A Life-Changing Experience Second Life As A Transformative Learning Space

"A Life-Changing Experience": Second Life as a Transformative Learning Space
Yvonne Masters, Sue Gregory
0172
University of New England, Australia
The Asian Conference on Education 2012
Official Conference Proceedings 2012
Abstracts
Higher education teaching traditionally occurred, and to some extent still does, in
face-to-face physical settings (often lecture theatres) with an academic and a group of
students. In recent decades, the emphasis has shifted to learning communities and the
mode of delivery has evolved from traditional face-to-face to online. This occurs
either blended with face-to-face or exclusively online, most commonly through the
medium of a learning management system. For students who have been studying by
distance education, this has frequently been an isolating, if not alienating, experience.
At the University of New England, Australia, transformative learning spaces have
been created in the virtual world of Second Life. These spaces have proven to engage
students in their learning and provide opportunities for interaction that can span both
time and space. In doing this, learning communities and a sense of belonging have
been fostered. Data from four research projects are presented in this paper,
demonstrating how virtual world learning spaces have transformed learning for
students. From the data, it is argued that learning in a virtual world lessens the sense
of isolation and heightens the sense of belonging to a learning community. It is also
argued that virtual world learning increases engagement and provides opportunities
for students removed from each other geographically to work together to meet
learning outcomes. The paper is concluded with a discussion of how virtual world
learning spaces have the capacity to provide for global sharing of both learning and
teaching.
Keywords:
Second Life, virtual worlds, experiential learning, teacher education
iafor
The International Academic Forum
www.iafor.org
Official Conference Proceedings Osaka, Japan
198

Introduction:
Higher education institutions (HEIs) are important centres of learning, continuing a long
tradition of tertiary education. Traditionally, this learning has occurred face-to-face and the
learning spaces have been lecture theatres and tutorial rooms or laboratories. Much of the
teaching in the lecture theatres has been direct transmission from ‘expert’ to ‘novice’.
However, this more traditional way of learning and teaching has changed. Online learning
has gained momentum in HEIs around the world (Gutierrez, 2010; Hiltz & Turoff, 2005;
Puzziferro & Shelton, 2009) and this is dramatically demonstrated by the current exponential
growth in the exploration into and delivery of what are described as massive open online
courses (MOOCs). These MOOCs have the capacity to deliver education on a large scale to
thousands participants who may be anywhere around the world. These courses are pushing
the envelope of distance education and creating new kinds of online learning spaces.
Accompanying a change in the learning spaces in HEIs (from physical to online), there is
greater accountability and HEIs are being measured against a range of indicators including
retention and student satisfaction as well as success rates (Shillington et al., 2012). In
Australia, most HEIs are government funded and the success of and satisfaction with the
learning experience provided is publicly reported via a government website (Simpson, 2009)
and in New Zealand government funding for HEIs is performance based with retention,
course completion and achievement as key indicators (Marshall, 2012; Shillington et al.,
2012). Engaging students in their learning and the university community is thus vital and
predicates the need for effective learning spaces, particularly for distance education students.
Simpson (2009) has argued that too often HEIs have tried what he describes as a ‘goulash’
approach to supporting and engaging distance education students, providing a toolbox of as
many strategies as possible rather than developing spaces that work. This occurs in spite of
the research outlining the importance of the learning space to student engagement and
success (Bennett, 2011; Dugdale, 2009; JISC, 2006).
In this paper, the authors discuss their research about a virtual world learning space that
demonstrates the capacity of this environment to engage students in their learning and to
transform how online learning, particularly for distance education students, has been
transformed.
Distance Education and Virtual World Learning Spaces:
As long ago as 1995 Keegan outlined the possibility of students being able to engage in
education that was “face-to-face at a distance” (p. 109), in this case education via satellite.
However, the capacity to study from a distance has earned its share of critics. While the
development of a range of information and communication technologies such as learning
managements systems, blogs, wikis and other Web 2.0 tools have been argued as impacting
online learning (Beldarrain, 2006; Bower, 2011; Buck, 2009; Peters, 2010), distance
education is still seen as needing to overcome the view that it is a “second rate, impersonal
educational option” (Baggaley, 2008, p. 41). Research suggests that what is lacking is a
sense of social presence and accompanying student engagement. Social presence (Short,
Williams, & Christie, 1976), a feeling of belonging to a community, has been shown to have
positive impact on student satisfaction and “students’ perceptions of social presence overall ...
contribute[d] significantly to the predictor equation for students’ perceived learning overall”
(Richardson & Swan, 2003, p. 68). Dow (2008) argues that the quality of student and
academic interactions that occur impact on social presence and that high quality interactions
require strategies that “effectively facilitate online socialization and engagement” (p. 240).
