3D online learning environments take elements of massively multi-player online entertainment technology and overlay selected tools to create an interface that al- lows students and instructors to interact and to communicate within a designed environment for the purpose of accomplishing informal or formal learning. Online
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environments used in games are the “convergence of two technologies: video games and high-speed Internet” (Kushner, 2004, p. 98). When an environment is built and displayed correctly, the user understands intuitively the space as displayed. For example, in an environment representing a building, users feel as though they are walking the halls of the building, or are engaged with other users in discussions, or immersed in a training situation. The user moves through and interacts with the environment using the keyboard, a mouse, or other heptic devices. As users move, the computer generates new graphics in real time to give them feedback on their position in the environment. This gives the user the feel of movement through space.
Placing objects in a contextual 3D framework provides users known reference points and creates a framework for communications and interactions. Students at remote sites assume control of a representation of themselves, also called an avatar, in a shared created environment such as a school building, a park, or any other space.
These highly graphical 3D interfaces allow individuals, through their “avatar,” to interact not only with the environment but also with other user “avatars” in the en- vironment. The java-based 3D online learning environment used at the University of North Texas segments the environment into conversation areas based on physical spaces (i.e., a classroom, a meeting room, or a hallway) so that learners can move their avatars to areas for small group or private discussions. A screen-shot from the environment being used at the University of North Texas for distributed education is shown in Figure 1. These virtual worlds are persistent social worlds—spaces in which the artifacts of others help guide new learners and where users are free to move and interact as they please.
Immersive environments can range from simple instructional settings to environ- ments created from any dataset. Created Realities Group (CRG) (2002) has created a 3D online multi-user environment that displays over 97% of the surface of Mars using NASA’s Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter (NASA, 2004). Figure 2 shows a screen shot of the summit of Olympus Mons captured from the CRG environment.
Students in distributed locations are able to login, move over the virtual surface, Figure 1. 3D online learning environment used at the University of North Texas
and perform math and science exercises using actual Mars topography data. The University of North Texas in the spring of 2005 developed curriculum materials aimed at middle-school students in after school programs interested in learning math and science problems using this mars online environment (Jones & Kalinowski, in press). The materials were aligned with the Montana Educational Standards for students’ knowledge, skills, and abilities. Testing with students in Montana using the materials and software has not yet taken place at the time of this writing.
3D online learning environments are benefiting from advances in technology that earlier approaches to online learning lacked, thanks to the explosive growth of the computer entertainment industry. The combination of affordable consumer technolo- gies such as personal computers and gaming consoles, widespread Internet access, and scalable server technology makes it possible for 3D online learning environments to emerge as the next generation of distributed learning technology. Multi-user online games are ubiquitous within contemporary pop culture (Steinkuehler, 2004), and emerging research suggests these games provide a complex and nuanced environ- ment in which multi-modal social and communicative practices may be developed (Gee, 2003). What is at first limited to the online environment soon moves into other forums of communications. For example, a 3D online learning environment when used to enhance a Web-based course can improve a student’s interaction and discourse. Students using a 3D online learning environment showed increased daily text-based communications, peaking earlier in the semester, and sustaining this increase in communications longer over the semester as compared to students who only used the Web-based environment (Jones, 2006). This research will be discussed in greater detail later in the chapter.
But learning is more than downloading, and courses are more than chats. The emergence of 3D environments as viable spaces for learning is also based on the social nature of learning and the affordances such environments supply. As Palloff and Pratt (1999) note, “people and the interaction among them in the distance edu- cation environment is essential to the development of a high functioning distance education class.” The key is that 3D online learning environments bring students and instructors to the front of the interaction. They share the roles of creators and Figure 2. Mars 3D environment generated in real-time based on NASA MOLA data;
Olympus Mons, Top Cone (MARS_19.0_227.0) (Created Realities Group, 2002)
consumers of knowledge and learning, thus breaking the isolated roles commonly seen in Web-based methods where instructors are subject matter experts that create and students are the consumers of that information. 3D online learning environments make this possible, because the environment promotes equality of communications and interaction. In a fully interactive world that allows users to contribute content, there is no limit to what students can add to the learning environment and the learn- ing itself.
The thing about interactive learning, however, is that you cannot just sit and pon- der. At some point, learners are compelled to do something. But what can you do when you do not know what to do? How an individual behaves in an environment depends upon his/her understanding of the causal structure of that environment (Tenenbaum & Griffiths, 2001). A 3D online learning environment has the potential to generate structures that a user is already familiar with and can then more easily infer causation from the observation of the 3D environment as a metaphor. How- ever, computational model structures and processes in the mind cannot adequately account for cognition in interactive learning environments alone. Lave (1988) contends that we must look at activity systems in which individuals participate in large systems. Within such systems, cognition is a complex social phenomenon that is distributed. Lave and Wenger (1991) state that the gradual transformation of an individual participant to a central member of a community through apprenticeship and increased participation is a key factor in learning. While there are numerous learning effects happening when a user is “in” the world interacting with others and the environment, the tenets of social constructivism, especially the role of the expert group in providing cognitive scaffolding, play critical roles in the success of the 3D online environments.
Social Constructivism and Online Learning Environments
Knowledge, according to social constructivists, is the artifact of decisions made by people in groups, based on their on-going interactions. In a sense, knowledge is a public record of transactions between like-minded people. It is grounded in the inquiring activities and commingled tasks through which people relate. What we each, individually, know is uncovered through the process of interacting with the world around us, and the others we find in it. And there is plenty “out there” to know, it seems. Constantly, people act based on a broad collection of assumptions—things they all seem to know to be true—that are tacit to some and mysterious to others.
What differentiates those who “know” from those who do not is the process of learning that happens when one participates in a community of practice under the guidance of both more and less experienced peers.
Learning involves change brought about by experience and interaction between people and their environment. These changes manifest themselves in intellectual aptitude, cognitive strategies, motor skills, and dispositions. Some believe learning is a directly observable change in behavior—the result of conditioning by reinforce- ment. Others believe learning is an indirectly observable internal process where learners compare new information to existing knowledge and either build new or modify existing schemata. Social constructivists view learning as the result of neither solely intrinsic schema nor purely extrinsic motivations but, rather, as a contiguous process that exists each time people willfully interact with each other in the world around them. Any effort to develop an effective online learning environment must consider the ways in which the participants become part of a community of practice and are able to construct knowledge in a social context.
As will be discussed in the case studies presented at the end of the chapter, prin- ciples of social constructivist learning provide the foundation for the conceptual framework of the Reich College of Education at Appalachian State University. This framework provides the foundation for the students thinking about online learning environments. The conceptual framework is an evolving construct, but the underly- ing basis remains firmly girded in the following assumptions about learning:
• Knowledge is created and maintained through social interactions;
• Learning is participatory where students take an active role;
• Development proceeds through stages and among more- and less-experienced peers within a community of practice;
• A specific and general knowledge base emerges from learning through mean- ingful activity with others;
• Learners develop dispositions relative to the community of practice.