'A student applies to a course and pays fees. They want marks, because marks equal credit points, and credit points add up to a degree. Fair enough. If we want to give them marks, we need to know who they are and what they have done. If they produce work in Second Life, then we invariably need to betray the identity of the avatar, so the puppeteer can get credit for the learning. This limits the potential for the really deep learning that a full-on immersionist/role play/fantasy approach enables. Can the immersionist ideal ever fully function in a traditional accreditation dependent framework? How might an immersionist programme of learning function? Is there really a need for any sort of formal framework for this immersionist extreme? Perhaps the role play involves an avatar going to University. The person behind the avatar may lack the usual credentials required to gain entry into a proper University, but in Second Life, the admissions criteria might be different, and the evidence could be fabricated. Maybe the avatar could pay fees (in Linden Dollars, obviously), and this could pay for the tutorial support and course design. Maybe this already happens, I don't know. What if the teacher-avatars were playing this role? Maybe pretend teachers could learn how to teach pretend students who are pretending to learn? What about quality? Perhaps a pretend Ofsted or QAA inspector could pay an unannounced visit, and suck all of the energy and enthusiasm out of everyone with an overly simplistic snap judgement about how everyone is doing it all wrong.' (Ian Truelove, Blogpost, December 2008)

One of the reasons why MUVEs such as Second Life are valuable for education is because they offer an experience thus far not achievable in a traditional face-to-face or distance learning context. The characteristics of face-to-face and distance learning are often (exaggeratedly) positioned as bipolar opposites. The former offers students a rich, albeit limited social experience that develops understanding of the subject matter as well as transferable skills such as critical reflection and interpersonal skills; the latter offers an equally rich set of resource materials which students can appropriate at will within their own social contexts. The medium of instruction for one is primarily speech; for the other, text. Typically, although increasingly controversially, distance learning has been the poor relation within education: the immediacy of the spoken word which allows rapid questions, answers and discussions, together with the enjoyment of social interaction, has been understood to provide a superior educational experience.

MUVEs not only offer a middle road between these two poles, but also lift the experience of learning into a new domain. Both students and teaching staff involved with Open Habitat commented on the mix of the familiar and the strange, the real and the fantasy, the normal and the abnormal… Learning using Second Life gave opportunities never before experienced: conversing with a dragon, building exotic and improbable constructions, appearing to others with an entirely different identity than that of real life (including, if chosen, a different gender), and much more. While a genuine sense of presence is unquestionably part of the experience, these mixes not only allow but require an adjustment to how learning takes place, even if, as was the case with the OH philosophy pilot, learners favour adopting a traditional approach in which discussions take place in a seminar format with participants sitting in a circle. Perhaps one of the greatest learning stimuli, turning to literature on experiential learning (Jarvis, 2004; Fenwick, 2001), is the vastly increased occurrences of needing to respond to the unexpected. Ian Truelove, who ran the art and design pilot at Leeds Met, notes in a blogpost: ‘Everything changes all the time, and a learning model that embraces change, and permits students to be active agents of change is something that I have witnessed and strongly believe in’. The Second Life world is a ‘middle world’ in which the rules, conventions and behaviours typical of real life are regularly flouted, either by intent or accident, yet which bears sufficient similarity to ‘normal’ real life for the environment to make sense. Time, for example, behaves differently, especially in the area of communication. Typing takes time, and competes with other visual activity that needs to be monitored: what is appearing in the chat box, what is appearing in the IM chat area, what other avatars are doing and where they are going, and what one’s own avatar is up to. Participants constantly have to multi-task, although the extent of this can be reduced by establishing a communication etiquette.

This ‘middle world’ is also fantastical, and those who enter it open themselves to the abnormal and sometimes capricious which has to be adjusted to. Some do so very consciously: Marya, a philosophy student, commented in feedback that ‘what I always try to avoid is the RL [real life] limitations that we tend to impose on ourselves here almost automatically - this is a different environment and we absolutely can take advantage of that in very exciting ways’. In another session discussing spirituality, one student experimented with levitating in a meditation spiral. It is this dimension which is both alluring and perilous, involving the imagination while pulling participants into an immersive new existence. Participants have control both over the degree to which they allow this immersive process to take place and over the length of time they spend in-world, yet, as can be the case for human physical addictions, extrication may demand significant willpower.

These characteristics suggest that the use of MUVEs in HE introduces a third alternative to the face-to-face and distance learning dichotomy. A useful analytic tool is that proposed by O’Neill and McMahon (2005) in a study of student-centred and teacher-centred learning. The authors identify three principal considerations: the level of choice available to the students, the degree to which students are active or passive in the learning situation, and whether power resides primarily with students or teachers. They state:

It appears from the literature that some view student-centred learning as: the concept of the student’s choice in their education; others see it as the being about the student doing more than the lecturer (active versus passive learning); while others have a much broader definition which includes both of these concepts but, in addition, describes the shift in the power relationship between the student and the teacher. (O’Neill and McMahon, 2005: 29)

These considerations apply very clearly to the face-to-face and distance learning continuum and provide a means of developing a better understanding of the dynamics of learning using MUVEs. The figure below presents an initial analytic framework using two axes. The horizontal axis depicts knowledge construction in a typical real world situation using the face-to-face / distance learning continuum, while the vertical axis acknowledges that all MUVEs involve a degree of fantasy and therefore removal from real life. All three modes of learning share an experience of real life, although this differs in nature from one to another: traditional distance learners construct their experience in their individual social situation; face-to-face learners negotiate their learning within a social group, often in a reality ‘bubble’ of a campus-based residential programme (the monastic model of education); while MUVE learners generally have a restricted real life context (a computer screen) but immerse themselves in a real albeit fantasy world.

Figure 1:

 This analysis allows the two OH pilots to be mapped onto the framework. The philosophy students were typical distance learners, living in diverse geographical locations and only coming together for the pre-determined Second Life sessions. They assumed the ‘right’ to decide where to meet, one student buying a castle for meetings where groups met and conversed in a familiar circle, then broke out into seminar rooms. While a blue dragon was one of their number, and they appreciated the tutor’s ‘Aaargh!!!’ being expressed as a cloud of butterflies, the level of fantasy was often controlled and perhaps minimised. For the art and design students, on the other hand, here was an opportunity to practise and express their creativity and make chairs from words, trees from ideas, and wonderful bridges which collapsed as soon as real-world architectural principles were applied… They worked individually and in groups, in a full-time, residential setting in which the tutor was an equal partner, ‘superior’ mainly in his greater degree of familiarity with the environment and how to manipulate it. Reflecting on the experience of the pilot in a blogpost he comments: ‘Students need to be welcomed into their course's community of practice, which is populated by 3 full years of co-learners, plus staff’’.

As Higher Education adapts to allow increasing use of MUVEs in a variety of programmes, it seems that this mode of learning has much to commend it. Some might resist the opportunities afforded on account of the introduction of fantasy. Others, on the other hand, view even fantasy as a tool that has real use in developing skills for learning.

References

Fenwick, T. (2001). Experiential learning: A theoretical critique from five perspectives. Columbus, OH: ERIC Clearinghouse on Adult, Career, and Vocational Education.

Jarvis, P. (2004). Adult Education and Lifelong Learning: Theory and practice. London: RoutledgeFalmer.

O’Neill, G. and McMahon, T. (2005). Student-centred learning: what does it mean for students and lecturers? Dublin: All Ireland Society for Higher Education (AISHE).