Augmented Reality as an Emerging Application in Tourism Marketing Education

Augmented Reality (AR) as an advanced format of Virtual Reality (VR) becomes widely available in numerous appliances, mainly in mobile devices like Smartphones or wearable devices. As the prospective benefits of this technology are said to be immense, tourism marketing education is believed to experience a comprehensive application of AR in coming years. At present, AR technologies are in use in many academic disciplines including medicine, geography, information technology, computer aided entertainment and many more. Out of all of the recently developed technological advancements, those can be termed as ‘Innovations', augmented reality can be considered as a key innovation. As coined, due to easier operational capacities, AR is becoming more popular and better fitting in tourism marketing education systems. This chapter outlines the use of AR, termed as an ‘Innovation' as per the ‘Diffusion of Innovations' theory of Rogers (1962), to meet tourism marketing education demands. The chapter critically examines relevant cross-country cases to support the arguments made above.

Augmented Reality

Augmented Reality (AR) is an emerging technology that bridges the gap between the computer-generated digital information and the reality in real time. Despite the use of AR in numerous disciplines such as architecture, e-learning system, entertainment, medicine, engineering, and e-commerce, it has also potential implications in education. Therefore, in this study, augmented reality use in education is considered in all aspects. After the advantages and disadvantages of AR use in education is explained detailed, the phases of augmented reality book development are discussed. As a result, researchers should work on experimental studies to investigate how AR applications can be applied in educational settings in the future.

Pedagogical Agents for Learning

Throughout the past two decades, researchers have seen rapid innovations in the field of learning technologies. Virtual reality, video games, and online learning are becoming quite common in educational contexts. Pedagogical agents are often present in a variety of these virtual environments. Pedagogical agents are virtual characters with an on-screen presence that are designed to facilitate learning in multimedia environments. In this chapter the author examines the theoretical rationale for incorporating a pedagogical agent into a learning environment, critically examines their effectiveness for learning, and discusses how they have been implemented in research studies to date. Suggestions for future research in virtual reality environments are highlighted.

Seeing Numbers Differently

Numbers are the most powerful adjective in the human language, being that they are descriptive and quantifiable. Humans can harness that power with our eyes and our innate ability to see shape patterns. Virtual worlds afford us this opportunity without the physical world hindrances of materials, space, time, or gravity. Explore how language, decimal-centricity, and symbols with their processes have clouded the view of numbers, their shapes, and the discovery of metapatterns: visually recognizable algebraic expressions and equations. The experiences shared in the case study within reveal the need of a working virtual world environment for educational training, prototyping, and studio image capturing. Common Core Standards for Mathematics aspire to bring the student into the understanding of the “why”. In the virtual reality of Second Life, the metaphor of seeing the forest before the trees is realized with our example and number patterns: from the earliest subitizing, to multi-digit, multi-base number recognition, to metapatterns, to deriving polynomial equations through differences.

The Use of Virtual Worlds in Foreign Language Teaching and Learning

This book chapter presents, a review of the literature from 2004-2014 regarding the various models of virtual worlds used in foreign language teaching and learning, the impact of virtual world learning environments and the implications of language teaching. The study being reported aims to address the following questions: (1) What are the models of virtual worlds used in language learning instruction in K-12 and higher education; (2) How do VWLEs impact language learning in terms of motivation, communicative competency, intercultural competency, collaborative competency, constructivist learning, and sociocultural competency; and (3) What are the implications of using VWLEs in foreign language teaching and learning? Results indicate that social context and task-based learning enhanced language learners' participation and motivations. Findings also indicate that consistent use of interactional strategies encouraged learners to engage in the tasks and stay motivated. The study suggested that a VWLE offers a motivating, engaging, and multi-dynamic environment for language learners.

Applied Areas of Three Dimensional Virtual Worlds in Learning and Teaching

Three Dimensional Virtual Worlds (3DVW) have been substantially adopted in educational and pedagogical fields worldwide. The current study conducted a systematic literature review of the published research relevant to the application of 3DVWs in higher education. A literature search was performed in eight high-ranking databases, and following scrutiny according to inclusion criteria, 164 papers were selected for review. The systematic literature review process was summarized, reviews undertaken by the authors, and results about the applicability of 3DVWs in higher education were extracted. A wide variety of application areas for the 3DVWs in higher education were found, and were classified into five main categories. Various 3DVW platforms and virtual environments used for educational goals were also identified. The results revealed Second Life as the most popular 3DVW platform in higher education. This study also found that by using 3DVW technology a wide range of virtual environments and virtual tools have been designed and applied in teaching and learning for higher education.

Teaching Economics in World of Warcraft

This chapter is a go-to guide for education professionals (primarily in the undergraduate and graduate college-level degree programs) for understanding and designing Economics classes in World of Warcraft. The premier MMORPG of the Western world, World of Warcraft boasts a number of features that makes it an ideal sandbox for economic education. It was deliberately designed to represent a large number of important real-world institutions like trade, production, cooperation, thus it can become a platform for learning about them. Moreover, since students encounter these institutions in a vibrant virtual world setting, they not only get to verify the learned materials but can practice their applications in their day-to-day dealings with other World of Warcraft denizens. This will lead to more student engagement, better learning outcomes, a more thorough understanding of both the principles of the theory and their applications, and greatly improved knowledge retention.

Integrating Technological Innovations to Enhance the Teaching-Learning Process

Virtual reality is one of the latest technologies to be integrated into the teaching-learning process and it holds significant potential to enhance instructional processes and impact student learning. Historically, technology integration for instruction has been initiated primarily within institutions of higher education, while K-12 integration has been gradual to become part of mainstream education. Likewise, as teachers play a pivotal role in the process of technology integration, it is imperative to train teachers not only in computer literacy, but also in the requisite technological knowledge and skills needed to use technology in instruction. Furthermore, such training should be accompanied by support for teachers in developing a pedagogy and self-efficacy for technology integration. Self-efficacy can also serve as a foundation of motivation for teachers to keep abreast of new technologies and to determine how and when to use such emergent tools to enhance instruction.

Ethics in Virtual World Environments Research

With increased use of virtual worlds in education, training, military, arts, engineering, architecture, astronomy, medical, physical sciences, and many other fields, research in the field of distributed virtual world simulation environments has increased manifold in the last decade. This astounding growth has motivated us to think seriously about issues related to ethics in such research. Awareness of ethical issues is not only a responsibility of the researcher conducting research in virtual worlds, but also for ethics committees and institutional review board members. In this chapter we provide an overview of the past and current research attempting to identify ethics issues related to distributed virtual world simulation environments research. We raise questions related to virtual world research ethics that researcher and ethics committee members should ponder, and we provide several references for the reader to engage in thought provoking further study and discussion.

Using Second Life® for Situated and Active Learning in Teacher Education

Preservice and inservice special education teachers used Second Life® as the educational platform in online courses in a graduate level distance education program. Faculty designed the virtual learning experiences to facilitate situated and active learning through the creation of a virtual campus and course-specific learning activities. The purpose of this chapter is to describe how instructors designed environments and activities to optimize learning in a three-dimensional virtual immersive environment, to report students' responses to learning in the virtual world, and to discuss the implications of virtual simulations for teacher education.