Multi-User Virtual Environments - Teaching through Multi-User Virtual Environments - page 295

tended to have a well-developed understanding
of the concepts, yet was less tolerant of ambigu-
ity or multiple acceptable responses than the
Explorer group.
The third group (N=7, 13%) is categorized as
the Presenter group because the participants spent
just enough time in the space to get the informa-
tion they needed to present with their group. The
time the members of this group spent in the SIE
ranged from 20-44 minutes ( M =33.5; SD =9.76)
over the course of the instructional period and the
participants logged-in between 1-4 times ( M =2.4;
SD =1.2), with only one or two of those log-ins
being longer than 1-2 minutes. Participants in
this group demonstrated a pattern of accessing a
summary of information that could be transferred
to their in-class presentation. The game play for
these students does not appear in the data as a
meaningful component of the learning unit on
requests and apologies. Rather, in this case, the
learning focus was primarily the presentation and
the attainment of a successful grade.
The Non-Player category is used to describe
the group of participants (N=4, 8% 9 ) who did not
spend any time in the SIE and did not complete any
of the quests or in-game activities. Nevertheless,
they were still able to present something during
Class Session 3 for the group presentations. This
suggests that they likely relied on information
given to them by their group members. Although
not intentional, it is not necessarily surprising that
these participants did not volunteer to be part of
the subset of twenty-five participants. Since par-
ticipation in the interviews was entirely voluntary,
there was no interview data available to explain
the behavior of the non-player group.
To summarize, the behavior patterns of the indi-
vidualized experiences of the learners were classi-
fied into four major groups (i.e., Explorer, Student,
Presenter, Non-Player) based on the time spent in
the game, in-game behavior, and quest completion
patterns. Ultimately, in taking advantages of the
affordances offered by MUVEs, the goal is to en-
able learners to become explorers who are willing

to experiment with, and analyze language, from
a variety of perspectives. Ways in which this can
be facilitated are yet to be determined. The four
user patterns found in the data can be attributed to
a variety of factors including, but not limited to,
previous experience with similar digital spaces,
task type and construction of the SIE, structure
of the classroom experience, and possible influ-
ence of technological difficulties. Based on these
factors, as well as other considerations relevant
to individual participant perceptions of the unit,
preliminary conclusions suggest that the percep-
tion of the SIE, as either a practice arena or a
task to complete, had an important influence on
the individualized experience of the participants.

Applying the Findings: Design
Considerations for mUVes
in Language Learning

The results presented above do not give the whole
picture, or even a definitive picture of how to cre-
ate and implement SIEs for specifically language
learning purposes. Nevertheless, they offer empiri-
cal support for design considerations and highlight
areas that might be especially fruitful for those
wishing to implement MUVEs in the near future,
as well as further, large-scale investigation. The
intention of presenting them here is to help avoid
repeating similar practices and, instead, move
forward with the re-design of similar spaces and
activities based on what we already know a fun-
damental consideration of design-based research.
Consideration #1: Carefully considering the
effect of learners' previous experience with virtual
worlds and immersive games is important; how-
ever, caution should be taken in making assump-
tions about user in-game activity and perception
based on this experience alone.
The cultural-historical framework for under-
standing how internet-based tools mediate com-
munication (Thorne, 2003; Lantolf & Thorne,
2006) suggests that those learners with previous
experience in MMOGs and other gaming envi-