The Use of Virtual Worlds in Management Education: An Investigation of Current Practices in Second Life (original) (raw)
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Virtual Worlds Applications for Management Education
Exploring the New Era of Technology-Infused Education, 2000
We live in a global world where information and communication technology is changing the manner in which businesses create and capture value, how and where we work, and how we interact and communicate (Cascio & Montealegre, 2016). As some previous studies highlight, Information Technology (IT), although pervasive in our daily lives as well as in the organizational life, is frequently not taken carefully into account in organizational research (Orlikowski & Scott, 2008; Zammuto et al., 2007). Similarly, IT use in management education is frequently overlooked, especially recent (and sometimes, polemical) technologies such as the Metaverses.
Using virtual worlds efficiently in a post-graduate business course: Lessons from a case study.
There is much interesting work being done around virtual worlds in education (Bulmer, 2008; Dede, 2007; NMC, 2007; Schutt & Martino, 2008) particularly in areas that lend themselves to immersion and scenarios or role-plays, but how can the time and effort required to become familiar with a virtual world be minimised whilst at the same time creating an engaging task for students? This paper describes one such example using Second Life in a postgraduate business course. It outlines the first phase of a mixed methods research study (Cresswell & Plano Clarke, 2007), in which insights are sought from a lecturer and student perspective. An Exploratory Design: Instrument Development Model is used to inform research questions around the factors that influence the use of virtual worlds in learning and teaching. Preliminary findings show that initial support and orientation to virtual worlds contribute to the success of their use in learning and teaching, and that our 'net-gen‘ students are not as technology savvy as we imagine. The second phase of the study has brought to light a conceptualisation of virtual worlds as a gaming environment which may indicate one reason not yet highlighted in the literature, for low uptake of virtual worlds by both students and lecturers (McNeil & Diao, 2010). Continuing investigations will use a Triangulation Design: Convergence Model to collect qualitative and quantitative data, surveying students on their perceptions of virtual worlds in order to corroborate the findings in the literature.
The Pedagogical Considerations in the Design of Virtual Worlds for Organization Learning
Concepts, Methodologies, Tools, and Applications
An increasing number of organizations have established presences in Second Life or virtual worlds for organizational learning. The types of activities range from staff training, annual meetings, to leadership development and commercial transactions. This chapter reviews relevant literature on how virtual worlds, especially Second Life, are utilized for organizational learning. The discussions include leveraging the affordances of virtual worlds for learning, integrating design principles of 3D immersive learning, and examining examples of actual workplace learning in virtual worlds. Specific emphasis will be placed on the translation of applicable learning theories into the pedagogical design of virtual worlds. Furthermore, the chapter examines student perspectives of an actual course on immersive learning that took place in Second Life. Student perspectives are summarized in six strands: challenging and informative learning, engagement, activity structures, transformation, collabor...
Journal of Information …, 2009
The context of Information Communication Technology (ICT) is changing dramatically. Today, Web 2.0 applications such as Facebook and MySpace are used ubiquitously in the general population, and Virtual Worlds are becoming increasingly popular in business, for example via simulations in Second Life. However the capacity of Virtual Worlds is underutilised in educational contexts. Educational institutions in general, but especially those offering Information Systems (IS) courses, must keep pace with emerging ICT and social trends or risk becoming irrelevant. Furthermore, there are particular pedagogical advantages in utilising emerging technologies such as Virtual Worlds in IS education. For instance, Second Life offers an intrinsically motivating, safe, and low cost environment in which to learn IS-related skills such as programming, requirements analysis, systems development, project management, and business process modelling. Drawn from the experience of the authors and current innovations in pedagogical research and practice, suggestions are made for curriculum design and implementation of Second Life in IS Education, including: the benefits of blending the real and Virtual Worlds; enhancement of students' intrinsic motivation; industry-relevant skill transfer; and innovative education that transcends traditional pedagogical practices. These points are illustrated with reference to case studies of IS student projects in Second Life from the University of Hamburg and Curtin Business School. Attention is given to current limitations of this emerging technology, regarding hardware, software, and connectivity. Future developments in both the technology and how it is implemented in educational contexts, integrating the real and virtual worlds via emerging technologies, are mentioned.
