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Educational Frontiers: Learning in a Virtual World Cynthia M. Calongne (“Lyr Lobo”) The use of virtual worlds expands on the campus-based and online classrooms, enhancing learning experiences. Classes in virtual worlds offer opportunities for visualization, simulation, enhanced social networks, and shared learning experiences.

Looking to the Future: Higher Education in the Metaverse Chris Collins (“Fleep Tuque”) Beyond the capabilities that virtual worlds offer us at the moment, it is the possibilities that we can imagine for the future that may be the most compelling. Virtual worlds technology, like the Internet in general, is changing the way we access and experience information and the way we can access and connect with each other.

Drawing a Roadmap: Barriers and Challenges to Designing the Ideal Virtual World for Higher Education Chris Johnson (“ScubaChris Wollongong”) When using a roadmap, one can take many different paths to reach a desired destination. Similarly, institutions can take many different turns along the road to implementing an ideal virtual world for higher education.

Alan Levine, New Media Consortium: The NMC Campus P. F. Anderson and Marc R. Stephens, University of Michigan: Wolverine Island Mary Anne Clark, Texas Wesleyan University: Genome Island Chris Collins and Ronald W. Millard, University of Cincinnati: Galapagos Islands in Second Life Ben Digman, University of Kansas Medical Center: KUMC Isle Larry Dugan, Finger Lakes Community College, and Terry Keys, Monroe Community College, SUNY LIVE Michael Gardner and John Scott, University of Essex, and Bernard Horan, Sun Microsystems: MiRTLE Adrienne Gauthier and Christopher Impey, University of Arizona: ASTR202, Exploring Life in the Universe Anne P. Massey, Indiana University, and Mitzi Montoya, North Carolina State University: Managing the Services Lifecycle Janet Nepkie, James Greenberg, and Harry E. Pence, State University of New York at Oneonta: SUNY Oneonta Music Project Ulrich Rauch, University of Trinidad and Tobago, and Tim Wang, Marvin Cohodas, and Negin Mirriahi, University of British Columbia: Arts Metaverse Beth Ritter-Guth, The Hotchkiss School, Laura Nicosia, Montclair State University, and Eloise Pasteur, Eloise Pasteur Educational Designs: Literature Alive!

Most lectures were given in the classroom, so those given in SL, hampered by the slowness of text chat versus face-to-face conversation, suffered by comparison. Many students had to be on campus anyway during scheduled online class activities, leading to situations in which students were text chatting while sitting next to one another in a computer lab.

understanding the validity and creative procedure for illustrating their papers in a three-dimensional environment

the concept of interreality - the integration of physical and virtual worlds - is ‘an advantage in distance education, if it can bring distance education closer to face-to-face education.’

It is also worth noting that of the 30 students that participated, only a few had difficulty navigating through Second Life and most felt that it was superior to other Web-based learning environments.

Passion communities exist, according to Gee, to “give people status and control, not always money.” He recounted the story of a young girl who began making clothes for her Sims characters. When she wanted more textures than the game provided, she taught herself to use Photoshop to create her own. Eventually, she moved to Second Life and began selling her own original designs. When asked if she planned to pursue her interest in fashion, she said no. “I want to work with computers because they give you power.”

Gee sees two separate educational systems operating today: one a traditional approach to learning; the other what Gee calls “passion communities.” In Gee's view, the latter produce real knowledge. Video games, virtual worlds and online social networks provide environments in which these passion communities can form and thrive

“Education isn't about telling people stuff, it's about giving them tools that enable them to see the world in a new and useful way.”

Gee sees broad implications for students in this regard. “Give students smart tools and let them use them and modify them to suit their purposes.” Such self-motivated learning moves students away from merely consuming knowledge and encourages them to produce knowledge and apply it in meaningful ways.

Gee clearly situates video games within an overall theory of learning and literacy with genuine power to transform students and equip them to address complex problems.

Respondents didn’t feel that using the Second Life client was too difficult. The majority of the respondents answered that moving (73.3 percent) and navigating (66.7 percent) in Second Life was easy or fairly easy. Almost all of the respondents felt that it was easy to take part in Second Life–based lectures and discussions, and that they gained additional information from other students in discussions.

Respondents were asked to estimate the usability of Second Life as a learning environment by comparing it to other learning methods. When compared with face–to–face education, the respondents felt that learning in Second Life was somewhat more difficult. Face–to–face education was considered overall as a “better” (versus worse, as literally asked in the survey) form of education. But learning in Second Life was considered to be clearly more fun. Nevertheless, 60 percent of the respondents answered that lectures in Second Life could replace face–to–face lectures. This question raised strong opinions.

