Multi-User Virtual Environments - Teaching through Multi-User Virtual Environments - page 298

on the in-class presentation (95%), as opposed
to activities in the SIE (5%). This potentially
explains why the Presenter group from this data
set may have spent less time in the SIE that the
designed intent. Once they felt they had enough
information for their part of the presentation, they
chose to focus their energy on the presentation
component of the unit. With a higher percentage
of the grade based on activities in the MUVE, it
is likely there would have been more interaction
and experimentation within the space. Rather than
purely being “experimental,” advocating partici-
pation in and MUVE as important (as evidenced
though grade distribution) has the potential to
impact behavior and pedagogy in transformational
ways. Integration in the curriculum should also be
consistent and relevant to other course material.
As with any pedagogical intervention, the
individual instructor and his or her perception
of the activity also have a notable impact on
learner behavior in the space. The importance of
instructor buy-in is notable in the Croquelandia
data discussed here. In the Explorer, Student, and
Presenter groups, there were participants from
all instructors. However, three of the four (75%)
participants in the Non-Player group were from
the same class, indicting this particular instructor
did not place a high value level of importance on
the SIE experience. This is a preliminary indica-
tion that the instructor played an important role
in either promoting the unit within the class or
placing less emphasis on use of the SIE. Of the
instructors teaching the sections where the SIE unit
was included, only one instructor actually logged
in to the SIE during the unit. Instructor buy-in is
essential to the success of any new unit; therefore,
it must be considered in future implementation
and research projects.
Consideration #4: A complex system of feed-
back should play an inherent role in the gameplay
experience. This might include implicit feedback
in the form of NPC and shifts within the in-game
experiences, as well as explicit feedback specifi-

cally targeted to the individual learner (e.g., asset
building and emotion monitoring).
A successful completion of a quest in Cro-
quelandia was indicated by a green check mark
in the quest log. For the learners, this symbolized
completion, and did not carry a connotation of
needing to re-do the activity, despite consistent
encouragement to do so on the part of the instruc-
tors and the researcher. Thus, quest completion
was either based on pass or failure, a prevalent
pattern in the Student group. The problem with
this perception of right/wrong for L2 pragmatic
development is the immense level of variability in
what is considered right or wrong (Bardovi-Harlig,
2001; Félix-Brasdefer, 2002; Kasper, 1997). 12 In
fact, the binary choice of right or wrong is exactly
the type of approach that use of SIEs for language
learning is meant to avoid. Much of the previous
difficulty in designing pragmatics assessments
has been with the attempt to find right or wrong
answers (Hudson et al., 1995), which may simply
not be feasible in the area of pragmatics (Roever,
2004; Rose, 2005; Salaberry and Cohen, 2006).
SIEs help to alleviate some of these issues by al-
lowing for multiple “right” or “wrong” answers.
The lack of experimentation in the user data
indicates that future uses of SIEs might include a
more complex system of feedback, which encour-
ages practice and experimentation on a variety
of levels. It is essential to create an immersive
experience that encourages failure as part of the
experience. 13 As noted by Prensky (2001):

“The art of providing feedback in a game is ex-
tremely important and complex because either too
little or too much can lead quickly to frustration
for the player. This leads to another important
characteristic of computer games - they are
adaptive. This means the level of difficulty goes
up or down automatically depending on what you
do” (p.122).

For the language learner, this might include
indicators of quest success or failure, based on