Keynote Conversation with Sarah Prestridge, Associate Professor School of Education & Professional Studies, Griffith University

Wednesday, April 13 10:15 AM-11:15 AM

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How to teach in a Virtual World as a place with student choice in Higher Education.

ABSTRACT: Increasingly, immersive and non-immersive virtual reality (VR) platforms are being used for student learning as they can actively engage students (Stavroulia et al., 2019). In comparison to other more frequently used platforms such as Microsoft Teams or Zoom, 3-Dimensional virtual world platforms allow students and teachers not only to see each other in real time and work together, but more importantly create a ‘place’ with greater ‘choice’ for learning engagement. Providing a place for student anytime conversations around learning is significantly important with the increase in online off-campus coursework offered in Higher Education where study-work balance remains a constant battle for time. But importantly, the use of a virtual world needs to be considered as a teaching space where learning must shift away from a teacher-centric lecture oriented model. Virtual worlds are not new in education and have a long history in the higher education context (see Bronack et al.’s, 2006 and Kluge & Riley’s, 2008 work). More recent investigation depicts the application of a virtual world where students’ pitch to industry as part of an assessment task (see Lee et al., 2016), or where they gain access to a situation that they cannot physically visit (see Freina & Ott, 2015). However, little is actually known about how to teach in a virtual world as a ‘place’ based on student learning ‘choice’ that drives engagement activity. Those finer more pedagogically framed questions are examined in this presentation through two explorations into virtual worlds: firstly, a study of pedagogical elements for teaching virtually (see Prestridge, et al., 2021); and secondly, the development of conceptual models and principles to guide pedagogical adaptation and practice. This work informs how to both understand and shift pedagogical ideals to design teaching and learning in a virtual 3D space.