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Sue Gregory
University of New England

Brent Gregory
University of New England

Denise Wood
Central Queensland University

Scott Grant
Monash University

Sasha Nikolic
University of Wollongong

Mathew Hillier
Monash University

Merle Hearns
Manukau Institute of Technology

Lisa Jacka
Southern Cross University

Marcus McDonald
RMIT University

Torsten Reiners
Curtin University

Sharon Lierse
Charles Darwin University

Blooma John
University of Canberra

Suku Sukunesan
Swinburne University of Technology

Emily Rutherford
University of Canberra

Jay Jay Jegathesan
University of Western Australia

Des Butler
Queensland University of Technology

Helen Farley
University of Southern Queensland

Pauletta Irwin
University of Newcastle

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Abstract

The adoption and pedagogical use of technologies such as virtual worlds to support teaching and learning, and research in higher education involves a complex interplay of technical, organisational and personal factors. In this paper, eighteen educators and researchers provide an overview of how they perceive a virtual world can be used in education from the perspective of themselves as individuals ‘me’, their educational organisations and as members of the Australian and New Zealand Virtual Worlds Working Group (VWWG) community of practice ‘us’, as well as the complex technology that underpins this learning environment ‘IT’. Drawing on Linstone’s (1981, 1984) Technical, Organisational and Personal (TOP) multiple perspective concept as the framework for analysis, the authors discuss their perspectives of how the personal, organisational and technical aspects of teaching through the use of virtual worlds have impacted on their teaching and research in higher education. The potential of employing the TOP framework to inform future research into the use of technologies such as virtual worlds in teaching and learning is explored.

About the authors

Sue Gregory

Associate Professor Sue Gregory is the Chair of Research, Education Scholar and member of the ICT team in the School of Education, University of New England, Armidale, Australia. She holds a Senior Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy. Sue teaches pre-service and postgraduate education students how to incorporate technology into their teaching. She has been applying her virtual world knowledge to expose her students, both online and off-campus, since 2007. She has been involved with many national and university projects on creating and using learning spaces in virtual worlds, with over Au$1.2m in grants, including five Australian Category 1, two as lead. She received an OLT citation in 2012. Since 2009, Sue has been Chair of the Australian and New Zealand Virtual Worlds Working Group and has over 100 publications on teaching and learning in virtual worlds and also in the area of exploring various tools for online teaching and learning.

Brent Gregory

Brent Gregory is a Chartered Accountant with extensive experience in Business Management and Growth. Prior to entering Academia his key area of research related to the attributes of successful business and in particular the key success factors for owner operated businesses. As a result he has devoted much of his professional career to guiding business on how to operate their businesses to better achieve their goals. He has also served on numerous regional development and community organisations.

Denise Wood

Denise Wood is a Professor, Engaged Research Chair and Director of the Centre for Regional Advancement of Learning, Equity, and Participation (LEAP) at Central Queensland University, Australia. She had led over AU$6 million in national funded research projects focusing on learning and teaching, and the innovative use of information and communication technologies, including virtual worlds, to enhance learning outcomes and the social and educational participation of people from underrepresented groups in Australia and South Africa. One of these projects, which is of particular interest to this publication, was an Australian Leaning and Teaching funded national project, “Facilitating flexible, enquiry-based experiential learning through an accessible, three-dimensional virtual learning environment (3DVLE)”, the outputs of which included guidelines for academics teaching in virtual worlds about the affordances and features virtual worlds for learning and teaching in higher education, case studies across a range of disciplinary fields and the development of an accessible virtual world viewer.

Scott Grant

Scott Grant has taught Chinese language and culture at tertiary level for more than 20 years. He coordinates and teaches Chinese Introductory 1 & 2 and Chinese Online Media 1 & 2. He is the creator of the Monash Chinese Island virtual language learning simulation in Second Life that has been part of the formal beginner level curriculum at Monash since 2008. Scott has also conducted collaborative research and jointly published a number of papers on educational uses of 3D multi-user virtual environments covering topics including self-efficacy, cognitive skills, second language acquisition and foreign language anxiety. In 2013/14, Scott was the Project Team Leader of the OLT funded Virtually Enhanced Languages (VEL) project which aims to share the experience and resources accumulated from implementing task-based language and culture learning on Chinese Island over a period of 10 years with other tertiary language educators.

