avoid the development of impractical implementation. In his model, the educational outcomes are placed before the educational tool. This is a pertinent point to make, as there are often times when technology is seen as the solution without consideration for the pedagogy. However, an understanding of the technological affordances of a particular resource may also lead to unexpected uses and the development of innovative tasks.

Pedagogical affordances of 3D VLEs is something that Dalgarno and Lee (2010) looked for when describing the 3D VLEs such as 3D simulations, games and other 3D virtual environments. They claimed that the ‘tasks, activities and underpinning pedagogical strategies’ (p. 17) that can be facilitated using a 3D VLE has the most impact on learning. As such they sought to identify the learning affordances that 3D VLEs offer as unique from other types of VLEs (such as 2D VLEs that include learning management systems used in universities). From their review of the lite...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright page
• Table of Contents
• List of images
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Virtual worlds
• 2 Disrupting norms
• 3 Making learning real
• 4 Perspectives
• Conclusion
• Index