BP18_2009113_Discussion Board_Virtual Worlds_LearningEnvironment

Retroactively posting Discussion Board entry to blog:

Week 3 - Discussion Board - Virtual Worlds

How might you use virtual worlds in your learning environment?
Synchronous group collaboration is available in many formats online. I have used several forms of online group connections for business meetings, from WebEx and iChat and Skype to ConnectNow. These can include audio, video, text chat, polls, whiteboards, file sharing, and screen sharing… more than enough adequate ways to communicate.

I would not use a 3D virtual world in my corporate learning environment unless the physical dimensional space was a critical information factor to be shared, and there was no practical way to do it in a real-world setting. This may be due to time-zone and location differences of the participants, or due to the actual space being inaccessible, or even space being in development and not yet created. Architectural planning and real estate showings and location tours would be prime examples of relevant use of digital dimensional space. For these to be viable, the digital build-out would have to be accurate enough to be a reasonable representation in a scale and level of detail that makes sense for a valuable virtual world experience, which takes a major investment of time and effort that would have to be justified by enough critical use.

I would not use an avatar-based virtual world in my corporate learning environment. The “cute factor” of making a little pretend digital character to represent yourself seems to me to be a time-consuming distraction from any professional activities at hand. Visual impressions of others are definitely a relevant and contributory factor to in-person and avatar-based communications. Individualization of an avatar is valid way to express many aspects of personality. Consideration should be whether this adds to or detracts from the interaction and communication. Should avatars be required to be realistic? Should the fat people be fat, and the tall people be tall? Should any evidence of age such as grey hair and wrinkles be included or avoided? What about wardrobe, should “business casual” be enforced, or are wings and capes allowed? Should all avatars be undifferentiated in a default setup to be “fair and equal” as in a Harrison Bergeron context?


In most cases, I do not think that the logistics of navigating an avatar in a virtual world add to the value of a group meeting or shared class experience. Pretend walking, flying and dancing are cute and kinda fun. Bumping into each other or accidentally falling off the edge of a stairway/building/cliff are distracting. Getting everyone to where they need to be - from virtual Point A to virtual Point B - is necessary. Combining these is OK, as long as it doesn’t take up too much time and effort on the fun stuff or diversions of the inadvertent actions to get the necessary result. If the fun stuff is needed to keep the participants’ attention in the experience, it would be important to measure how their focus is differentiated between the fun aspects of the experience and the necessary engagement in the event.