This paper describes the use of Second Life to teach marketing in the final year of a Bachelor program at the Geneva School of Business Administration of the University of Applied Sciences Western Switzerland. It starts by summarizing the theories and key facts supporting the choices made by the educators. It then presents the program in details, including course objectives, teaching plan, assessment criteria, logistics and budgets. It summarizes students' feedback and lists key learnings and improvements made, enabling educators interested in implementing a similar program, to avoid pitfalls and beginners' mistakes. The paper ends by sketching current Second Life teaching projects, on which the authors are currently working, more specifically an immersive cross functional business case study concept, opening the window to future cross expertise and cross cultural collaboration possibilities between universities and teaching institutions.
Final report 2013 (pp. 1–226). Armidale, Australia: DEHub: Innovation in Distance Education, University of New England, 2013
3D immersive virtual worlds such as Second Life have been the focus of substantial attention from tertiary educators in recent years and the potential for the use of such environments in learning and teaching contexts has been a frequent topic of discussion by commentators on higher education futures. However, despite anecdotal evidence of an increase in usage of such environments for learning and teaching in Australian and New Zealand higher education, there have been no published studies reporting on the breadth of use and the nature of the experience of adopters of such environments across the sector. This report draws on data from a review and environmental analysis of the use of 3D immersive virtual worlds in higher education in Australia and New Zealand, carried out by researchers from Charles Sturt University (CSU), the University of New England (UNE) and the University of Southern Queensland (USQ) from 2010 to 2012. The study sought to identify and examine existing applications of 3D immersive virtual worlds by educators throughout the two countries, with the aim of developing an understanding of how the technology is being used for learning and teaching across institutions and disciplines and the relevant experiences of academics, educational designers and Information Technology (IT) support staff. The study has been carried out under the auspices of the Distance Education Hub (DEHub at http://www.dehub.edu.au), a federally funded research consortium based at UNE that involves UNE, CSU, USQ and Central Queensland University in Australia, and Massey University in New Zealand. The study set out to provide the higher education community with exemplars, guidelines and recommendations to encourage the successful uptake, implementation and use of 3D immersive virtual worlds. The scoping study consisted of three phases of data collection: 1. Literature searches and searches of institutional web sites leading to the establishment of a database of 179 higher education staff (135 in Australia and 44 in New Zealand) with an interest or involvement in using 3D immersive virtual worlds for learning and teaching; 2. An online questionnaire completed by 117 respondents, including 82 from Australia and 35 from New Zealand, to obtain information about the ways in which 3D immersive virtual worlds were used, and about the perspectives of the teaching staff involved; 3. Interviews to gather more detailed information and perspectives from 13 academic staff who had implemented virtual worlds in their teaching, from six educational design staff and from five Information Technology (IT) support staff. The 62 respondents who indicated they had already used 3D immersive virtual worlds in their teaching reported on a total of 125 individual subjects in which they had used the technology, including 201 individual subject offerings. Details were provided about the use of virtual worlds in 100 subjects, and of these, the majority used Second Life (78.0%) as the virtual worlds platform, followed by Active Worlds (5.0%) and OpenSim (4.0%). Within these 100 subjects the virtual world-based tasks were compulsory and assessed in 41% of subjects, compulsory but not assessed in 16%, and neither compulsory nor assessed in 43%. There was a fairly even distribution of subjects using virtual worlds across disciplines, although the science discipline was somewhat underrepresented. Specifically, 29% were in the Arts and Humanities, 21% in Education, 18% in Information Technology, 10% in Legal and Business Studies, 9% in Health, 4% in Science and 9% in other discipline areas. Respondents provided 53 detailed descriptions of the way in which virtual worlds were used in their teaching, and from these descriptions, ten categories of learning design were identified, with a number of subjects fitting into more than one category. The most commonly used virtual world supported learning design was role-play (43% of subjects), followed by learning designs centred on communication (40%), learning designs focussing on instruction or presentation (23%) and place exploration and building/scripting (each 17%). Fifty-five respondents provided more detailed information