CSCL Techniques in Collaborative Virtual Environments: The Case of Second Life - Teaching through Multi-User Virtual Environments - page 142

that may lead to participation and learning for all
students. Research should be aimed at examining
the effectiveness of online learning compared
with face-to-face instruction, designing capable
online learning practices and documenting ben-
eficial online learning conditions. Furthermore,
according to Means et al. (2009), an evaluation
of whether supplementing face-to-face instruction
with online instruction leads to enhanced learning
is considered valuable.
To this end, we review and compare the most
promising collaborative virtual environment
platforms, select the most promising solution
and examine the applicability of collaborative
learning techniques in its 3D virtual environ-
ment. We have chosen to evaluate the Jigsaw
and Fishbowl collaborative learning techniques,
which have been characterized as having moderate
online transferability (Barkley et al., 2004) when
implemented through a 2D CVE approach (e.g.,
forums, chat rooms).

The platforms we present are Wonderland
Project (https://wonderland.dev.java.net/), Cro-
quet (http://www.opencroquet.org/), Worlds
(http://www.worlds.net/), Tixeo (www.tixeo.
com/), I-maginer (www.i-maginer.fr), Active
Worlds (http://www.activeworlds.com/), There
(http://www.there.com/), Dive (http://www.sics.
se/dive/), Moove (http://www.moove.com/) and
Second Life (http://secondlife.com/).
In order for a platform to be used in education,
there are several elementary functions that have
to be supported. The functions presented below
were used to review the aforementioned platforms
and can be grouped into categories:

• Awareness of space and individual col-

laborators through avatar representation.
These determine the level of the user's im-
mersion in the environment, based on the
realism of the user's representation and the
ability to modify it, their orientation within
the environment and the interface usability
(comparison presented in Table 1).

COmPARATIVe STUDY
OF CVe PLATFORmS

• User groups and access control. These

determine whether groups can be created
within the community, what different roles
can be assigned to users of the same group
and if the access to objects or communi-
cation can be controlled (comparison pre-
sented in Table 2).

In this section we present the state of the art in
3D CVEs. The presented platforms were chosen
based on their popularity, proven educational and
collaborative value as presented by Bedford et
al. (2006), and Bransford (1990), respective user
testimonials and support of the generic features
of such systems.
Τhere are many 3D multi-user collaborative
environments offering tools and services that can
be categorized with regard to their functionality
into communication tools, teacher and student sup-
port tools, tools for coordinating the collaborative
learning process, shared applications and photo-
realistic humanoids (Tsiatsos & Konstantinidis,
2007). The platforms that tend to integrate these
features seamlessly seem to be more appropriate
for use in education.

• Concurrent, collaborative creation and ma-

nipulation of shared resources. This deter-
mines the level of collaboration that can be
achieved, based on the users' ability to cre-
ate shared objects within the virtual envi-
ronment and to share applications such as
a text editor and web browser (comparison
presented in Table 3).

• Communication means and media, these

are invaluable to the educational process
and include text and voice chat, and video-
conference (comparison presented in Table
4).