Virtual Worlds – Technology Summary
Virtual worlds provide a place to socialize, collaborate, create, and communicate across geographic boundaries and with a sense of presence and awareness of one’s surroundings. Businesses, schools, and government use it for a variety of reasons. As a learning environment, it allows manipulation of both time and space: slowing or speeding time such as in simulations; viewing microscopic as macroscopic and vice versa. Mistakes can be made without real world penalty or consequence. Taking advantage of the immersive environment supports a variety of pedagogical models such as problem-based learning, action learning, and experiential learning. Implementation can support asynchronous and synchronous distance learning; exploratory, discovery, or collaborative learning; and provide social learning places and an immersive learning space. Many virtual worlds exist that you can visit for free, the most well-known being Second Life. Many options exist to create your own space in a virtual world for a fee. Proprietary commercial virtual worlds may be more expensive than those based on open source software. If you have programmers available, you can download and create your own virtual world using open source software, for example, OpenSimulator.
Advantages
- Virtual worlds increase enjoyment and positive feelings through a sense of telepresence (Nah, Eschenbrenner, & DeWester, 2011)
- For ethics learning, existing virtual worlds (e.g., Second Life) provide a place for experiential learning and compare to ethics theory (Houser et al., 2011)
- For foreign language learning, provides an immersive environment where the language is spoken natively (Ibanez et al., 2011)
- Permits creative collaborative solutions to joint problems (Gillen, Ferguson, Peachey, & Twining, 2012)
- Provides a single environment to help the students work more effectively by persistence in files, sharing, one storage place, and meeting minutes via text chat (Chang, Gutl, Kopeinik, & Williams, 2009)
- Can provide sound based on proximity to source to mimic distance effects (Dalgarno & Lee, 2010)
- Provides an environment that promotes student exploration, participation, discovery of knowledge, and development of relevant skills with greater intrinsic motivation and autonomy (Dreher, Reiner, Dreher, & Dreher, 2009; Good, Howland, & Thackray, 2008)
- Promotes student enjoyment through the ability to move around freely in a 3D space, to meet new people, and experience virtual field trips and simulated experiences (Hew & Cheung, 2010)
- Facilitates self-motivated ongoing feedback from students through their request for review of their work (Good, Howland, & Thackray, 2008)
- Can be integrated with online learning management systems (such as Sloodle) for additional support features (Livingstone, Kemp, & Edgar, 2008)
Disadvantages
- Rich, highly interactive sites can cause cognitive overload and interfere with attention (Nah, Eschenbrenner, & DeWester, 2011)
- Too many avatars participating at the same time can cause a lag in the system responsiveness (Mennecke et al., 2008)
- Provides a convenient way to meet (no travel time, work around individual schedules) (Chang, Gutl, Kopeinik, & Williams, 2009)
- Lack of understanding by practitioners on how to implement and moderate appropriate activities or engage the students (Mimirinis & Bhattacharya, 2007; Minocha & Roberts, 2008)
- Need to have a newer computer (Hew & Cheung, 2010)
- Creating a Second Life learning environment takes planning, effort, and time (Chang, Gutl, Kopeinik, & Williams, 2009)
- Is time consuming to provide rights at the user and group level to access and work with the collaboration spaces (Chang, Gutl, Kopeinik, & Williams, 2009)
- Currently lacks a variety of tools that support information sharing, that is, allowing users to create content, present content, and collaboratively update the content (Bouras, Giannaka, & Tsiatsos, 2008)
- perating collaborative tools is difficult (Chang, Gutl, Kopeinik, & Williams, 2009)
- Have to learn avatar names to know who you are interacting with (Chang, Gutl, Kopeinik, & Williams, 2009)
- Inability to express emotions even though VoIP and Skype were used (Chang, Gutl, Kopeinik, & Williams, 2009)
- Need to address issues: protection of intellectual property rights, protection against plagiarism, allocation of rights, only one media stream per parcel, can’t scroll web pages, limited number of primitive building blocks, difficult to create collaborative tools, the content on the collaborative tools is static (Chang, Gutl, Kopeinik, & Williams, 2009)
- Have to use a work around to overcome issues with dynamic text display (De Lucia, 2009).