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Engagement is closely linked to social presence and its development is essential. Student
engagement means that they “have a sense of energetic and effective connection with the
activities they are undertaking” (Schaufeli, Bakker, & Salanova, 2006, p. 702). Linked with
social presence, engagement has been shown to improve student outcomes (Tu, 2002).
The literature on distance education reporting student feelings of isolation, feelings that have
been shown to contribute to high attrition rates and reduced student satisfaction (Alston et al.,
2005; Buchanan, Myers, & Hardin, 2005) prompted the authors to explore alternative
learning spaces from those already available. They work at the University of New England in
Australia which has a long tradition of distance education delivery. It has more than 80% of
its students studying in this external mode (UNE Corporate Intelligence Unit, 2011) and e-
learning is one of its strategic goals. While acknowledging that Web 2.0 tools, UNE’s main
delivery mode, have been shown to assist in student interaction online (Guri-Rosenblit, 2009;
Lee & Chan, 2007; Peters, 2010; Veletsianos, 2010) enhance interaction, an environment that
could better help to overcome isolation and enhance social presence was seen as crucial.
Research into the use of a virtual world environment began.
Virtual worlds are “richly immersive and highly scalable 3D environments” (New Media
Consortium and EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative, 2007, p. 18) and they have affordances
such as their capacity for immersion, simulations and extended interactions (Warburton, 2009)
that suit them to educational purposes. Indeed, a research project conducted by McKerlich,
Riis, Anderson and Eastman (2011) examining student perceptions of a teaching, social and
cognitive presence in virtual worlds demonstrated that “learning in a virtual world is often
perceived as a rich educational experience that includes elements of all three presences” (p.
334) and they concluded that:
learning is taking place in virtual worlds and this medium will continue to grow. The
days of presence deprived online learning could be limited; virtual worlds have the
potential to provide a rich learning experience overflowing with presence (McKerlich
et al., 2011, p. 334).
The use of virtual worlds as learning spaces is growing and, in Australia and New Zealand,
they are being used in innovative ways for teaching and learning across a range of disciplines
(Dalgarno, Lee, Carlson, Gregory, & Tynan, 2010; B. Gregory et al., 2011; Gregory et al.,
2012). Second Life, although losing some traction in the educational field, is still the virtual
world that is most used by educational institutions worldwide (Liu, Kalk, Kinney, & Orr,
2012). For this reason the authors commenced researching in Second Life in 2008.
The Research Studies in Brief:
Study 1: 2008
The first study commenced in 2008 when Gregory built a custom learning environment,
Education Online Headquarters to provide her participants with somewhere they could feel a
sense of belonging and where they could meet both formally for class sessions and also
informally, outside of ‘class’ time. In this way, social presence could be enhanced. The aim
of the research was to explore the potential of virtual worlds as an effective environment to
engage students in their learning. Gregory had created her avatar, Jass Easterman, 12 months
before data collection began and honed her skills in the use of Second Life. Each week, for a
two-hour tutorial period, participants met in Second Life: in the first hour the meeting was
held at Education Online Headquarters to consider issues they were having with their
learning and to discuss the focus topics for the week. In the second hour, they visited a range
of virtual national and international institutions where they were given tours of the facilities
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and the virtual guest academic introduced them to how s/he was using the environment for
education. Data was collected through surveys, recording of the in-world sessions (where text
rather than audio was used to avoid some bandwidth issues) and questioning. The data
supported the contention that a virtual world is an effective teaching and learning
environment (Gregory & Tynan, 2009).
Study 2: 2009/2010
In 2009 the authors began researching together and were particularly interested in the
possibilities inherent in the use of a virtual world for role-play. A long term goal was to use a
virtual world learning space for teaching practice, but this first research into role-ply was
more modest and aimed to explore whether a role-play that was practised by teacher
education students in face-to-face sessions could be replicated in a virtual world. To assist in
the verisimilitude of a classroom, a new learning space was custom-built by Gregory which
was interactive and could later be used for other purposes. A playground was also created
again for verisimilitude, but also to provide a space for later research. Traditional face-to-face
workshops were conducted and then, to permit comparison, repeat sessions occurred in
Second Life. De Bono’s (de Bono, 1985) six thinking hats strategy was the focus of the role-
play for two reasons: it was relatively easy to replicate in Second Life and it was an integral
component of the unit of study of the first year participants. Data was again collected in a
range of forms: observation of the participants both by the authors and another academic
occurred in all role-play sessions; all online dialogue (which took the form of typed chat) was
recorded for analysis; and, at the end of each workshop, surveys were completed. The overall
finding was that role-play in a virtual world could be effective and engaging (Gregory &
Masters, 2012). This finding is supported by Inman, Wright and Hartman (2010) who, after
reviewing other role-play research in Second Life, stated that "Second Life has the capacity to
facilitate role-play activities that are equally effective as role-play activities in the real world"
(p. 53).
