<blockquote>Role-plays in a virtual world hold tremendous potential for higher education because they allow synchronous, immersive participation by students located across the globe. They also have the added advantage of allowing students to adopt roles and carry out tasks that are not possible in the real world. In this article, a project that involved pre-service teachers carrying out role-plays based on de Bono's <em>Six Thinking Hats</em> framework is presented. A pilot study was carried out over two years with on-campus students, who performed the role-plays both in a real-life, physical setting and within the virtual world of <em>Second Life</em>. The activity has since been extended to off-campus students exclusively using <em>Second Life</em>. The authors report selected quantitative and qualitative survey data from the pilot study that provide insight into students' perceptions of this style of learning, and discuss the challenges that were encountered and how they were overcome. The future of virtual world-based role-playing as a strategy for teaching and learning is discussed, with a focus on its application to distance education contexts.</blockquote>
A First Year Teaching and Learning Network was established in a regional university with a strong focus on distance education for a very diverse student cohort. The purpose of the Network, which consisted of a Coordinator in each of nine schools, was to support staff teaching students transitioning into tertiary education. The paper explores the theoretical bases of the structure, its current method of operation, its impact so far, and future plans. The development of the Network illustrates how a university can consciously embed opportunities for staff to take ownership of transition pedagogy and thus encourage widespread capacity building amongst their peers. The experiences of the Network in its first two years provide a case study of how institutional support for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, in particular scholarship around capacity building, can be used as a mechanism to promote both staff and student engagement with transition pedagogy resulting in a shift from a second generation approach towards a third generation approach to transition.
An increasing number of educational institutions are trialling the use of virtual worlds as teaching and learning environments, particularly for distance education students. In 2009 the authors have begun a research project to explore the efficacy of one such virtual world, Second Life, as a viable adjunct to other online learning experiences. However, it is now recognised that most academics have no experience of teaching in a virtual world. An integral aspect of our research is to examine whether a novice user of Second Life could quickly learn to teach effectively with this tool. The teaching experience is outlined from two points of view: the novice and the expert. The emergent themes are discussed and conclusions are made regarding the efficacy of Second Life as a teaching and learning environment for distance education students and the level of support that might be needed to assist other novices to teach in-world.
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