Virtual worlds for learning: Done and dusted?

When Second Life first came to the attention of the mainstream media in 2007, educators recognised the potential of virtual worlds for teaching and learning. They seemed to be the ideal environments to facilitate authentic learning, alleviate the tyranny of distance for students not on campus, and provide an inexpensive and safe environment to teach skills that were too dangerous or expensive to teach in the real world. In spite of all this fanfare, virtual worlds have failed to gain significant traction in higher education. This paper outlines a preliminary investigation into the reasons why virtual worlds have not been adopted for learning and teaching. The reflections of the six authors on this topic were subjected to a thematic analysis with themes arranged under four broad topics. This information informed the development of a survey to be distributed more widely to further explore this phenomenon

How are Australian higher education institutions contributing to change through innovative teaching and learning in virtual worlds?

Over the past decade, teaching and learning in virtual worlds has been at the forefront of many higher education institutions around the world. The DEHub Virtual Worlds Working Group (VWWG) consisting of Australian and New Zealand higher education academics was formed in 2009. These educators are investigating the role that virtual worlds play in the future of education and actively changing the direction of their own teaching practice and curricula. 47 academics reporting on 28 Australian higher education institutions present an overview of how they have changed directions through the effective use of virtual worlds for diverse teaching and learning activities such as business scenarios and virtual excursions, role-play simulations, experimentation and language development. The case studies offer insights into the ways in which institutions are continuing to change directions in their teaching to meet changing demands for innovative teaching, learning and research in virtual worlds. This paper highlights the ways in which the authors are using virtual worlds to create opportunities for rich, immersive and authentic activities that would be difficult or not possible to achieve through more traditional approaches. © 2011 Brent Gregory, Sue Gregory, Denise Wood, Yvonne Masters, Mathew Hillier, Frederick Stokes-Thompson, Anton Bogdanovych, Des Butler, Lyn Hay, Jay Jay Jegathesan, Kim Flintoff, Stefan Schutt,Dale Linegar, Robyn Alderton, Andrew Cram, Ieva Stupans, Lindy McKeown Orwin, Grant Meredith, Debbie McCormick, Francesca Collins, Jenny Grenfell, Jason Zagami, Allan Ellis, Lisa Jacka, Angela Thomas, Helen Farley, Nona Muldoon, Ali Abbas, Suku Sinnappan, Katrina Neville, Ian Burnett, Ashley Aitken, Simeon Simoff, Sheila Scutter, Xiangyu Wang, Kay Souter, David Ellis, Mandy Salomon, Greg Wadley, Michael Jacobson, Anne Newstead, Gary Hayes, Scott Grant, Alyona Yusupova

Sustaining the future through virtual worlds

Virtual worlds (VWs) continue to be used extensively in Australia and New Zealand higher education institutions although the tendency towards making unrealistic claims of efficacy and popularity appears to be over. Some educators at higher education institutions continue to use VWs in the same way as they have done in the past; others are exploring a range of different VWs or using them in new ways; whilst some are opting out altogether. This paper presents an overview of how 46 educators from some 26 institutions see VWs as an opportunity to sustain higher education. The positives and negatives of using VWs are discussed

Virtual worlds in Australian and New Zealand higher education: Remembering the past, Understanding the present and imagining the future

3D virtual reality, including the current generation of multi-user virtual worlds, has had a long history of use in education and training, and it experienced a surge of renewed interest with the advent of Second Life in 2003. What followed shortly after were several years marked by considerable hype around the use of virtual worlds for teaching, learning and research in higher education. For the moment, uptake of the technology seems to have plateaued, with academics either maintaining the status quo and continuing to use virtual worlds as they have previously done or choosing to opt out altogether. This paper presents a brief review of the use of virtual worlds in the Australian and New Zealand higher education sector in the past and reports on its use in the sector at the present time, based on input from members of the Australian and New Zealand Virtual Worlds Working Group. It then adopts a forward-looking perspective amid the current climate of uncertainty, musing on future directions and offering suggestions for potential new applications in light of recent technological developments and innovations in the area

Assessing students' professionalism: considering professionalism's diverging definitions

Context: Although most health education programs assess students' professionalism, there is little clarity within the health education literature on the definition of professionalism. This makes assessment of students' professionalism a potentially flawed activity.\ud This literature review clarifies professionalism by bringing together diverging definitions from across a number of health disciplines and discusses the complexities and limitations of these definitions. \ud \ud Methods: A search was conducted within the medical and health science education literature to identify articles that discussed professionalism and its assessment. Theoretical, qualitative and empirical research were included in the review.\ud \ud Findings: The literature variably defines professionalism as upholding professional values, as demonstrating professional attitudes or demonstrating professional behaviours. Each of these perspectives influences how professionalism is to be assessed, with each perspective having its own limitations. The behavioural perspective is simple to assess, but it has been criticised for being too superficial. The values perspective has the potential to develop professionals who are motivated by philanthropic values, but values can be difficult to identify and assess. Attitudes are complex in their structure, but they are less superficial than behaviours and can be assessed with attitudinal scales.\ud \ud Conclusion: Health professions educators should ideally assess all three perspectives of professionalism, however, this may not be realistic given the already laden curricula and the demands on educators. Educators may decide to only assess one perspective and given its advantages, the attitudes perspective may be a useful starting point

Consistency in the application of a reflective tool designed to facilitate scholarly review and development of curricula

This paper addresses the need for an objective and accessible system that assists academics in the quality review of their teaching and curricula. This is achieved via the Quality Review Instrument (QRI), which was trialled in a postgraduate research proposal course. The QRI provides a scaffold that can guide academics in the development and redevelopment of their courses, and facilitates reflection in and on the teaching process by teacher, peers and learners. At the same time, the QRI provides a robust and objective approach to evaluation of teaching for quality assurance. The comprehensive approach to review of teaching described in this paper facilitates a process that leads to the reshaping of academic and institutional practice in ways that can support and enhance the quality of teaching, learning and the student experience. The review template was constructed by the instructor and reviews of the course were completed by the instructor and two independent reviewers. Students completed the Student Evaluation of Teaching instrument (SET) and the Course Evaluation Instrument (CEI). Responses from the SET and the CEI were compared with the results of the QRI. The results demonstrated that the QRI has a high degree of reliability, even when used by reviewers with different backgrounds and different levels of experience. The instructor also rated the course in a very similar way to the two independent reviewers. The strong relationship between the student responses and the reviewers lends validity to the QRI