about a specific virtual world implementation, and of these 55% indicated that the virtual world, island or space was developed specifically for the purpose of the subject they taught. Twenty-two per cent of these 55 respondents indicated that an important aspect of the learning task was familiarisation with Second Life and consequently these respondents indicated that students were required to explore the environment as a whole rather than using a space developed for a specific pedagogical purpose. Of these 55 respondents, 55% indicated that they had drawn on the support of non academic staff within their institutions, such as information technology or educational design support staff. Fifty-five per cent also indicated that they had drawn upon dedicated funding to support the implementation with this funding coming from a variety of internal and external sources. Interview participants described a number of different virtual spaces that had been developed to meet the specific needs of their particular learning context, including a virtual hospital emergency department, a virtual classroom, and a simulated street with retail outlets allowing students to undertake a business role-play. Others described the development of spaces designed for various types of online teaching including amphitheatres, boardrooms, and informal student meeting spaces. Some of the spaces developed consisted largely of static building and furniture, while others incorporated dynamic features controlled by complex scripts, for example one participant described a virtual environment containing business outlets controlled by a complex back-end economic simulation. Other spaces relied on user interface enhancement allowing avatar control beyond that provided by default within the viewer software. With respect to evaluation, little systematic evaluation was described in the interviews, with participants mainly describing informal feedback mechanisms and some types of formal but not systematic evaluation. Most commonly, participants described informal student feedback or informal observation of student activity as the main evaluation mechanisms. Formal evaluation procedures predominately included student subject evaluation forms that were included as part of a university reporting system. Of those that did mention systematic evaluation, most referred to research projects associated with the virtual world implementation. Respondents to the questionnaire mentioned a number of problems they had encountered in their attempts to integrate virtual world activities into their teaching and these problems were grouped into the following categories: technology, support, funding and time, usability and familiarity, equity and ethics, inherent limitations of virtual worlds, acceptance of virtual worlds, and management and planning. Interview participants also provided more detailed descriptions of many of the problems identified, and a number of recommendations for others emerged from both the questionnaire responses and interviews. Other perspectives emerging from interviews included identification of a lack of specific funding for, and an absence of institutional policies relating to virtual worlds, an acknowledgement of the need for substantial time commitment by staff considering the adoption of virtual worlds, and noting of the value of working with others through informal and formal networks. Additionally, academic staff members interviewed highlighted the increased engagement of students that had occurred through the introduction of virtual worlds based tasks and the fact that the process of introducing virtual worlds into their teaching had led to new reflections on their teaching practice.
Virtual Worlds in Higher Education: The Challenges, Expectations and Delivery
Springer eBooks, 2013
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specifi c statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. While the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication, neither the authors nor the editors nor the publisher can accept any legal responsibility for any errors or omissions that may be made. The publisher makes no warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein.
Journal of Educational Technology & Society, 2015
Three-dimensional (3D) virtual worlds have been used for more than a decade in higher education for teaching and learning. Since the 1980s, academics began using virtual worlds as an exciting and innovative new technology to provide their students with new learning experiences that were difficult to provide any other way. But since that time, virtual worlds have failed to maintain their popularity as learning spaces; many builds falling into disuse and many disappearing altogether. The aim of this article is not only to determine why virtual worlds have not become a mainstream teaching tool, but to ascertain why they have even failed to maintain their popularity. In order to do this, the research team surveyed over 200 academics about the barriers and enablers to the use and perceived affordances of virtual worlds in teaching and learning. These responses are examined in relation to academics’ past, present and future use, experience and knowledge of virtual world environments.