Fostering argumentative knowledge construction through enactive role play in Second Life

Practising teaching using virtual classroom role plays

“…The key potential advantages of role plays housed in a virtual world over both face-to-face role plays and non-immersive simulations is that they allow for visual realism in the context in which the role play occurs, a key limitation of conventional classroom role plays identified by Anderson (1982). The realistic appearance of the role-play avatars can engage participants more deeply with the activity and allow them to identify more closely with their allocated role (Jamaludin, Chee, & Ho, 2009;Jarmon, Traphagan, Mayrath, & Trivedi, 2009). In a classroom role play, the student roles in particular can be more realistic in a virtual world than they are when played by university students in a face-to-face role-play context.…”

Learning through computers: Uncovering students' thought processes while solving physics problems

“…Elgort et al, 2008), and games (e.g. Jamaludin et al, 2007), the technology that we used was entirely appropriate for our objectives. After all, we wanted students to collaboratively solve physics problems in an environment that allowed them to articulate their thought processes in a manner that would be made overt for our analysis so that subsequent classroom lessons would directly target students' misunderstandings.…”

A Comparison of the Effects of Classroom and Multi-User Virtual Environments on the Perceived Speaking Anxiety of Adult Post-Secondary English Language Learners

“…Simulations were conducted in the MUVE Second Life given the current advances in technology and rapid emergence of virtual worlds which are providing a great opportunity for educators to consider using these environments for collaborative student learning (Jamaludin, Chee, & Ho, 2009). ELLs' anxiety when interacting with NESs was measured because anxiety is considered to be a variable that may significantly affect language performance (Dulay & Burt, 1977;Krashen, 1985), and research has demonstrated that ELLs often have high levels of anxiety when interacting with NESs (Woodrow, 2006).…”