Virtual Worlds for Student Engagement

Atul Sajjanhar

doi:10.4236/ce.2012.326118

Abstract

In this paper, we study the scope of virtual worlds for student engagement in higher education. The motivation for the study is the gap in opportunities for interactivity that exist for off-campus students compared with on-campus students. A student taking a course at a university, while located in a different geographic location, has limited opportunity for student-student and student-teacher interaction; this effects student engagement significantly. We conduct a feasibility analysis for engaging students in a virtual world; Second Life is used as the test-bed to create the virtual world environment. We present preliminary findings, the promises and the limitations of Second Life as an immersive environment for engaging students.

Highlights

The notion of student engagement is based on the assumption that learning is influenced by how a student participates in educationally purposeful activities (Coates, 2005)
We focus on Second Life (SL) because it is the most mature of virtual world platforms which is reflected by its high usage figures compared with other competing platforms (Warburton, 2009; Dalgarno et al, 2010)
We describe the use of SL to engage students in a virtual world

Summary

Introduction

The notion of student engagement is based on the assumption that learning is influenced by how a student participates in educationally purposeful activities (Coates, 2005). Learning management systems (LMS) such as Blackboard, Desire to Learn and Moodle are used extensively in attempts to engage students. The drawback of traditional LMS is that they are reduced to an online repository of resources; interactivity is passive and manifested as discussion forums or teacher blogs. Such an LMS is referred to as object-centric. Stutzman (Stutzman, 2007) makes a distinction between object-centric and egocentric networks. An egocentric social network places the individual as the core of the network experience (Orkut, Facebook, LinkedIn, Friendster) while the object-centric network places a non-ego element at the center of the network. Examples of object-centric networks include Flickr (social object: photograph), Dopplr (social object: travel instance), del.icio.us (social object: hyperlink) and Digg (social object: news item)

Objectives

Findings

Discussion

Conclusion