Educators
Why Would You Consider A VLE?
As an educator, why would you choose to use a VLE as a platform for course delivery? In an increasingly competitive Post-Secondary world the ability to provide rigorous quality programs for anyone in the world would open up the talent pool of potential students as well as the cultural diversity of your classroom. It speaks to the changing nature of the contemporary student in lecture halls both physical and online (Ng,2015). We have fully landed in the era of the Digital Native (Samokishyn, M) . Many educators already use social media as a means to communicate with colleagues and students. Second life provides a hub for all of those interactions including virtual face to face instruction and asynchronous methodologies.
needs a modern space with which to engage in building meaning through a participatory culture. Achieving a space that honours inclusive, culturally diversity, and is technology friendly us a daunting task for your traditional brick and mortar institution. A VLE could be a great space to put constructivist best practices to work.
The contemporary student PVLE's are not without their drawbacks. Though we have entered the age of the digital native their still lies bridging of digital literacy to be done for those students whom digital literacy is not as necessary to work with in a VLE . An introductory digital literacy course maybe required to facilitate the use of a VLE as a platform so as not to exclude digital immigrants. Cultural sensitivities must also be considered. If we are to create an inclusive culturally diverse environment then the design of your institution or classroom must be aware of biases, and differing Semiotic domains (College, 2014 & Gee, J. 2007)
A Truly Immersive (not so) Distant Learning Experience.
VLE's like Second life or Open SIM (An open source fully walled version of Second Life. that you can download and install on your institution's server.) offer a way to manage your course just as you have with LMS's like MOODLE but with the added bonus of a virtual physical world as the wrapping paper. SLoodle is a plugin for MOODLE that is compatible with Second Life and Open SIM . The addition of VR technology with this kind of platform could move Distance Education into an entirely new era. Gone will be the days of worksheets and multiple choice questions driven by the instructor and tethered to traditional formative assessment strategies. Collaborative, remixed, participatory education will be the demand of our digital native students. The efficacy and advancement of Distance Education has risen steadily with the availability and innovation of technology.
What of the introduction of Virtual Reality? VIrtual reality platforms are already in existence for the consumer as devices linked to gaming and entertainment. It is not a large leap to see how this technology could be used in conjunction with a virtual learning environment to provide next level education. We will use the Oculus Rift as our headset for the purposes of this potential pairing as it is robust and geared toward a PC experience as opposed to a VR headset tied to a gaming console.
​
​
Things to consider
When choosing your VLE environment and VR headset things you should consider apart from the technical requirements, and the digital native and digital immigrant literacy gap created by different Semiotic domains.
Specific physiological implications need to be taken into account when designing or building a virtual or augmented world: considerations like the potential for motion sickness and the significance of ‘head tracking’ must be weighed in order to comfortably situate a new VR/AR user into a position of acceptance and physiological comfortability.
The Oculus Rift, for example, is currently one of the more popular and effective tools on the VR/AR market. The Oculus Rift works simply by aligning physical and virtual world frames, essentially fooling the brain into a sense of feigned perception. Because we are dealing with a symmetry between digital and real world, “including head position further aligns the physical and virtual worlds to improve the experience...the head must be tracked in a way that minimizes perceptual artifacts” (LaVelle et al, 2014).
Universal Design
The Oculus Rift, for example, is currently one of the more popular and effective tools on the VR/AR market. The Oculus Rift works simply by aligning physical and virtual world frames, essentially fooling the brain into a sense of feigned perception. Because we are dealing with a symmetry between digital and real world, “including head position further aligns the physical and virtual worlds to improve the experience...the head must be tracked in a way that minimizes perceptual artifacts” (LaVelle et al, 2014).
Research
The Contemporay Student
Beware the MEME
Semiotic Domains
"By a semiotic domain I mean any set of practices that recruits one or
more modalities (e.g., oral or written language, images, equations, symbols,
sounds, gestures, graphs, artifacts, etc.) to communicate distinctive types of
meanings. Here are some examples of semiotic domains: cellular biology,
postmodern literary criticism, first-person-shooter video games, high-fashion
advertisements, Roman Catholic theology, modernist painting, midwifery,
rap music, wine connoisseurship—through a nearly endless, motley,
and ever-changing list.(Gee, J. 2007)
Changing classroom changing assessment.
Digital Immigrants vs Digital Natives
VR Head Tracking
Inclusion for all
Do you need a PhD in Computer Science to use a VLE?
The short answer is NO! A VLE truly is a tool to offer an enriched and robust learning experience that considers all learners abilities . It houses the tools necessary to develop for the individual all the way to an institutional experience of education at the post secondary level. VLE's combined with Virtual reality are quite possibly the next era of distance education. We would be so happy to hear from any individual or institution that begins the implementation process of VLE's and or VR as a Learning environment.