Using 3D virtual environments to facilitate students in constructivist learning

a r t i c l e i n f o Advances in network infrastructure and computing technology have made 3D virtual environment increasingly popular and less costly. Many education institutions have shown interests in its application in teaching and learning activities. In this project, we evaluated how the 3D virtual environment can facilitate students in achieving learning outcomes. To provide students with learning experience in 3D virtual environments, we designed a task which requested students to identify some information security issues in a virtual office setup in Second Life, the most widely adopted 3D virtual environment. In this paper, we report our experience in having students finish the task within the virtual environment in an introductory management information system course. Evaluation on the students' learning experience showed that 3D virtual environments could indeed facilitate students in achieving learning outcomes through constructivist learning. We suggest some recommendations in using 3D virtual environments as an educational platform. Three-dimensional virtual worlds on the Internet have emerged as a popular trend in digital world in the recent decade due to advancement in computing technology and network infrastructure. Virtual worlds such as Second Life, World of Warcraft, Sony Playstation Home and Xbox Live have gained vast popularity and worldwide success. Taking Second Life as an example, according to the statistic provided by Linden Lab — the creator of Second Life, the number of unique users in the Second Life exceeds 750,000 in 2010, and they spent more than 105 million hours in the virtual online world (Linden Lab, 2010). A virtual world is a computer-generated, boundaryless, immersive " game-like " environment often equipped with three-dimensional graphics that resembles the real world [21]. Users can create in-world characters, known as avatars, to represent themselves in the virtual world and participate in different kinds of activities. User can communicate and interact with other users using body language, voice and text messages. The use of multi-channel expressive communications in the virtual world allows users to communicate and convey their emotions through the Internet in a more real-world-like setting [7]. In light of various special and unique features provided by virtual worlds, there is an opportunity of using virtual worlds for educational purpose. Despite the fact that virtual worlds are mainly for entertainment purpose, it has been suggested that they have great potential to become innovative education platform in the future, providing students with real-world-like experiential learning. Universities …