Anna Peachey

Researching Learning in Virtual Worlds

Most of the chapters in this book are extended papers from Research Learning in Virtual Environments (reLIVE08), an international conference held by the UK Open University in Milton Keynes in November 2008. Authors of the best papers and presentations from the conferences were invited to contribute to Research Learning in Virtual Worlds, the first book to specifically address research methods and related issues for education in virtual worlds. The book covers a range of research undertaken in virtual worlds. It opens with an accessible introduction both to the book and to the subject area, making it an ideal springboard for those who are new to research in this area. The subsequent ten chapters present work covering a range of research methodologies across a broad discipline base, providing essential reading for advanced undergraduate or postgraduate researchers working in education in virtual worlds, and engaging background material for researchers in similar and related disciplines.

Distributed cognition in a virtual world

Over a 13-month period, the Schome Park Programme operated the first ‘closed’ (i.e. protected) Teen Second Life 1 project in Europe. The project organised diverse educational events that centred on use of a virtual world and an associated asynchronous forum and wiki. Students and staff together exploited the affordances of the environment to develop skills and enhance community spirit. One popular activity, initiated by students, involved sailing boats around the projects virtual island, a technically challenging task for beginners. This paper studies the records of one of these sailing regattas. Organising and implementing this event involved considerable technical and interactional challenges. We analyse the following: How do people work together, including through the use of (virtual) artefacts, to solve problems? What particular qualities of the literacy practices surrounding the regatta appear to us to involve learning? Simultaneously, we contribute to the development of methodologies for studying learning in virtual worlds by employing a virtual literacy ethnography. Findings include a diversity of creative approaches that are used when solving problems, the significance of adult behaviour in authentically modelling learning and the value of humour in fostering a learning community. The notion of distributed cognition has implications for characterising learning and analytical approaches to analysis.

The Third Place in Second Life: Real Life Community in a Virtual World

In June 2006 The Open University (OU) purchased its first land in Second LifeTM (SL). Over a two and a half year period, the OU presence evolved and grew to a point where an average of between 150 and 250 unique users in any 7-day period are active in an OU area. This chapter charts the history of the development of the OU Second Life social community and considers the nature of that activity at a point of critical change, in January 2009, shortly before a new island is developed to provide a permanent home for the community. In order for the community to continue evolving it is necessary to understand the nature of the core activities of these users, and to consider this in a context of sustainable development. Through reference to aspects of socialisation and physical community, the author proposes that a virtual world environment can be described using the physical world concept of a Third Place in the information age, and considers the value of virtual space to a learning community. From a perspective of ethnography, this chapter captures a community development within SL and proposes that physical world concepts of community and Third Place are exhibited in a virtual world, and that there are equivalent benefits in the sense of support and belonging to a virtual world community.

Open virtual worlds as pedagogical research tools: learning from the Schome Park Programme

This paper introduces the term Open Virtual Worlds and argues that they are ‘unclaimed educational spaces’, which provide a valuable tool for researching pedagogy. Having explored these claims the way in which Teen Second Life® virtual world was used for pedagogical experimentation in the initial phases of the Schome Park Programme is described. Four sets of pedagogical dimensions that emerged are presented and illustrated with examples from the Schome Park Programme.

The strength of cohesive ties : discursive construction of an online learning community.

Learning takes place in a social context, shaping and shaped by discourses. In online projects such as the Schome Park Programme, these discourses are material-semiotic practices that make use of writing and other manifestations of digital literacies. Discourses include traceable patterns with linguistic features of distinctive forms and functions. Employing a sociocultural perspective of discourse as mediated interaction (Scollon, Mediated discourse as social interaction: a study of news discourse. Longman, London/New York, 1998), we identify use of register and cohesive ties as salient to the practices of learning communities. The study reported here focuses on two groups of teenagers, one a formal learning community based in the USA, the other a larger, online, informal learning community based in the UK. The groups were originally only weakly tied within a network, but aimed to work together within the virtual world environment, despite some different aims. Working with McMillan’s (J Community Psychol, 24(4):315–325, 1996) concept of community as characterised by spirit, authority, trade and art, we illustrate how misalignments in register and problems with cohesive ties can be associated with difficulties in the cooperative learning enterprise and we also make recommendations for future practice.

Do Virtual Worlds Support Engaging Social Conferencing

This chapter presents The Virtual World Conference, an online event that brought together top international researchers and pioneers in the fields of virtual worlds, from academia, education, and industry. The authors outline the challenges, successes, and problems of adopting the approach of structuring the global conference into three equidistant major time zones – East, Central, and West – resulting in a 24-h worldwide event. The chapter presents analyses of questionnaires that were completed by attendees, in an attempt to test the central hypothesis that virtual worlds can support engaging and effective social conferencing. We present innovations to be applied for further editions of the conference and close the chapter with suggestions and novel ideas for future virtual world events.