Virtual worlds

Ah, virtual worlds. The key argument put forth by Steinkuehler & Duncan (2008), Neulight et al (2007) and Hudson & Degast-Kennedy (2009) is that the learning (be it content, dispositions, etc.) gained from virtual worlds is potentially transferable to real life learning situations. Steinkuehler & Duncan (2008) argue that scientific habits of mind may occur in the wild while Neulight et al (2007) demonstrate that designing for virtual worlds can be beneficial for students but remain challenging for learning. Regardless of methodological issues present in the former study, it stands to reason that some players engage in scientific literacies. A bigger question for me is thus who is participating, since it may very well be that only interested players would visit such forums in the first place, as opposed to a classroom environment where students have limited choice in their participation. This is not to say that the students did not enjoy Whyville, although there seemed to be healthy skepticism among the participants in Hudson & Degast-Kennedy's (2009) study.

What does this all mean for educators and researchers interested in using such technologies in the classroom? For me, the big takeaway from these authors is the role of the teacher and curricular design. Neulight et al (2007) highlighted that learning gains are impacted by these two factors, a message that I think is consistent across all the literature read thus far. Nardi and O'Day will certainly agree that in order for effective learning to occur, educator must understand how individual components of a learning ecology interact. To this effect, my model remains unchanged, but I have illustrated the model with problematic components to illustrate why learning gains in the Neulight study were superficial. Through this illustration, I hope to present justification as to why taking into account components of the model is necessary for learning and demonstrate the usefulness of the current model.