More research into the educational value of Second Life

"Virtually all college students have had experience with games. Games represent active, immersive learning environments where users integrate information to solve a problem. Learning in this manner incorporates discovery, analysis, interpretation, and performance as well as physical and mental activity. An increasing number of colleges and universities are exploring the use of games to enhance learning. The ELI's interest in games and simulations is to gain a fresh view of cognition and learning by looking at games as the intersection of play, pedagogy, and technology."

(EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (ELI) 2008)


Learning Theory - Constructivist

Learners cannot be passive in a game or simulation environment. Those learners that are engaged in educational games and simulations are interpreting, analyzing, discovering, evaluating, acting, and problem solving. This approach to learning is much more consistent with constructivist learning, where knowledge is constructed by the learners as they are actively problem solving in an authentic context, than with traditional based learning.

	Constructivist	Traditional
Knowledge	Constructed, emergent, situated in action or experience, distributed	Transmitted, external to knower, objective, stable, fixed, decontextualized
Reality	Product of mind	External to the knower
Meaning	Reflects perceptions and understanding of experiences	Reflects external world
Symbols	Tools for constructing reality	Represents world
Learning	Knowledge construction, interpreting world, constructing meaning, ill-structured, authentic-experiential, articulation-refection, process-oriented	Knowledge transmission, reflecting what teacher knows, well-structured, abstract-symbolic, encoding-retention-retrieval, product-oriented
Instruction	Reflecting multiple perspectives, increasing complexity, diversity, bottom-up, inductive, apprenticeship, modeling, coaching, exploration, learner-generated	Simplify knowledge, abstract rules, basics first, top-down, deductive, application of symbols (rules, principles), lecturing, tutoring, instructor derived and controlled, individual, competitive

From: Jonassen, D. H., Peck, K. L., & Wilson, B. G. (1999). Learning with Technology: A Constructivist Perspective. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Merrill.

Social Experience

Collaboration is important in constructivist learning, as knowledge is socially constructed. One common misconception of gaming is of a lone player, secluded in front of his or her computer. With modern computer games and a good Internet broadband connection this is not the reality. Most games have a community of players who interact socially to not only discuss strategies but share experiences, and provide encouragement via websites, discussion boards, blogs, and wikis. In my opinion this can be directly linked to Etienne Wengar's thoery of "Community of Practice" (2006).

"Communities of practice are groups of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly"

The following table is based on Wengar's Community of Practice and what it should look like. I have adapted the structure to suit SL virtual environment.

Problem solving	"Can we work on this build together and generate some ideas; I'm not clear on it."
Requests for information	"Where can I find the script to switch the lights on and off?"
Seeking experience	"Has anyone used u-Stream before?"
Reusing assets	"I have a RLO that I designed last year. I can send it to you and you can work through it."
Coordination and synergy	"Can we combine our Linden Dollars to purchase land, build a shopping mall and open shops for trading?"
Discussing developments	"What do you think of the new beta2 viewer? Does it really help with building and ease navigation?"
Documentation projects	"We have come across this issue before. Let us write it down once and for all."
Visits	"Can we come and see your interactive meeting centre? We need to establish one on our land."
Mapping knowledge and identifying gaps	"Who knows what, and what are we missing? What other groups should we connect with?"

Communities of Practice can be linked to the virtual learning environment as they are not governed by any formal structure, indiviuals and/or groups of people can and do make connections with each other where before there would of been organisational and geographical boundries.

Multiplayer Gaming

SL is a multiplayer game ,and in multiplayer games several people can play the game at the same time by using networked and Internet technologies, this can provide additional social experiences as you can play the game with others, against others, or both.

This significantly changes the nature of a computer game. In SL, users can create (construct) their own world, they can create complex objects, such as a spaceship, house or motorcycle, by combining simpler objects, such as a cube or sphere - called primitives or prims. Also, objects can be programmed for action using a scripting language (Linden Scripting). In SL, the door on your house can open when you touch it, or you can script a "ghost" door which would allow an avatar to walk through it, and you could also sit on and race the motorcycle you designed and built.

SL does go beyond the remit of a multiplayer game, where players make moves and receive outcomes. It is a virtual world, created by and inhabited by its users. This then leads into the use of SL for educational purposes...

References

John Seely Brown, "New Learning Environments in the 21st Century: Exploring the Edge," Forum Futures 2006 (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Forum for the Future of Higher Education, 2006).

Richard Van Eck, "Digital Game-Based Learning: It's Not Just the Digital Natives Who Are Restless," EDUCAUSE Review, vol. 41, no. 2 (March/April 2006), pp. 17–30.

Len Annetta, Marshall Murray, Shelby Gull Laird, Stephanie Bohr, and John Park, "Serious Games: Incorporating Video games in the Classroom," EDUCAUSE Quarterly, vol. 29, no. 3, (August/September 2006).

Diana Oblinger, Simulations, Games, and Learning, ELI White Paper, May 2006.

Joel Foreman, "Game-Based Learning: How to Delight and Instruct in the 21st Century," EDUCAUSE Review, vol. 39, no. 5 (September/October 2004), pp. 51–66.

Wengar, E. "Communities of Practice" http://www.ewenger.com/theory/ accessed 11th November 2010.

http://www.educause.edu/ELI/LearningTechnologies/GamesSimulationsandVirtualWorl/11263 accessed 11th November 2010.