- Not applicable where kinesthetic experiences are part of the learning process [without the aid of additional support] (Dickey, 2005)
- Have to be able to instantaneously formulate responses and type fast through the chat tool (Hew & Cheung, 2010)
- No provision for turn-taking or threaded discussion (Hew & Cheung, 2010)
- Requires more work for the instructor to manage activities and student interactions in comparison to traditional online distance learning courses (O’Connor, 2009)
Best Practices
- Design a virtual world that incurs strong psychological ownership (a measure of usability) so users spend more time, do more activities, and return to the virtual world (Lee & Chen, 2011)
- Design spaces so the social, location, and task cues are intuitive to reduce the ‘cost’ in understanding the meaning (Goel, Johnson, Junglas, & Ives, 2011)
- Provide experiences for learners to explore, observe, investigate, and manipulate objects so they take ownership (Downey, 2011)
- Give precise navigation directions or use teleporting so not to lose a student or create long cognitive dead times (Downey, 2011)
- Consider specifying the number of in-world sites to visit to promote variety to the in-world experience (Houser et al., 2011)
- Implement accountability strategies at both the group and individual level (Good, Howland, & Thackray, 2008)
- Encourage social engagement such as through team-based activities as these are likely the most effective in virtual world learning environments (Shen & Eder, 2009)
- Provide rooms and tools for multiple working groups to use and interact (Chang, Gutl, Kopeinik, & Williams, 2009)
- Provide an orientation to Second Life but also provide a refresher on how to use the collaborative tools just before they are needed (Chang, Gutl, Kopeinik, & Williams, 2009)
- Name the site buildings and provide a map (Chang, Gutl, Kopeinik, & Williams, 2009)
- Provide an on-going help desk for technical support (Chang, Gutl, Kopeinik, & Williams, 2009)
- Use detection bots to track student visitation and activity (Dreher, Reiner, Dreher, & Dreher, 2009)
- Visit stud ents in-world to question and review activities (Dreher, Reiner, Dreher, & Dreher, 2009)
- Be explicit on how and why Second Life is being integrated into a course (Jarmon, Traphagan, & Mayrath, 2008)
- Develop a virtual world learning environment that includes addressing project-based pedagogy, technical training and support, and assessment (Jarmon, Traphagan, & Mayrath, 2008)
- Create instructional designs that leverage the unique affordances of Second Life and that use real-world projects (Jarmon, Traphagan, & Mayrath, 2008)
- Leverage Second Life affordances of: making field trips to content-related locations; having students make presentations; inviting guest lecturers; and implementing short and long-term collaborative projects (O’Conner, 2009)
- Make learning how to interact in a virtual world an assignment so students invest the time (O’Conner, 2009)
- Recognize that an online meeting time means developing a schedule amenable to all participants (O’Conner, 2009)
- Develop ways students can document their work, for example leverage the camera snapshot if field trips are required (O’Conner, 2009)
- Provide the means, tools, and structure for collaboration (O’Conner, 2009)
- Establish protocols for interaction in group meetings (O’Conner, 2009)
Apply this technology
How to Implement
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Joe Sanchez from the University of Texas at Austin provides a basic overview of virtual worlds. |
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A virtual world is located on an electronic grid that is composed of a connection of 3D regions or islands, similar to how the Internet is composed of a multitude of home pages (islands) and subpages (different areas of an island). Many grids exist, some for a specific purpose and audience. The link below provides a list of existing virtual worlds provided by the Federation of American Scientists. Some of these are gaming environments such as World of Warcraft. Gaming environments are goal oriented while social virtual worlds focus on meeting people. You can filter your search of this list of virtual worlds by use, level, subject, and other criteria to find one that interests you. |
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Second Life is a well-known, proprietary social virtual world grid. Many universities and businesses have paid for a presence on this grid but it’s free to visitors. Additionally, Second Life has its own economy that might prove beneficial for teaching accounting, business, and economic type courses. This video introduces Second Life and how it is being used by the individual, by universities, and by business. |
