Eight Years of Utilizing Virtual Worlds for Education

Abstract

The authors' team of developers and educators has been working since 2006 to deploy virtual worlds for training within secondary and special schools, vocational education, higher education, private industry and the community sector. During that time the team has dealt with a complex web of interrelated factors in an environment of continual technological and institutional change. These factors include technological change, organizational politics, pedagogical fashions, changes in policy and funding environments, and the human aspects of working with teachers and students. The authors conclude that utilizing virtual worlds for education can be rewarding but is not always easy, requiring qualities of nimbleness and self-reinvention.

Deconstructing the Value Creation Process

“…Group dynamics can be applied usefully to advance productivity in varied environments. Schutt & Linegar (2016) build from the early experience of group dynamics to divide the organization into three broad areas. These areas are: groups working with organization development practitioners to improve performance; a self-managing project team working; and the organization in a distributed value creation process characterized with sophisticated hi-tech and information technology infrastructure.…”