Sasha Nikolic

Dr Sasha Nikolic is a lecturer at the University of Wollongong. From the University of Wollongong he received a B.E. degree in Telecommunications in 2001 and a PhD in Engineering Education in 2017. Sasha specialises in laboratory learning and video-augmented virtual environments. He won a university Outstanding Contribution to Teaching and Learning Award in 2011. In 2012, he was awarded a Citation for Outstanding Contributions to Student Learning as part of the OLT Australian Awards for University Teaching. In 2016 he was team leader for a project that won the ASCILITE Innovation Award. He is a senior member of IEEE and member of both AAEE and ASCILITE.

Mathew Hillier

Dr Mathew Hillier is a Senior Lecturer in the Office of Learning and Teaching at Monash University. Mathew specialises in e-assessment and e-exams and teaches into the academic staff development program at Monash University leading the ‘technology and space’ theme. He is one of two co-leaders of the ASCILITE SIG for ‘e-Assessment’ and in this capacity is a co-host of the Transforming Assessment webinar series along with Prof Geoffrey Crisp. He has previously taught into Business, Information systems, Engineering and Arts programs at several universities in Australia, Singapore and Hong Kong. Mathew is currently the leader of the ‘Transforming Exams’ project developing a toolset for authentic, computerised, high-stakes assessment (e-Exams). The project covers 10 university partners and is funded by a half-million dollar Australian government grant. He is also leading the development of a multi-language computerised exam platform for use in national professional translator accreditation. More about Mathew at http://ta.vu/mathewhillier

Merle Hearns

Merle Hearns is a Senior Lecturer in the Tertiary Teaching Unit at Manukau Institute of Technology. She previously worked in foundation (enabling education). Merle (then Lemon) was a Lead Educator for the 2009 Second Life Education in New Zealand (SLENZ Project), funded by the NZ Tertiary Education Commission Encouraging and Supporting Innovation Fund. Merle developed a literacy game, called The Mythical World of Hīnātore, which is available on a Kitely sim 24/7, as an Ako Aotearoa/MIT jointly funded research project. Merle is currently completing a PhD in education, focussing on the transference of skills learned in virtual worlds to the real world. Merle is involved in the Virtual Worlds Working Group (VWWG) which assists in facilitating collaborative research and informing best practices in the use of virtual worlds for teaching and learning. For more information, see https://www.linkedin.com/in/merle-hearns-b81a583/; https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Merle_Hearns; https://zc.academia.edu/MerleHearns; https://eportfolio.manukau.ac.nz/view/view.php?t=2Z8cCTmou1NRx5nwgPaG

Lisa Jacka

Dr Lisa Jacka is a lecturer in the School of Education at Southern Cross University, NSW. She has been an adult educator for many years who works with pre-service and post-graduate education students to expand their knowledge and confidence to integrate innovative ICTs into their teaching practice. Lisa has expertise in virtual worlds in education having completed PhD research in this field as she introduced educators to the possibilities of virtual worlds. She has over 27 publications including book chapters, journal articles and conference papers and in 2015 was awarded a Vice Chancellor’s citation for innovative design and delivery online learning experiences that facilitate education students’ readiness to teach in learning environments of the future.

Marcus McDonald

Dr Marcus McDonald is a Lecturer at RMIT University. He is focused on the affordances and application of educational technologies. Concerned mainly with how student experience may effect engagement and learner buy-in. Most recently he has been taking these evaluation methods in the evaluation of health care. This focus takes evaluations of learning engagement and examines the use and experience of Health Care practitioners with a range of third party payers and schemes. The intention is that it would influence the delivery and co-operation of these stake holders.

Torsten Reiners

Dr Torsten Reiners is Senior Lecturer in Logistics at the Curtin University, Australia. His research and teaching experiences are in the areas of operations research, but include instructional design, development of adaptive learning environments, distant collaboration, and mobile learning. His PhD thesis is about adaptive learning material in the field of operations research. He has participated in multiple projects to use 3D spaces for learning support; i.e., to improve the authenticity of learning in classes about production and simulation. He is project leader on a competitive grant from the Australian Office of Learning and Teaching (www.ndive-project.com).