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These two videos provide guidance on design elements you might want to consider if you create your own island or region. Dr. Tony O’Driscoll and Dr. Karl Kapp developed a four layer design model for 3D learning environments. In the first video, they explain the seven ‘sensibilities’ layer that differentiates social virtual worlds from other media environments. In the second video, they describe the archetypes layer which addresses the 14 ways they feel how people learn best in 3D environments. |
Real World Examples
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Boise State University with the University of Auckland and Western Wyoming Community College created a 3D learning environment for nursing students to determine the feasibility of teaching and learning in such an environment for nursing education. This video explains their project. |
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The University of Wisconsin Oshkosh College of Nursing has not only created a nursing learning environment but also an entire campus that accommodates lecture, hospital care, and triage from an aircraft disaster. This video provides an overview of that campus. |
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Wesleyan University created Genome Island, a place in Second Life devoted to the education of genetics through text, visualization, and ‘hands-on’ experiments. |
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Science Through Second Life was a New York City project that researched student perceptions and performance in a science class given in Second Life. This video describes the four different science areas presented and the student activities associated with each area. |
Practice
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You will need to download a viewer to access a virtual world. A viewer is the web interface you use to interact with the virtual world such as for login, text chat, and teleporting to different locations. Each grid will have its own viewer but you can also use a third party viewer such as Imprudence. The third party viewers should work on all grids, making it easier for you to become acquainted with just one web browser interface. When you first start the Imprudence viewer, it will ask you which grid you want as a default, such as Second Life. This is the list of virtual world grids that Imprudence is known to work with. |
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This video by Texas State University introduces Second Life, explains some of the terminology, and describes how to get started. Use the link below to register for Second Life. Second Life users have created a well-populated wiki with guidelines, help, and video tutorials. Once you have your avatar, visit Orientation Island to learn the basics about maneuvering in a virtual world. Also, be sure to visit Genome Island in Second Life. That was the virtual world you toured on the “How To Implement” page in LATIST. And remember, when class is not in session, this area may not be well populated. Video: Introduction to Second Life Second Life Home Page to Access Registration Second Life Wiki, Tutorial Videos Second Life, Genome Island, Grid Location Coordinates: 119, 144, 52 |
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OpenSimulator is an open source platform that can be downloaded and put on a server to create your own multi-user 3D environment. The software is maintained and improved by a community of developers. While it is free and allows you to make additions to your version of the code, it is less stable than other older commercial versions. Educational institutions are beginning to move towards the OpenSim option to reduce costs. |
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Active Worlds is another 3D virtual world that began in 1995. Like many social virtual worlds, visitors are free. Active Worlds also has a separate universe dedicated to education, called Active Worlds Educational Universe. Compared to some worlds, the cost is relatively cheap but as with many grids, you will have to pay for your visitors, i.e. students, to enter your world. It also has a wiki with helpful guidelines. Active Worlds Home Page to Access Registration |
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Reaction Grid is another 3D virtual world grid that was originally focused on education. It started based on open source, meaning you could create your own objects and have access to all coding. Reaction Grid has evolved and is now based on Jibe, a proprietary platform that still includes open sim but other software as well. For example, the use of Unity 3d allows it to run in a browser (you need a plugin but not a 3D viewer). This means it can potentially run on tablets and cellphones. You can host or they will host for you. If you pursue this platform, you will need to discuss your specific learning environment because a review of blog postings indicates there is a question as to how many simultaneous users can be supported in a network-dominated environment versus one that is local, that is, each person views their own instantiation of the 3D environment. Also, its graphics are rich with fast download times. |
