Teacher presence has been considered one of the cornerstones of students' motivation and engagement in traditional and online education. However, we argue that diminished teacher presence can actually be beneficial for building a democratic, student-led classroom. We hypothesize that this can be achieved through the use of an Open Source Educative…

The purpose of this paper is to present a review of research on Second Life (SL) as a learning environment within English as a foreign language (EFL) context, as research on its use within EFL learning is relatively new. The study is categorized into four main sections. Introduction section introduces the rationale of the paper and SL. Next…

Young and healthy undergraduates in health education were not predisposed to learn the complex sprawl of topics in a required course on U.S. Health Care. An online simulation of health care reform was used to encourage student learning about health care and participating in health care reform. Students applied their understanding of high costs,…

The following paper presents two stages of an action research project involving two oral proficiency courses held in the virtual world Second Life. Course 1 was conducted during the Autumn of 2007. Based on the experiences of this course, we redesigned many aspects of it in order to improve student activity in terms of oral participation and gave…

Constructivist pedagogical approaches have become common in many science curricula. However, while sciences such as physics and chemistry lend themselves to compelling opportunities for interaction (explosions, reactions, objects in motion), certain systems sciences are more challenging for learners to engage with on a short time scale. Applying…

Although engagement and learning appear linked, quantitatively measuring this relationship is challenging. New technologies offer a window into studying the interactions among classroom activity, student engagement, and positive learning outcomes in computer-equipped classrooms. A Classroom Behavioral Analysis System (CBAS) was developed to…

Conversational technologies such as email, chat rooms, and blogs have made the transition from novel communication technologies to powerful tools for learning. Currently virtual worlds are undergoing the same transition. We argue that the next wave of innovation is at the level of the computer interface, and that mixed-reality environments offer…

This paper explores the Web 2.0 ethos with respect to the application of pedagogy within 3D online virtual environments. 3D worlds can create a synthetic experience capturing the essence of "being" in a particular world or context. The AliveX3D platform adopts the Web 2.0 ethos and applies it to online 3D virtual environment forming a Web…