Study 3: 2010/2011
While the earlier projects demonstrated that engagement in virtual world learning was high,
affirming the use of this learning space, the authors were also interested in whether such
learning had any effect on performance. While enhancing social presence and engagement is
a plus, it is important that any innovative learning space does not detract from the acquisition
of skills and knowledge and possibly have a negative impact on performance. To explore this
aspect of learning in a virtual world space, the authors researched the performance (as
measured by final grade results at the end of units of study) of participants across seven units
in 2010 and another three units in 2011. Those students who studied via the university
learning management system had access to chat rooms, discussion forums, blogs, etc. Those
who met for discussions in Second Life did so in the rooms available at Australis 4 Learning,
the island where our classroom and playground had been built and which now included a
library space and a staffroom. One particular mini-project within the larger project was the
exploration by masters of her students’ performance where she was fully responsible for
teaching and marking the assessments for 50 students, 20 of whom used Second Life and the
other 30 interacted with her in the online chat room for an hour per week. The results of this
mini-project are discussed later and information regarding the entire cohort can be found at
http://www.une.edu.au/altc/ult-futures/documents/ULT-Futures-2010-Masters.pdf (Masters
& Gregory, 2010). The general finding was that there was no detrimental effect on
performance and persuasive evidence that a virtual world learning space could positively
affect performance.
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Study 4: 2011/2012
The positive response to a role-play situation in 2009 and 2010 encouraged the authors to
seek funding at the end of 2010 for the project which was their long term goal when they
commenced researching together. They had demonstrated that a virtual world learning space
was effective and innovative and they believed that this research could now be extended in
new to benefit teacher preparation. This project, which was concluded at the end of 2012, was
undertaken by the authors in collaboration with five other researchers from different
institutions as part of an Office of Learning and Teaching grant. VirtualPREX (Virtual
Professional Experience) was developed to enhance teacher preparation by providing a
virtual world space for students to practise their teaching without risk. Students have been
able to role-play teaching scenarios with their peers acting as primary school students.
Further developments of the synchronous role-plays are possible as bots (robot avatars) are
developed to interact with the student playing the role of teacher. This will facilitate
asynchronous practice permitting anytime anywhere access to a teaching practice
environment. Data collected through observation, recording and survey demonstrated that this
role-play activity had the capacity to add to the repertoire of learning experiences for pre-
service teacher preparation.
Discussion of the Results:
Student Engagement and Presence
The results of the 2008 project demonstrated that “the virtual world of Second Life is an
engaging environment for the students” (Gregory & Tynan, 2009, p. 379). This is supported
by the data from several re-iterations of this early project. Student comments from the
surveys revealed evidence of both engagement and social presence. One convincing example
from the many is:
I had a defining experience last week when we sat down in that open-air lecture
space and I sat on one side and the rest of you sat on the other side. Suddenly I
felt lonely and, without thinking, got up and moved to where you were all sitting.
And then, I thought, that felt so real!
Again, distance education students, after undertaking the role-play in the de Bono project,
informed us that:
For an external student, you can feel very isolated and alone whilst studying. I
find that SL provides an opportunity to ‘pretend’ that we are all sitting around
a table throwing around ideas. I find SL engaging as opposed to chat rooms
and I love wearing a ball gown to lectures each week!;
and
The use of Second Life is a great way to motivate and engage students,
especially those studying off campus. I find that I am more absorbed in this
unit (and ICT last semester) because of the interaction with the lecturer(s) and
the visual stimulus of actually seeing the other students (avatars). In doing this
I feel like I am actually part of the University, being involved in a tutorial and
learning from others.
These comments indicate that learning in a virtual world is engaging and that it also enhances
social presence. Several of the comments reported also indicate that the students were able to
articulate what it was about their experiences that created this engagement.
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Enhancing Learning
As reported in the section on the research projects, while engagement is important,
engagement without learning is not constructive. Gregory’s early project suggested that
learning was effective, with all of the students scoring 80% or more on their assessment tasks
with 71.45% of students reporting that Second Life supported their learning “quite a lot” and
28.58% reported the support level as a “fair amount”. These were the highest two choices on
the scale.
The de Bono research project also had students comment about their learning with one
student, who had learned the theory from a recorded lecture and textbooks, commenting after
the in-world role-play that:
The opportunity to use Six Thinking Hats strategies in a group situation to
guide discussion was deeply beneficial. It gave me a clearer understanding of
how to use the hats, and provided an insight into how it may be used in a
classroom (something that up until the Second Life session had eluded me).
