The Affordances of Second Life for Education - Teaching through Multi-User Virtual Environments - page 97

Like the SCANS report, meaningful learning
incorporates new understandings about learning
that are emerging from cognitive science. These
understandings are well described in How People
Learn , a volume edited by Bransford et al. (1999),
and can be summarized as:

dent learning by making changes in that learning
environment. The learning environment includes
not only the physical attributes of a classroom,
such as desks, chairs, bulletin boards, chalkboards
(and even heating and air conditioning systems),
but also less tangible aspects of the environment
such as how students are grouped, what the
teacher says or gives to, and even the goals that
the teacher or students have in mind. To the extent
that technology makes a difference in the learning
environment that matters, it makes a difference
in student learning. A learning environment con-
ducive to meaningful learning would be one that
encourages students to take responsibility for their
own learning by situating them in collaborative
groups engaged in generative learning activities
taking place in authentic and realistic contexts
and involving a variety of assessment techniques
that focus on higher-order thinking (Grabinger
& Dunlap, 2002; Grabinger et al., 1997). Thus,
technologies that help to support such pedagogi-
cal strategies would therefore have an impact on
meaningful learning.
In addition to the concept of “learning environ-
ment”, it is helpful to think about technologies as
offering certain general “affordances” for teach-
ing and learning. An affordance is a possibility
for action that is supplied by a given feature or
element in the learning environment. Technolo-
gies can increase the possibilities for action in a
learning environment by providing or enhancing
the following:

• Learning occurs in context.

• Learning is active.

• Learning is social.

• Learning is reflective (Driscoll, 2002).

These principles of learning suggest that stu-
dents learn best in situations that are authentic
and participatory and involve an interactive (or
iterative) cycle of action and reflection that chal-
lenges the students' mental models of the world
appropriately. By “appropriately”, we mean that
challenges are carefully designed to push the
students' thinking beyond their comfort zone, but
not so much as to lead to frustration or repeated
failure. Vygotsky's (1978) concept of “zone of
proximal development” is helpful here, offering
the advice that appropriate challenges are those
that a student could not necessarily meet on his or
her own, but can meet with the support of others.
Such supports can come from the teacher, in the
form of scaffolding (such as instructions, hints,
resources, tools) or from mixed-ability groups
of students that can fill in the gaps in any one
students' understanding and support each other
in meeting challenges that any one student might
find too difficult (Daniels, 1994). The capacity of
a collaborative group to support the individual
learners that make up the group in meeting chal-
lenging problems—through a process known as
“reciprocal teaching” (Palincsar & Klenk, 1992;
Collins, Brown, & Holum, 1991)—is a key
principle of new understandings of how students
learn, and of the concept of meaningful learning.
So how can technology help create meaningful
learning? A central principle is that all learning
takes place within a context known as a learning
environment , and that teachers can only affect stu-

• Communication and Collaboration :

technologies can connect students to each
other, to the teacher, and to the larger
world, giving them access to real-world
data as well as subject-matter experts, and
enabling them to work together efficiently
and synergistically.

• Representations and Simulations : tech-

nologies can offer multiple modes of con-
veying information and ideas, either to
students to help them to understand or by