Virtual Worlds for Learning: An Analysis in the Use of Immersive Environments for Training

Posted 25 October, 2009 - 22:38 by publisher

Virtual Worlds for Learning: An Analysis in the Use of Immersive Environments for Training

AUTHOR : Ross McKerlich

Using Virtual Worlds for Learning

Virtual worlds such as Second Life (pictured at right) are attracting interest from organizations as platforms for learning. Also known as immersive environments, these systems can provide significant advantages over other learning strategies:

• The experience can be much more engaging than a typical page-turning course.
• The learner can learn by doing.
• Expensive videoconferencing is not required for real-time online activity.
• A user's learning experience can be designed to fit specific task needs with a flexibility and immediacy that is impossible in real life.
• Exploration and discovery are encouraged.
• Fantasy and imagination can be unleashed.
• Virtual 3-D spaces often allow full recording of any activity, interaction, or exchange, enabling past events to be re-experienced or re-used.
• Creed, skin color, look, and status within the company do not count much in virtual spaces. Further, people with major physical handicaps appear as capable and as beautiful as anyone else, reducing discrimination.
• The ability to inhabit any type of body and to customize one's own look gives many people the opportunity to express themselves as they truly feel and not as society forces them to be.

The full description of this report is available here:

www.brandon-hall.com/publications/virtualworldsanalysis/virtualworldsanalysis.shtml