Of mice or men? — The avatar in the virtualscape

Conrad, Marc; Neale, Joanne; Charles, Alec

doi:10.1109/i-society16502.2010.6018705

Cited by 4 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 3 publications

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“…The notion of simulated space and real space blur. In fact, it has been argued that there is no real difference between a 'real' and 'virtual' experience (Conrad et al, 2010). This blurring of 'real' and 'virtual' experience however makes virtual worlds an ideal space to teach 'real' issues in a controlled environment.…”

Section: Situated Learningmentioning

confidence: 99%

Teaching Risk with Virtual Worlds - Experience and Lessons Learnd in Second Life and Other Virtual Worlds

Conrad

2013

Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Computer Supported Education

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We discuss and demonstrate how Virtual Worlds available at the University of Bedfordshire have been used to teach Project Management using a 'situated learning' approach. In particular we have a closer look on the aspect of teaching risk management and identify how different aspects of risk are addressed in a variety of implementations of Virtual Worlds, namely Second Life, a Virtual World provided by an external provider, not Linden Lab, a Virtual World that is maintained 'in-house' and a Virtual World hosted by the students themselves. We note that the student experience of risk is different in each of these incarnations of a Virtual World which impacts their perception of risk and hence the effects this has concerning the teaching goals.

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Section: Situated Learningmentioning

confidence: 99%

Teaching Risk with Virtual Worlds - Experience and Lessons Learnd in Second Life and Other Virtual Worlds

Conrad

2013

Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Computer Supported Education

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“…In these worlds, users are able to perform a wide range of interactions with the content of the world and other users [4], such as object creation [5,6] and manipulation [6,7], terrain editing [5], and navigating around the world [2,5,6,8,9], as well as chatting synchronously or asynchronously, either verbally via voice or written chat or nonverbally using avatar gestures and other forms of in-world visual interactions [6][7][8][9][10]. These kinds of interactions are performed through the use of avatars [2,5,7,8], that is, users' artificial figures [4,11].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Objects, Worlds, and Students: Virtual Interaction in Education

Christopoulos

Conrad

Shukla

2014

Education Research International

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The main aim of this study is to form a complete taxonomy of the types of interactions that relate to the use of a virtual world for engaging learning experiences, when blended and hybrid learning methods are to be used. In order to investigate this topic more accurately and effectively, we distinguish four dimensions of interactions based on the context in which these occur, and the involved parts: in-world and in-class, user-to-user and user-to-world interactions. In order to conduct investigation into this topic and form a view of the interactions as clear as possible, we observed a cohort of 15 undergraduate Computer Science students while using an OpenSim-based institutionally hosted virtual world. Moreover, we ran a survey where 50 students were asked to indicate their opinion and feelings about their in-world experience. The results of our study highlight that educators and instructors need to plan their in-world learning activities very carefully and with a focus on interactions if engaging activities are what they want to offer their students. Additionally, it seems that student interactions with the content of the virtual world and the in-class student-to-student interactions, have stronger impact on students’ engagement when hybrid methods are used.

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