In March 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic brought great changes to classrooms and students around the world. As the virus swept into cities and communities, students were swept out of their routines--experiencing many sudden and profound losses. In one urban school district in the United States, elementary students lost the writing communities they had…

Open learning represents a new form of online learning where courses are provided freely online for large numbers of learners. MOOCs are examples of this form of learning. The authors see an opportunity for personalising open learning environments by adapting to learners' learning styles and providing adaptive support to meet individual learner…

Relatively few studies have empirically tested computer-based immersive virtual environments' efficacy in teaching or enhancing pro-social attitudes, such as intercultural sensitivity. This channel study experiment was conducted (N = 159) to compare what effects, if any, an immersive 3D virtual environment would have upon subjects' intercultural…

Different approaches have explored how to provide seamless learning across multiple ICT-enabled physical and virtual spaces, including three-dimensional virtual worlds (3DVW). However, these approaches present limitations that may reduce their acceptance in authentic educational practice: The difficulties of authoring and sharing teacher-created…

The aim of this study is to investigate the effect of an educational agent, used in online task based learning media, and its form characteristics on problem solving ability perceptions of students. 2x2 factorial design is used in this study. The first study factor is the role of the educational agent and the second factor is form characteristics…

Today virtual world instruction faces many of the same educational challenges faced by Web-based instruction during its infancy. There is a lot of jargon and visions of the future being bandied about, but as Hirumi et al. note in the May/June and July/August 2010 issues of "TechTrends" "there little understanding of how to apply" pedagogical…

The emergence of new technologies such as three-dimensional virtual worlds brings new opportunities for teaching and learning. We conducted an action research approach to the analysis of how teaching and learning of computer programming at the university level could be developed within the Second Life virtual world. Results support the notion that…

Second Life (SL) has been gaining increased attention in Education since it was launched in 2003. Language educators explored SL mainly as a virtual learning environment where learners can interact with native speakers (e.g., Hislope, 2008; Wang, Song, Xia, & Yan, 2009). Although most studies concluded positively about using SL for language…

Learners need to have good reasons to engage and accept e-learning. They need to understand that unless they do, the outcomes will be less favourable. The technology acceptance model (TAM) is the most widely recognized model addressing why users accept or reject technology. This study describes the development and evaluation of a virtual…

This paper is focused on virtual campuses, i.e. virtual worlds representing real educational institutions that are based on the metaphor of a university and provide users with different learning tools. More specifically, the idea of integrating a virtual campus into the context of a virtual city is suggested. Such a virtual city, where students…

The Web-based e-learning can benefit from the modern multimedia tools combined with network capabilities to overcome traditional education. The objective of this paper is focused on e-training system development to improve performance of theoretical knowledge and providing ample opportunity for practical attainment of manual skills in virtual…

Three-dimensional (3D) virtual worlds (VW) have great potential for contemporary art education. This article introduces the key characteristics of 3D VWs and reviews the research literature and application of VWs in education and art education. After explaining how 3D VWs provide unique possibilities as a contemporary art medium, learning tool,…

Business communication educators need to realize that as technology changes and evolves, they must also change and evolve their teaching methods and content. Cell phones, email, blogs, wikis, and text messaging are just a few examples of business communication technologies that not so long ago were viewed as entertainment for teens or techies, but…

Videogames have become a cultural and commercial phenomenon across the globe. Researchers and educators have been working to understand how to leverage these tools in education. However, there are few training opportunities that focus on the positive attributes of games in education for preservice teachers. This paper describes the preliminary…

The use of animation and multimedia for learning is now further extended by the provision of entire Virtual Reality Learning Environments (VRLE). This highlights a shift in Web-based learning from a conventional multimedia to a more immersive, interactive, intuitive and exciting VR learning environment. VRLEs simulate the real world through the…