The Benefits and Unanticipated Challenges in the Use of 3D Virtual Learning Environments in the Undergraduate Media Arts Curriculum - Teaching through Multi-User Virtual Environments - page 248

only had minimal exposure to Second Life in the
Digital Media Techniques course, the feedback
gathered from those students was based on their
comments in tutorial sessions and anonymous
responses in the end of semester course evaluation.
86.5% of participating students were in the age
group described as representative of the ' digital
native ' population (Table 1).
Most of the students responding to the ques-
tionnaire were male (65.4%) and 86.5% of re-
spondents have access to high speed broadband
Internet at home.
We were surprised to find so few of our students
are regular users of 3D multi-user environments,
with only 17.3% of students describing themselves
as regular users of online multi-user games such
as World of Warcraft and only 1.9% being regular
users of 3D virtual worlds such as Second Life .
Forty-two percent of students stated that they
never access 3D online multi-user games, and
40% of the students stated that they never access
3D virtual worlds. The most popular application
of those listed is chat (such as instant messages,
MSN or ICQ) with 61.5% of students stating they
are regular or frequent users of these services.
Social networking sites such as Facebook or
MySpace were the next most popular with 50%
of the students stating they are regular or frequent
users (Figure 11).
Student responses to questions relating to the
effectiveness of social interactions in Second Life
based on the mean rating of all scores for each
criterion (on a scale of one to five). The findings

reported in Table 2 show that DIM student ratings
for criteria relating to social interactions were
higher for most criteria than EPI student ratings;
with the highest rating by DIM students (3.53)
applying to the criterion ' My classmates and I
cooperated in completing assignments in Second
Life' and an EPI rating of just 2.28 for this crite-
rion. This finding is not surprising given students
worked in groups in constructing their multi-user
games in the DIM course, contrasting with the
individualised assignment undertaken by students
in the EPI course in which they constructed their
own 3D virtual world portfolios. Observations
also confirmed this, with EPI students tending to
spend most of their time working alone on the
portfolios with little interaction, in contrast to the
teams of students who were almost always ob-
served working collaboratively in teams on their
projects.
Overall student ratings for criteria relating to
the effectiveness of learning activities in Second
Life were also higher for DIM students than EPI
students (Table 3). As shown in Table 3, both
cohorts of students gave the highest ratings to the
criterion ' The learning activities in Second Life
required me to think critically in Second Life'
(3.23 and 3.0 respectively) and ' I was willing to
put in the effort needed to complete the learning
activities in Second Life' (3.38 and 2.70 respec-
tively). The higher rating given overall to criteria
relating to learning activities by DIM students
suggests (as expected) that collaborative learning
activities are more effective in engaging students
in these kinds of environments than activities
focusing on individual assignments.
Both DIM and EPI students rated criteria relat-
ing to the materials provided and the supports
available to them in Second Life higher than cri-
teria relating to social interactions or learning
activities (Table 4). The overall rating for supports
being 3.32 ( DIM ) and 3.16 ( EPI ) compared with
2.52 ( DIM ) and 2.27 ( EPI ) for learning activities,
and 2.96 ( DIM ) and 2.74 ( EPI ) for social interac-
tions. The average rating given to the criterion ' I

Table 1. Age distribution of students responding
to questionnaire

Cumulative
Percent

Age Range

Percent

18 or under 5.8 5.8

19 to 24 80.8 86.5

25-34 9.6 96.2

45 to 54 1.9 98.1