Sharon Lierse

Dr Sharon Lierse is Lecturer in Education at Charles Darwin University (Melbourne). Prior to her appointment, she was Associate Professor in the Faculty of Music and Performing Arts in Malaysia where she was founder and Managing Editor of the Malaysian Music Journal. Dr Lierse has also lectured at the University of Tasmania, and was Manager of Professional Learning at ACER. She has published widely and has given conference presentations around the world including keynote presentations in Europe and Asia. Her research interests include instrumental music, lecturing face-to-face and online, and the characteristics of excellence in teaching in a university setting.

Blooma John

Blooma John is Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Business Government and Law, University of Canberra. She has a PhD in Information Systems from Nanyang Technological University. Her research interests are in text mining, social question answering, learning analytics and health informatics. She has published various academic articles including journal papers, book chapters and conference proceedings in these areas. She has won the award for Excellence in Learning and Teaching 2015 at RMIT Vietnam. She had also won the best paper of the conference award at the AIS Special Interest Group in Education 2013.

Suku Sukunesan

Dr Sukunesan is a Senior Lecturer at Swinburne University of Technology within the Information Systems Department, and is an Innovation Fellow within the Swinburne Innovation Precinct. He is an experienced researcher and academic with a keen interest in edutech applications, social media, social network analysis and disruptive technologies. He has previously used Twitter, Second Life and Shoutcast servers as part of his teaching innovation.

Emily Rutherford

Emily Rutherford is an Educational Designer at the University of Canberra. She works in partnership with the academic staff from the Faculty of Business, Governance and Law on staff development projects, teaching strategies and innovation, as well as University-wide learning and teaching projects. She enjoys connecting with new ways to use pedagogically-driven technology to support teaching strategies and enhance digital literacy skills. Emily has a strong background in teaching and supporting teaching practice, as well as being a passionate enthusiast of Second Life, VR/AR and mixed reality, and how they are explored creatively in a higher education context.

Jay Jay Jegathesan

Jay Jay Jegathesan holds a Bachelor of Commerce (Hons) degree from the University of Western Australia (UWA), majoring in management and marketing. An employee of UWA since 2004, Jay Jay is attached to the Graduate Research School coordinating an area looking after the interests of prospective PhD students in the medical field.

Des Butler

Des Butler is a Professor of Law at the Faculty of Law, Queensland University of Technology, where he served as Assistant Dean, Research (1997-2002). He was awarded his doctorate in 1996 for his thesis on liability for psychiatric injury, and is the author or co-author of 21 books and numerous articles on topics including legal education, media and entertainment law, psychiatric injury caused by negligence, and contract law. He is an Australian Learning and Teaching Fellow and a Senior Fellow of the United Kingdom Higher Education Academy. He has developed technology-based programs for enhancing the learning of law since 1990 and has received numerous awards for his work, many of which involve machinima created using the Second Life virtual world, including an Australian Award for Teaching Excellence, the LexisNexis/Australasian Law Teachers Association Award for Excellence and Innovation in the Teaching of Law (twice) and a Janders Dean/LexisNexis Legal Innovation Index Award.

Helen Farley

Dr Helen Farley is an Associate Professor (Digital Futures) at the Digital Life Lab, University of Southern Queensland. She researches the educational affordances of emerging digital technologies for learning. She is leading the Australian government-funded Making the Connection project which is introducing digital technologies into correctional centres to enhance access to higher education for Indigenous and non-Indigenous prisoners. The project has been successfully deployed in five states and territories with some 1000 students. Helen also led USQ’s Collaborative Research Network project to develop a Mobile Learning Evaluation Framework. Helen is also at the forefront of virtual world research, having led the award-winning Religion Bazaar project in Second Life. She has published extensively on the affordances of digital technologies to enhance learning and has secured around $6 million in funding. Twitter: @Helssi

Pauletta Irwin

Pauletta Irwin is a Nursing Lecturer and Simulated Learning Environment Coordinator at the School of Nursing and Midwifery, University of Newcastle. Pauletta has a strong history in various simulation platforms in her years of employment in the tertiary sector. Pauletta’s doctoral research considers the nature of learning in a virtual world for undergraduate nursing students. She has led several innovative projects where virtual simulation has been piloted to teach nursing students skills such as holistic assessments, post graduate mental health students home environment assessments, and an international study examining a shared learning space with international students. Leadership on these projects has led to sustained partnerships with tertiary (national and international) and healthcare sectors. A committee member of the Faculty of Health and Medicine’s Centre of Excellence in Simulation, Pauletta is developing several interdisciplinary simulations that seek to improve student learning and capacity in the workforce.