Virtual Learning

Abstract

This chapter explores the seamless learning opportunities that video games and virtual reality offer for learners and instructors. Interacting with content, with each other, and with learning processes in virtual environments, learning becomes a process combined with discovery and fun. The authors analyze emerging trends and learning understandings (epistemologies) built by video game users and learners represented in the forms of avatars. Digital environments are in fact transforming the way learners and instructors (faculty) interact with each other in and across contexts. Using data from two parallel research projects, the chapter examines students' self identity construction, problem solving, and learning in virtual environments. The authors suggest that learning epistemologies that take place in virtual reality should be brought back to the classroom or to the online environment (by the instructional designer or the game developer) and impact the way learning takes place in this ‘real'/physical environments.