%0 Journal Article
%T Objects, Worlds, and Students: Virtual Interaction in Education
%A Athanasios Christopoulos
%A Marc Conrad
%A Mitul Shukla
%J Education Research International
%D 2014
%I Hindawi Publishing Corporation
%R 10.1155/2014/318317
%X The main aim of this study is to form a complete taxonomy of the types of interactions that relate to the use of a virtual world for engaging learning experiences, when blended and hybrid learning methods are to be used. In order to investigate this topic more accurately and effectively, we distinguish four dimensions of interactions based on the context in which these occur, and the involved parts: in-world and in-class, user-to-user and user-to-world interactions. In order to conduct investigation into this topic and form a view of the interactions as clear as possible, we observed a cohort of 15 undergraduate Computer Science students while using an OpenSim-based institutionally hosted virtual world. Moreover, we ran a survey where 50 students were asked to indicate their opinion and feelings about their in-world experience. The results of our study highlight that educators and instructors need to plan their in-world learning activities very carefully and with a focus on interactions if engaging activities are what they want to offer their students. Additionally, it seems that student interactions with the content of the virtual world and the in-class student-to-student interactions, have stronger impact on students¡¯ engagement when hybrid methods are used. 1. Introduction Over the past few decades, technology has proven to be a useful tool in educators¡¯ hands and, thus, has attracted researchers¡¯ interest. Technology relates to education in four different ways, that is, technology as a topic (¡°learning about technology¡±), technology as a delivery mechanism (¡°learning from technology¡±), technology as a tool (¡°learning with technology¡±), and technology as the context in which learning takes place (¡°learning in technology¡±) [1]. Virtual reality and virtual worlds, which were first introduced to the public in 1980s and have continued to emerge ever since [2], are the cornerstones of ¡°learning in technology¡± [1]. In the literature [2, 3], virtual worlds are defined as 2D or 3D computer generated environments that either depict parts of the physical world or imaginary sceneries. In these worlds, users are able to perform a wide range of interactions with the content of the world and other users [4], such as object creation [5, 6] and manipulation [6, 7], terrain editing [5], and navigating around the world [2, 5, 6, 8, 9], as well as chatting synchronously or asynchronously, either verbally via voice or written chat or nonverbally using avatar gestures and other forms of in-world visual interactions [6¨C10]. These kinds of interactions are performed
%U http://www.hindawi.com/journals/edri/2014/318317/