Skill transfer occurred from the experiential learning possible in the virtual world learning
space. There was also a comment made by a student who used virtual world learning in an
ICT and an EDLT unit) that:
From looking at my results in other units, I can see an improvement in results
for both ICT and EDLT, compared to my other two units that had no chat
option at all.
This latter comment suggests that learning is enhanced through the use of a virtual world
learning space and this suggestion is supported by the data from the research on performance
grades. The mini-project previously described, where Masters had groups in both Second Life
and the learning management system, again has persuasive results about the efficacy of
virtual world learning. Based on the final results of all students (rather than task by task) the
two groups in Second Life performed significantly better than the three using the LMS as
shown in Table 1.
Table 1: Student Grades - Comparison of Second Life and LMS
Adapted (Masters & Gregory, 2010, p. 6)
Result Blackboard
n=30
Second Life
n=20
High Distinction 0% 17%
Distinction 46% 72%
Credit 46% 11%
Pass 8% 0%
Fail 0% 0%
These figures suggest that learning in a virtual world is not detrimental to learning and also
that learning in a virtual world environment had a positive effect on results.
Opportunities for Practice
As previously described, role-play is seen as one of the positive affordances of virtual worlds
(Inman et al., 2010) and the opportunity to role-play de Bono’s six thinking hats was
203

beneficial as indicated by the quoted student comment explaining that it allowed her to
understand a concept which ‘up until the Second Life session had eluded me’. The
VirtualPREX project revealed similar views regarding the benefits of role-play:
Being able to consider unexpected occurrences within the classroom and
approaches in how they can be overcome
and
Experiencing a classroom environment without a classroom
and
I liked how effective the role-play situation was, and how it relates back to
teaching in real life. It helped me see and experience what happens within the
classroom with the students.
These comments demonstrate that the students felt the teaching environment in the virtual
world was authentic and that they were able to practise their teaching skills, including
management of, and interaction with, the students. One other comment was particularly
insightful, with the student able to articulate why a virtual learning space might be so
beneficial:
Enjoyable to see what others did and how they coped with the situation in a safe
environment where you could make mistakes and learn from them.
The risk-free aspect of this form of preparation, where students can practise teaching with no
possible detrimental effects on the learning and well-being of real children in a physical
classroom was a key driver for this project. Further discussion of this research project can be
found in other literature (S. Gregory et al., 2011; Masters, Gregory, Dalgarno, Reiners, &
Knox, 2012).
Conclusion:
We are not the only researchers in the arena of virtual world learning spaces. The Virtual
Worlds Working group began in 2009 in Australia with ten members from 4 institutions: it
now has over 190 members from 54 institutions across both Australia and New Zealand.
Research also covers many disciplines and the kinds of learning spaces are diverse. In 2008,
Kelton wrote that “the movement toward the virtual realm as a viable teaching and learning
environment seems unstoppable” (p. 16) and the literature on virtual world research supports
this. Jarmon, Lim and Carpenter argue that a shift has occurred and virtual worlds “are no
longer the preserve of the stereotypical geek, nor are they just technical or social curiosities
that educators … can safely ignore” (2009, p. 3). Importantly, they claim that the research has
moved away from a “focus on the actual teaching and learning practices and on their
assessment in the virtual learning environment” (Jarmon et al., 2009, p. 4).
While virtual world learning spaces have proven to be engaging and effective there is still
more research to be done, particularly in the area of how these spaces can transform the way
in which higher education institutions support and teach their distance education students. As
research commences into the effectiveness of massive open online courses, it is also possible
that virtual world learning spaces will have a place in the debate.
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Are virtual world learning spaces transformative learning spaces? The authors believe that
their research demonstrates that capacity. In terms of transformation, the last word should be
left to one of the student participants commenting on her experience of learning in Second
Life:
It has been one of the highlights of my entire uni life! This is my 7th year of uni.... and
only performing in operas has been better. This has been a life-changing experience!
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Acknowledgements:
The authors would like to acknowledge the School of Education, UNE, which provided
internal research grant funding which permitted the earlier research projects reported here to
occur. They also acknowledge the contribution of the following to the VirtualPREX project:
Barney Dalgarno (Charles Sturt University), Torsten Reiners (Curtin University) Geoff Crisp
(RMIT), Heinz Dreher (Curtin University), Deanne Gannaway (University of Queensland).
Support for part of this publication has been provided by the Australian Government Office
for Learning and Teaching (OLT) and the Australian Government Department of Industry,
Innovation, Science, Research and Tertiary Education through the DEHub Project. The views
expressed in this publication do not necessarily reflect the views of the Australian
Government Office for Learning and Teaching.
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