VW/VLE Project

Project Title

Supporting Education in Virtual Worlds with Virtual Learning Environments (VW/VLE)

Start date

1st July 2010

End date

30th June 2011

Overview

Supporting Education in Virtual Worlds with Virtual Learning Environments (VW/VLE) is a twelve month JISC project, from July 2010,which will analyse and catalogue emerging pedagogical opportunities offered by integrating virtual worlds and web-based virtual learning environments.

It aims to show how the relative strengths of each platform, i.e. administrative capabilities of virtual learning environments and the presentation layer of virtual worlds, can be exploited and subsequently enhanced through such integration.

The project will develop, evaluate and disseminate effective models of good practice, where little guidance or structure currently exists and based on experiences from pilot groups use this integrated approach for teaching and learning at multiple institutions.

You can follow the project here.

This project is led by Dr. Daniel Livingstone at the University of the West of Scotland. The project partners are listed below.

Aims and objectives

This project aims to investigate how web-based virtual learning environments can provide effective support for learning and teaching in virtual worlds whether by:

- Using virtual learning environments for personalised learning in shared virtual worlds

- Effective web-based support / scaffolding for virtual world learners

- Using VLE integration to improve accessibility for virtual world learning activities

- Web-integration for virtual world learning management support

- Improving reuse through web-integration

- Providing a layer of structure to teaching and learning through the integration of platforms

- Develop suitable materials and resources to enable successful third-party adoption and extension of the project's findings and outcomes.

Project methodology

This project builds on the partners' existing work on integrating virtual worlds and web-based learning environments with SLOODLE and game-based learning in virtual worlds.

Pilot courses with Engineering and Computing students at University of Ulster, The Open University and University of the West of Scotland and with medical students at Imperial College London will each explore the use of web-based learning environments in supporting effective use of virtual worlds for blended and distance learning.

While individual pilots will focus on different aspects of the project, the various pilots will provide additional corroboration for findings and support each other.

Anticipated outputs and outcomes

Key outputs and outcomes to include:

- Evaluation of student and staff feedback

- Evaluations of various case studies based on each of the pilot groups

- Guidance for practitioners on the successful use of web-based support for learning in virtual worlds, including the use of embedded web-content inside the virtual world and data-integration using SLOODLE

- Highlight pedagogical opportunities offered by integrating virtual worlds and virtual learning environments

- Enable third parties to adopt and leverage the strengths of the respective platforms integration in a teaching and learning setting

Technology / Standards used (if applicable)

The project will use the popular Moodle open source virtual learning environment and SLOODLE – an open source plug-in for Moodle, which provides a range of tools for integration with both the Second Life and OpenSim virtual world platforms.

The project will also build on previous tools developed by the Faculty of Medicine at Imperial College London for Game-Based Learning in virtual worlds.

Additionally, extensions to Moodle and/or SLOODLE to support the work of the project will be released as open source.

Project Partners