New Life for Corporate Training

While the educational use of Second Life by the academic community is well established, the number of corporate training and development programs utilizing Second Life has yet to be fully determined. However, while the corporate training use of Second Life may not be as prolific as the academic use, it is occurring. To support this argument the author combines the use of ethnographic evaluation with a review of the existing literature surrounding the corporate use of Second Life. Presented within are what the author found to be the main advantages and hesitations that surround the corporate use of Second Life. The affordances of Second Life, the communication channels, the immersive self-directed building opportunities, and rich, content driven environments, are a unique mix that makes Second Life an ideal medium for developing corporate learning programs.

New Augmented Reality Applications

In this Chapter, the authors will present an Augmented Reality (AR) system for teaching Inorganic Chemistry to university-level students. Augmented Reality (AR) is a computer related research area that allows users to see views of the real world enhanced with computer-generated text and visual information. AR with 3D models can be used as an educational aid to help students gain spatial intuition. This is really important and useful in disciplines like Inorganic Chemistry, where solving problems related to 3D crystal structures, understanding these structures or facing symmetry related problems can be supported by computer generated 3D graphics. AR is an immersive technology that can improve education offering more interaction and realism. It can also be applied to real-time online and in-classroom teaching. Our system is based on inexpensive webcams and open-source software. A survey the authors conducted after using it in the classroom shows great acceptance of the system and improved results when solving Inorganic Chemistry problems related to 3D structures. This opens up new possibilities of self-assessment and interaction.

Education-Oriented Research Activities Conducted in Second Life

Second Life (SL) is a multiuser virtual environment (MUVE) that can be used to enhance students’ learning. It is a virtual environment constructed by SL residents, where students can engage in collaborative learning with other SL residents. In the field of education, SL has been used as a professional tool, a synchronous online system, a virtual environment mimicking real life, a platform for role-playing, a communication tool between teachers and students. This chapter focuses on education-oriented research activities conducted in SL. The authors explain and analyze SL usage in higher education, foreign language instruction as well as investigated its contribution to various learning paradigms, and suggested future research directions.

Subject Matter Content Creation for Second Life Delivery

Worldwide, educators are experimenting with the myriad possibilities that Second Life and other multi-user virtual environments (MUVEs) provide for teaching and learning for online courses. Some find the ability to collaborate enhanced, others see the social presence improved, more acknowledge the ease of employing role play intriguing, and a few have employed highly complex simulations as means of delivering complex material. The ability of educators to develop, test, and effectively deliver meaningful educational content within virtual worlds is often limited by the rather steep learning curve such environments present. This chapter provides first a set of basic guidelines for preparing instructors for an incremental approach to content delivery and predisposes learners for successful implementation and performance. Second, using examples from the discipline of geography, specifically my subspecialty of geographic information systems (GIS), it describes the use of some basic tools contained within Second Life for creation of active course content through small learning objects. Finally, it demonstrates real-world examples of such in-world learning objects from a laboratory-based course to illustrate how traditional course content can be transformed to hands-on exercises in the virtual environment.

Interactive Models Based on Virtual Reality Technology Used in Civil Engineering Education

Concerning the educational task, a school of engineering can be reasonably expected to constantly update computational resources which are in frequent use in the professions, technology which must be introduced into the training of the student, leading to their adaptation for curricula in these disciplines. The interaction allowed by three-dimensional geometric models could make an end to passive attitudes of learners as an opposition to traditional teaching systems. In addition, virtual reality technology could be applied as a complement to three-dimensional modeling, leading to a better communication between the various stakeholders in the process, whether in training, in education or in professional practice. Techniques of virtual reality were applied on the development of teaching models related to the construction activity. The involvement of virtual reality techniques in the development of educational applications brings new perspectives to the teaching of subjects related to the field of Civil Engineering activity.

Enhancing tertiary healthcare education through 3D MUVE-based simulations

This chapter focuses specifically on the use of three-dimensional multi-user virtual environments (3D MUVEs) for simulation-based teaching and learning in tertiary-level healthcare education. It draws on a broad range of extant research conducted over the past three decades, synthesizing this with newer developments and examples that have emerged since the advent and proliferation of the “3D Web.” The chapter adopts and advocates a research-informed approach to surveying and examining current initiatives and future directions, backed by relevant literature in the areas of online learning, constructivist learning theory, and simulations. Both opportunities and challenges are discussed, with the aim of making a contribution to the development of best practice in the field.

Foreign Language Instruction in a Virtual Environment

The chapter conveys the experiences of using the virtual world Second Life (SL) to supplement classroom-based instruction of an introductory foreign language class. With attention given to the needs of educators and instructional designers, as well as students, the author presents selected activities, along with detailed practical plans and theoretical justifications for those activities. She follows by discussing the technological characteristics of SL (communication features, logging features, and features used to ease activity preparation) that the author found to be of particular pedagogical value in her instruction. The importance of situated cognition, cultural relevance, self-pacing, students’ autonomy, and interactivity with diminished inhibition is examined as well.

The Benefits and Unanticipated Challenges in the Use of 3D Virtual Learning Environments in the Undergraduate Media Arts Curriculum

This chapter describes the benefits as well as the unanticipated challenges in engaging undergraduates in immersive experiences within the 3D virtual environment, Second Life. The chapter draws on trials of three undergraduate courses in which students attended virtual classes and undertook media-related activities in Second Life. International experts conducted synchronous virtual guest presentations in all three courses. Media arts students designed immersive games using Second Life tools and the final-year students created virtual portfolios. The findings from student evaluations suggest both benefits and challenges in the use of 3D virtual environments in the undergraduate curriculum. In discussing these findings, the author challenges assumptions about the readiness of ‘Generation Y’ students to adapt easily to such learning environments. The final section of thechapter outlines proposed strategies for addressing the identified challenges.

Multi-User Virtual Environments

Various features of multiuser virtual environments (MUVEs) make them promising and, potentially transformational, contexts for the development of second language (L2) skills. While there has been a surge of interest in the use of MUVEs for language learning, there is still a relatively small body of empirical evidence that supports our understanding of how these immersive spaces can best be utilized for second language education. After a brief introduction to relevant research on MUVEs and language learning, this chapter is divided into two primary sections. The first section describes one component of a larger empirical study of the first MUVE built specifically for learning Spanish pragmatics. The following section utilizes the empirical findings, combined with lessons learned from classroom implementation, to suggest design considerations for those wishing to implement MUVEs in the language classroom. While the specific focus of the chapter is language learning, the findings are intended to be generally applicable in other disciplines as well.

Staging Second Life in Real and Virtual Spaces

Over a four-week period students enrolled in a second-year visual theatre course at the University of South Australia attempted to stage the online virtual world Second Life in a conventional proscenium arch theatre. The Staging Second Life project played upon the liminal space between ‘real’ and digital, and gave the students the opportunity to transpose a virtual world into a theatrical setting. The students actively played between these two media in turn becoming intermedialists. Within the hypermedium of the theatre they were able to remediate the conventions of Second Life via their bodies and manipulation of objects. The project reflects a growing trend in performance pedagogy where technology and new ways of thinking about its applications are increasingly integrated into the curriculum. This chapter describes the practical aspects of the course as well as the emergent theory of intermediality underpinning the Staging Second Life project.