Multi-user virtual environments (MUVEs) have great potential for supporting learning experiences with a high social and teaching presence. One particular MUVE of note is Mozilla Hubs, a system of open-source virtual worlds that allow users to join sessions and interact as avatars. To date, prior studies have not examined teaching and social…

This study aimed to determine the importance of socialization through sports as exemplified by athletics using interactive technologies for better socialization of students. The Small Group Socialization Scale (SGSS) was utilized for the measurement of socialization. The researchers conducted the study based on the Physical Education Department…

Research exploring students' learning from physical and virtual labs has suggested that on the whole, students learn science content just as well, if not better from virtual labs as they do from physical labs. However, the affordances of physical labs might support the learning of specific skills and competencies that are just as crucial for…

This study examines how different roles and background knowledge transform players' dyadic conversations into spatial dialogues in a virtual cellular biology game. Cellverse is a collaborative virtual reality (VR) game designed to teach cell biology. Players work in pairs, assuming the role of either a Navigator, with reference material and a…

This exploratory study examines the role virtual reality can play in student speech practice for oral communication courses. The study focuses on situational communication apprehension of the virtual reality practice session in relation to students who practice face-to-face and the final grade of the subsequent speech. Test and control groups…

The paper discusses the use of "Productive Disciplinary Engagement" (PDE) for a curricular project that features a technology-based alternate reality game (ARG) with the objective of teaching undergraduate students about the collaborative nature of STEM careers. Much of the PDE research uses PDE as either a design-principle or as an…

Virtual Reality (VR) is a valuable tool for learning, however, there is a lack of education-focused content for language learning needs. This article introduces the "VR Application Analysis Framework" (Lege, Bonner, Frazier, & Pascucci, 2020) to assist educators in scaffolding existing commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) applications for…

The COVID-19 pandemic of 2020 and the subsequent shutdown of all of the schools in the United States thrust teachers into distance learning environments with little or no preparation. This mixed methods exploratory study of teachers' perceptions of the role of professional learning in reducing transactional distance in a virtual environment…

This study explores the effects of how collaborating in a virtual world (VW) enhanced learners' healthcare professional-patient communicative skills, including physician-patient and inter-professional communication in medical discourse. Through a quasi-experimental design case study, 47 Taiwanese Freshman English students from a College of…

This mixed-method study explored the changes in Turkish EFL learners' reported willingness to communicate and communication anxiety after conducting ten real-life tasks in a virtual world. Sixty-five university EFL learners (experimental = 30; control = 35) participated in this study. The participants were the first-year students of a foreign…

The aim of this study was to discover what potential benefits of Virtual Reality (VR) use students perceived in comparison to smartphone use in an English-speaking activity. Two surveys were conducted over three interventions in order to ascertain these student perceptions. Ten students enrolled in an elective English class at a Japanese…

Three-dimensional Multi-User Virtual Environments (MUVEs) are being increasingly used in many areas, and they are becoming more and more integrated with learning and teaching. MUVEs can be used in learning and teaching to facilitate student learning and collaboration. This study identified the effects of MUVEs on collaborative learning and social…

Preparing future school administrators to engage in effective communication with parents and teachers is a necessary component of master's of educational leadership preparation programs. Mixed reality experiences (i.e., a life-like virtual rehearsal experience) provide students with opportunities to engage in realistic practice in a low risk…

Analysis of the applicability of a learning technology requires evaluating how the affordances of the technology respond to the users' needs. We examine affordances of a digital learning environment. We concentrate on organizational and socio-interactional affordances, which are based on technological affordances. The analysis shows how…

Digital technologies are an integral part of Higher Education teaching, revealing a set of technologies chosen to integrate formal learning contexts, and therefore being used by students in support of learning. This paper presents a literature review mapping the digital technologies set for higher education students to use in formal education…