Teaching in the Virtual Theatre Classroom - Teaching through Multi-User Virtual Environments - page 180

TeACHINg IN mUVeS user-created. Along with being highly social, the

media-rich environment often promotes quite
intense engagement” (p. 408). A MUVE can pro-
vide a learning environment to support “active,
sensing, global learners” (Junglas et al., 2007, p.
93). Students may interact with their virtual envi-
ronment, experiencing “discovery, investigation,
and creation” (Coffman & Klinger, 2007, p. 29),
while working on collaborative projects within
the world. Ohio University's VITAL Lab website,
Second Life Development (2009), lists a variety of
possible class projects and games that others can
utilize. By finding themselves immersed in defined
projects, students have a prescribed goal toward
which to work, and working actively toward that
goal has as its consequence the learning and en-
hanced retention of the intended subject matter.
While we assume that the instructor for a course
is a content specialist, the virtual world also allows
for an availability of other experts in a given area.
Of course, a campus could employ a virtual envi-
ronment for distance learning, bringing students
from various locations together within the virtual
world. Students may also visit or be visited by guest
speakers, who may be local to their campus, or
hail from across the planet. The interconnectivity,
through a MUVE, holds the promise of education
occurring in a Marshall McLuhan-esque global
village, where instantaneous communication hap-
pens via digital technology.
Because of my experiences with producing
theatre in Second Life (SL), this particular MUVE
seemed an ideal setting for a new course entitled
“Theatre Technology.” Following are my experi-
ences with this course (taught in Spring 2008),
with an explanation of the course rationale, the
in-class assignments that dealt with SL, and a
discussion of how the use of SL in this particular
course might be applied to teaching other courses
in a multi-user virtual environment.

The incorporation of digital technology into teach-
ing has lead to a paradigm shift in the way some
academics interact with students. Beginning with
the assumption that students absorb and retain
material better through active learning techniques,
such as “physical activity or discussion” (Junglas,
2007, p. 90), we find that digital technology in
general, and multi-user virtual environments
in particular, can be utilized to promote active
learning. Within virtual worlds, students are not
passive observers or receivers of information, but
rather interact with content, or may even create
it themselves. Hence, virtual worlds, when used
as a platform for teaching, place the student into
an active learning environment.
Within the virtual world, the instructor may
utilize a variety of active projects; as students
move through the world, they interact with their
environment, with objects, and with others. The
others may be classmates or complete strangers
they happen to encounter along the way. Such
encounters, which allow for improvisational com-
munication, can be as fruitful as the structured
experiences an instructor has planned and created
for the students.
While a virtual world classroom experience
exhibits some obvious differences from the real
world (RL, or real life) classroom, both instructors
and students may discover that similarities occur
as well, as teaching and learning techniques are
translated from the real to the virtual world. For
example, peer teaching, a vital tool that urges
students to help each other, can happen quite ef-
fectively when the students buy into the virtual
world in regard to telepresence—the perception
that they are indeed in the other world—and co-
presence—the perception that others are with
them in that world (Peterson, 2006, pp. 98-99).
The virtual world can thus replicate “the social,
fun aspects of getting to know fellow students,
commiserating with them about difficult assign-