Designing Immersive Language-Learning Environments in Virtual Worlds

• In Event: Design-Based Research in Gaming and Virtual Environments

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to explore affordances of a 3D virtual world platform designed as an immersive language teaching and learning environment. Focusing on designing virtual worlds as a catalyst for change, three design phases (development of artifact, low fidelity prototyping, and high fidelity prototyping) were detailed and documented in this study. Three design cycles revealed primary design factors of immersive second/foreign language learning in virtual worlds (embodied avatar, co-presence, and simulation) and their relative significance in the process of learners’ meaning-making and knowledge construction. Findings showed that embodiment through an embodied avatar, community of practice through co-presence, and situated learning through simulation had a greater impact on the immersive virtual learning design. Building on a theoretical framework of embodied mind, situated learning and distributed cognition, this study documented features of learning theories key to language learning curriculum design in virtual worlds.

The findings and techniques resulting from this study will help designers and researchers improve second/foreign language curriculum design in virtual worlds. It also prompts designers and researchers to achieve a better understanding of how virtual worlds can be redesigned by rethinking learning theories. The refinement of design-based research (DBR) stages into low and high fidelity prototyping provides researchers with empirically tested and nuanced understandings of the design process.

Virtual worlds may offer foreign language learners opportunities to go beyond context boundaries to learn a target language, as in the target language speaking culture, without physically stepping out of their home countries. The specific instructional design of virtual worlds may blur boundaries between foreign language learning and second language learning by providing an opportunity for foreign language learners to experience the target language speaking culture without physically being in those targeted countries. How should we design immersive language teaching and learning activities in virtual worlds to engage language learners? Do language learners learning in the specific designed virtual environment feel real?

Nineteen students from a pre-service teacher cohort, two technicians and eight language learners from high schools in Vancouver as well as eighty language learners from universities in China were involved in this study; participants were asked to immerse themselves in the virtual language learning environment designed for the study.

The field study aimed at listening to teachers’ feedback. It took a fine grain analysis of pre-service teachers’ group discussions on affordances of virtual worlds for learning. Qualitative and quantitative, or mixed-method, studies were conducted to test the effectiveness of the designed inworld learning artifacts: the chatbot and time machine. I also found that learners’ knowledge and language skills acquired inworld might transfer into real world practices through embodied avatars. Qualitative data indicated that scenario-based, simulated role-play, or situated language learning in contexts, promoted learning and shaped communities of practice.

It appeared from the quantitative data that no statistical difference between the first three groups existed for Immersive Tendencies. However, a statistically significant difference between the first three groups existed in the level of Presence achieved during the experience.

Author

• Yifei Wang, The University of British Columbia