In September 2008 I submitted my MA dissertation titled "An Exploratory Study of Higher Education Virtual Campuses in Second Life" to the University of Nottingham. Although, this research was done in less than 3 months, it could be a contribution to this field of knowledge and a useful piece of paper.
I would like to express my thanks to my supervisor professor Colin Harrison who scaffolded me in this research. Also, I want to say many thanks to professor Chuck Layne from the University of Houston, Professor Robin Teigland from Stockholm School of Economics in Sweden, Dr. Giuseppe Russo and his colleagues from Temple University, the virtual designer Mattie Edwards from Citrus Virtual Ltd and Sheila Webber a senior teacher in the University of Sheffield who all added valuable contributions to this work through their participation.
Below is the abstract of my dissertation and a link to download the whole study.
Online Multi User Virtual Worlds are emerging three- dimensional (3D) technologies that offer unique and diverse learning opportunities. Second Life (SL) is becoming the most popular virtual world being used for traditional and distributed higher education. The number of higher education virtual campuses is increasing dramatically in this world which indicates the need for discovering what this platform could offer to enhance education (teaching and learning). This study explores the educational spaces in five case studies of higher education virtual campuses and illustrates how they look like by showing their pictures. It investigates how these spaces are being used for education to determine which modes of learning are more appropriate through this platform. This investigation illustrates that the prominent modes of learning in this platform are situated within constructivist paradigms of learning. However, since SL is a world, it is possible to set other styles of learning which are situated within other theories of learning such as behaviourism.
All comments and feedback on this piece of work are most welcome to be posted in this blog.
To download the whole dissertation, please click here.
Note: "Please write your feedback here"
It is good to see that there are many downloads for this research, so it would be great if I could know what do you think of this work after reading it. You know when we achieve something, we like to hear what others say about it. So, if you download this dissertation, please write me a feedback in this blog when you have a look at. I will be thankful to you even if you criticise the work since this will help in improving it.
