Identity, Citizenship, and Moral Constructs from the Virtual Self

Many young people now access digital networks that include individuals very unlike them who promote different cultural, religious and ethical value systems and behaviour. Such value systems can create conflicts of expectation for young people seeking to resolve their relationship to a national citizenship in a pluralistic society, especially if they are experiencing adolescent uncertainties or a growing awareness of social inequalities. The emergence of trans-national political structures and their differing value systems, together with the rise of international tensions, have increased uncertainty about the nature of identity and entitlement to a national citizenship. This paper describes the ongoing Citizens project study of identity development in young people, using real-world scenarios to discover the values that underpin their engagement with this wider range of religious and cultural value systems and to explore personal identity, political issues and citizenship.

Applying E-Portfolio Evaluation Criteria to the Blackboard LMS E-Portfolio

An important part of educational effective practice is performing evaluations to optimise learning. Applying evaluation criteria to virtual and personal learning environments enables educators to assess whether the technologies used are producing the intended effect. As online educational technologies become more sophisticated so does the need to evaluate them. This chapter suggests that traditional educational evaluation frameworks for evaluating e-Learning are insufficient for application to LMS e-portfolios. To address this problem we have developed evaluation criteria designed to assess the usability of LMS e-portfolios used within higher education. One of the main problems with evaluating the usability of LMS e-portfolio is that there is a distinct lack of empirical evidence of evaluation criteria designed and developed for evaluating e-portfolios. This chapter describes the results of applying newly developed LMS e-portfolio evaluation criteria within one UK higher education institution.

Teacher-Created Augmented Reality Experiences

This paper describes the process and results of a project to incorporate Augmented Reality (AR) technologies and pedagogical approaches into a Virginian elementary school and a corresponding process to train a group of Australian teachers to develop AR experiences for their own educational settings. The process involved training a group of 5th grade teachers in Newport News Virginia and a corresponding group of k-12 teachers in Queensland, Australia on the design and production of narrative-based AR games in order to give them the skills to build their own AR games. This chapter focuses on describing the training process, the pedagogical approach, and an exploration of the practical issues that arose from these projects (e.g. policy and fiscal issues that dictated the choice of technology). The discussion of the results from this effort demonstrates the promise of the approach, and shows the potential for educational practices.

Design-Based Research with AGILE Sprints to Produce MUVES in Vocational Education

An innovative approach to effective design, development and testing of Multi-User Virtual Environments (MUVE) in vocational education is provided. It blends Agile software development with design based research (DBR), seeded with educational frameworks and theories relevant to vocational education. Legitimate peripheral participation was used as a filter to inform design thinking for authentic vocational contexts because moving towards being work ready increases the student's legitimate practices particular to a vocation. Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge TPACK (Mishra & Koehler 2006) provided a framework to link content and pedagogy with the MUVE technology. Software development techniques for MUVEs are shown to have characteristics compatible with design based research. A design based methodological process that introduces software development within phases is described. The approach is illustrated in the design of two MUVE to simulate (1) the hazardous situation of temporary traffic management and (2) communication on a maritime ship's bridge.

Trajectory of an Institutional PLE in Higher Education Based on an e-Portfolios System

This paper presents a study during four academic years (from 2010/11 to 2013/14) on the potential for offering students elements to construct their own personal learning environments, by integrating an institutional virtual learning environment and an e-portfolios system. The study was conducted in the University of the Balearic Islands (Spain) and a total of 232 students enrolled to a graduate compulsory course of the fourth year of the studies of Pedagogy took part in the study. The course was performed using the project-based method, and the study was carried out by phases. The collection of data was done through observation and monitoring the e-portfolio activity, a student questionnaire and the observation of student output. These data showed that this kind of environment is used almost exclusively for academic purposes. Some conclusions are that e-portfolio is a good tool for the organization of academic information and that it is useful for collaborating and working in groups.

Eight Years of Utilizing Virtual Worlds for Education

The authors' team of developers and educators has been working since 2006 to deploy virtual worlds for training within secondary and special schools, vocational education, higher education, private industry and the community sector. During that time the team has dealt with a complex web of interrelated factors in an environment of continual technological and institutional change. These factors include technological change, organizational politics, pedagogical fashions, changes in policy and funding environments, and the human aspects of working with teachers and students. The authors conclude that utilizing virtual worlds for education can be rewarding but is not always easy, requiring qualities of nimbleness and self-reinvention.

Students as Designers of Virtual World Learning Environments

Virtual worlds provide pre-service teachers with the opportunity to study teaching and learning in an immersive 3D computer based environment. The pre-service teacher is able to become a designer of learning environments in ways that were previously impossible in a traditional bricks and mortar classroom. The learning environment that pre-service teachers create can, in turn, inform established educators about the usefulness of virtual worlds for education. In the School of Education at Southern Cross University, Australia, pre-service teachers have been given the opportunity to design and build virtual world learning environments. This chapter presents the story of one pre-service teacher and her tutor as they discuss the design of a virtual world learning environment for maths. This particular design project resulted in virtual worlds being integrated across a number of pre-service teacher courses and extended into the K-6 classroom. An overview of these other projects is also presented.

Facilitating Communities of Practice in Online Immersive Learning Environments

This exploratory study is based on survey research involving graduate students using this 3D immersive environment for their coursework. Investigators examined students' perceptions of community and presence via coursework offered in the immersive world. Utilizing the Sense of Community II index and the Communities of Inquiry survey, variables examined include students' time within their graduate programs, time spent in the 3D environment, and their levels of immersion, as well as the relationship between the two instruments. Analysis showed significant results for each of the research questions for both instruments, and allowed for a number of new research directions including that of the correlation of community and presence, along with the potential for design based research informed by systems thinking as a potential new area of interest.

A Research Lens for Studying Power in Learning Games

Digital games have been used to support learning since the 1980s. However, the last decade has seen games, simulations and virtual world use take firm hold of the academic imagination. There also has been a rapid expansion of sponsored, formal research, informal inquiry, and a growing body of theory supporting the use of learning games. As a result, several challenges to their use have been identified such as flaws in the games themselves, inadequate methods of assessment due to complex, confounding variables, and the perceptions of students and teachers. This piece describes a research method called Critical CinéEthnography meant to address this lack. It stems from a discursive, systems-oriented view of learning that explores of the arguments and truth claims made by learners and teachers. The method employs video capture of out-of-game discussion, artifacts, and body language that should allow researchers to build a complex picture of participant experiences that can be easily shared with academics and practitioners alike.

Revisiting the Effects and Affordances of Virtual Manipulatives for Mathematics Learning

In this paper, we revisit the research on virtual manipulatives by synthesizing the findings from 104 research reports, with 46 studies yielding 104 effect size scores reporting the effects of VMs on student achievement. The 104 reports also contributed to a conceptual synthesis analysis that produced categories of affordances that promote mathematical learning. The results of the effect size scores analysis yielded overall moderate effects for VMs compared with other instructional treatments, which was consistent with the first meta-analysis we conducted. There were large, moderate, and small effects when VMs were compared with physical manipulatives, textbooks, and examined by mathematical domains, grade levels, study duration, study quality, year of study publication, and study size. Revisiting the affordance categories confirmed our first analysis which produced five categories of features in the VMs that promoted students' mathematical learning (motivation, simultaneous linking, efficient precision, focused constraint, and creative variation).