In addition, 83.3 percent of the respondents thought that the barrier to participate in discussions or to ask a question was lower in Second Life than in face–to–face lectures

When compared to Web–based learning platforms, Second Life was not considered to be neither easier nor more difficult. But even in this case, learning in Second Life was considered to be a lot more fun (a response from over half of the respondents). In contrast to the comparison with face–to–face education, Second Life was considered to be a “better” form of education than learning from Web–based learning platforms.

One–third of the respondents considered Second Life to be “better” — against 13.3 percent of the respondents that thought Second Life was “worse” — than Web–based learning platforms. The respondents graded a lecture in Second Life to be “better” than webcasting and discussion boards, almost as good as videoconferences, but clearly not as good as face–to–face lectures and meetings.

A question about how the students experienced the presence of other students gave very mixed answers. Compared to Web–based learning environments the interaction between the students was thought to be more comfortable by almost 50 percent of respondents. It was considered to enhance interaction and the feeling of presence was stronger. Most of the students (56.6 percent) felt that other students were actually present in the virtual classroom. The respondents said that it was “fun” to meet all of the other students in the same location without having to leave their homes and that the campus–like atmosphere made it feel “real”.

Second Life was also considered to be a functional environment for teamwork. Assignments that students resolved in teams were considered to be fun and productive. The respondents felt that their teams produced more than they would have done individually. Students also felt very strongly that they were part of the team (56.7 percent).

When the respondents were given a chance to freely express their opinions about their experiences in Second Life, it became apparent that using Second Life in education may even have somewhat surprising positive consequences. One of the respondents wrote that using Second Life in education had brought her closer to her 16–year–old son’s world.

Another surprising observation outside the survey was that some of the students used Second Life on their own time to improve their language skills. One of the students told us that she spent a lot of time in the French–speaking areas of Second Life exercising both her written and spoken French. This discovery strengthens our belief of the huge potential that Second Life has for language education, an area certainly requiring further research.

In general, Second Life was considered to enhance interaction between students and between the instructor and the students especially when compared to Web–based learning environments.

Provided that participating face–to–face education does not require too much traveling and learning outcomes are satisfactory, Second Life does not necessarily provide any significant benefits, at least not when using it only as a platform for lectures and teamwork.

When considering distance only as a physical measure of separation, Second Life provides a means to overcome it. The existence of multimodal and non–interfering means of communication and socialization by using chat, instant messages and voice calls in personal and group interaction provides users a wider range of possibilities to communicate than in face–to–face sessions. Of these varied means, each student can select an option one that feels most comfortable, an observation also made by Paquette–Frenette (2006). In this study, all of the students were participating at a distance through Second Life, avoiding problems noted in Paquette–Frenette (2006).

The mixed responses to questions about Second Life being comfortable or better than other environments of learning indicate a variety of emotional and cognitive reactions. This study did not give clear answers to the interplay of different distance variables (Nooteboom, 2000; Duval, 2006; Hargreaves, 2001; Garrison, et al., 2000) in Second Life–based learning. However, the results indicate that the feeling of presence and distance is a multidimensional issue that needs further attention in future studies.

In comparison to lectures, the benefits of using Second Life in teamwork were more obvious. The physical presence of avatars, the possibility to communicate in real time and the existence of a shared local space explain why Second Life produces a more realistic feel of presence than discussion forums or chat rooms. In a sense, Second Life brings distance education closer to face–to–face education, supporting Jones, et al. (2005). The strong feel of presence noted by respondents and the immersive nature of Second Life seem to do just that.

In an instant messaging conversation during Robert Washburn’s journalism lecture at Loyalist, Urqhart, whose real name is Tyson Jewell, reveals his frustrations with Second Life. He says the heavy computer requirements can be a hassle for students who can’t afford sophisticated video cards or a faster Internet connection. Because of this, some students have to come to school anyway to use a computer inside a lab or a library to attend their Second Life classes. There are various other technical problems, such as the glitch in the program that caused Mr. Jewell’s classmate to be locked out of his account. And, ironically, Second Life battles against the one thing that has propelled its popularity: the rapid advances in technology.

Finally, everyone who was interviewed for this article agrees that virtual worlds like Second Life won’t completely overtake normal classroom settings. However, they do believe that three-dimensional online classes and assignments will become a staple in Canadian education – and that’s for real.