Virtual Situated Learning Environments - Information Communication Technologies for Human Services Education and Delivery - page 76

communication between students that eradicates
the disadvantage of “social distance” by enabling
students to share ideas, knowledge, and experi-
ence. Laurillard (1994, p.20) described ICT as
providing opportunities to 'simulate the real
world and to link students to various audio and
visual databases'. Reeves (1993) argued that
a well-designed multi-media environment can
be used to provide a wealth of learning support
activities through the design of situated learning
environments. More recently Reeves, Herrington
and Oliver 2002, p.565) claimed that the digital
environment provides opportunities for the de-
velopment of authentic learning environments
by enabling learners to:

structured Internet-based virtual world in which
users ( called Residents ) can interact with each
other through motional “ Avatars .” The ability of
Second Life to enable text-based communication
through local chat and global 'instant messaging'
has developed the potential for universities to cre-
ate virtual classrooms as communities of practice
and situated constructivist learning environments.
One of the first virtual universities established
was the privately funded Virtual Global Univer-
sity (VGU) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vir-
tual_Global_University). The VGU was founded
in 2001 by 17 Professors of Business Infomatics
for 14 different universities in Germany, Austria
and Switzerland. A UNESCO Report stated that
the emergence of the virtual university is being
seen as a 'potentially powerful complement or
competitor to the traditional campus-based of-
fer of higher education' (D'Antoni & Mugridge
2004, p.1).
While such digital environments initially seem
to provide an appropriate learning environment
for students of human services to engage in inter-
professional learning opportunities, there are many
issues that need to be considered before such
digital innovations can be used effectively for
educational purposes. These include issues such
as how to ensure that the digital environment is
used as an enabler rather than a determiner of how
teaching and learning should take place and how
to develop a pedagogy for e-learning that benefits
from instructional design. There are technology
issues such as what delivery platforms and quality
assurance mechanisms are appropriate. Finally,
there are questions related to whether law and
policies have been established at institutional,
national and international levels (D'Antoni &
Mugridge 2004). These issues have recently been
exacerbated by instances of virtual universities
that have had to close because of unethical and
dangerous actions by some student “avatars” to
others.
The use of ICT to create Virtual Situated Learn-
ing Environments provides an alternative way to

move freely around the resources provided rather
than move in a linear fashion that may not ape the
complexities of real life. Problems presented to
students can use the full capacities of the technol-
ogy to present situations and scenario's in video
clips, texts links and images to give meaning and
purpose to the students' endeavours, and to provide
motivation to complete.

Digital advances are creating ever-expanding
opportunities for student engagement in learn-
ing activities in the ICT environment that are in
accord with the so-called Computer literate or
“C” generation identified hunger for interactive
experiences. Virtual education is defined as:

instruction in a learning environment where
teacher and student are separated by time or space,
and the teacher provides course content through
course management applications, multimedia
resources, the Internet, videoconferencing... Stu-
dents receive the content and communicate with
the teacher via the same technologies (Kurbel,
2001, p.133).

One of the most recent advances has been the
use of ICT to create “virtual worlds.” “Second
Life”, developed by Linden Research Inc, is a semi-