Education Commons^™

Virtual Worlds In Australian And New Zealand Higher Education: Remembering The Past, Understanding The Present And Imagining The Future, Sue Gregory, Ali Fardinpour, Lisa Jacka, Scott Grant, Jay Jay Jegathesan, Frederick Stokes-Thompson, Chris Campbell, Sweekin Loke, Ning Gu, Anton Bogdanovych, Caroline Steel, Lindy Mckeown Orwin, Brent Gregory, Mathew Hillier, Des Butler, Merle Hearns, David Ellis, Belma Gaukrodger, Xiangyu Wang, Sheila Scutter, Stefan Schutt, Thomas Trescak, Penny Neuendorf, Tom Kerr, Torsten Reiners, Mark Lee, David Holloway, Kim Flintoff, Marcus Mcdonald, Jason Zagami, Jamie Salinas, Christine Newman, Simeon Simoff, Matt Bower, Ian Warren, Denise Wood, Dale Linegar, Ross Brown, Angela Giovanangeli, Eimear Muir-Cochrane, Ian Larson, Charlynn Miller, Vicki Knox, Grant Meredith, Arin Basu, Shane Mathews, Yvonne Masters, Clare Atkins, Andrew Cran, Michael Jacobson

Yvonne Masters

3D virtual reality, including the current generation of multi-user virtual worlds, has had a long history of use in education and training, and it experienced a surge of renewed interest with the advent of Second Life in 2003. What followed shortly after were several years marked by considerable hype around the use of virtual worlds for teaching, learning and research in higher education. For the moment, uptake of the technology seems to have plateaued, with academics either maintaining the status quo and continuing to use virtual worlds as they have previously done or choosing to opt out altogether. This paper …