E d i t i o n V I T A P R O J E C T — V I R T U A L L E A R N I N G F O R T H E M A N A G E M E N T O F S U C E S S F U L L S M E s Lifelong Learning Programme - Leonardo da Vinci Transfer of Innovation

2008-1-PT1-LEO05-00411

Training in Virtual

Environments

Guide of Good Practices

Organizer

Clara Rodrigues

Authors

Clara Rodrigues

Leonel Morgado

Gerhard Doppler

Hillevi Koivusalo

Erja Lakanen

George Velegrakis

Giovanni Sorrentino

Chiara Sancin

Valentina Castello

Aura Haidimoschi

Project Promoter

Instituto Politécnico de Beja

www.ipbeja.pt

Partner Organisations

Universidade de Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro (Portugal)

Camera de Comert si Industrie a Municipiului Bucaresti

(Romania)

bitmedia e-Learning solution (Austria)

IDEC ,S.A. (Greece)

HYRIA Education (Finland)

DIDA Network (Italy)

VITA Project

2009-2010

The project has been funded with support from the European

Comission. This publication reflects the vision only of the authors

and the Comission cannot be held responsable for any use which

may be made of the information contained therein.

EDITION

Instituto Politécnico de Beja

Portugal

2010

ISBN: 978-989-95366-4-7

SUPPORT

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0. INTRODUCTION |P.5|

1. ATTRIBUTES AND ADVANTAGES OF VIRTUAL WORLDS FOR LEARNING |P.7|

2. BEING A TRAINER IN A VIRTUAL WORLD |P.11|

3. GOOD PRATICES AND LESSONS LEARNED |P18|

4. CONTRIBUTORS AND CONTACTS |P.20|

Index

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The project VITA – Virtual Learning for the management of successful SMEs — presents an innovative

approach to learn and practice entrepreneurship and business management competences, based on

the activities and interactions in virtual environments.

VITA was developed during 24 months (2009-2010) and aimed to increase the capability of SMEs

to adapt to European contexts, resorting to a specific training, and increase adults employability,

mobility and multicultural awareness, by:

Defining the European manager profile in terms of SME management competences on the

basis of needs analyses in collaboration with employees;

Defining courses, pedagogical approaches and evaluation tools addressing identified needs,

upon the results of different projects, adapted to the characteristics of a virtual learning

campus;

Conceiving a 3D virtual learning environment where learners will participate in collabora-

tive learning experience, located in Second Life platform and will have the opportunity to

test their competences in a safe context of application by generating and managing a virtual

SME;

Delivering the management course in Second Life and certify the participants.

As result of the training experiences in VITA virtual campus, this Guide aims to share good prac-

tices and lessons learned on how to educate in virtual worlds, such as Second Life.

Introduction

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3D environments have special features for distance learning, which determine differences between

simple e-Learning and on-line, interactive simulation and building. These differences are explored in

the first part of this guide ―Attributes and Advantages of Virtual Worlds for Learning‖.

Acknowledging this background will enable the reader to understand better the experiences of

VITA trainers, as they tell it. Our trainers were regular teachers and trainers in schools and

training centres without previous experiences in the use of Second Life, in general. Their

achievements and learning show their overcome of challenges and tracking for solutions. The

testimonials are presented in the second part ―Being a Trainer in a Virtual World‖.

In the third part—―Good Practices and Lessons Learned‖- we demonstrate some strategies to

increase the efficiency of training. These were found solutions that proved to have good results

within VITA courses. As trainer, we can adapt those or find inspiration for others. Sharing

problems and research by asking others, inside the community of Second Life educators is a

powerful way to improve developments in this field.

At fourth, because the end users teach us how to improve, we share the ―Feedback from

Participants‖ we received. They tell us what was better and worst in their learning experiences.

Our participants were also not regular users of virtual worlds, therefore they passed all through

the process of adaption and competence acquiring for Second Life at the same time as they

participated in the management actions.

Lastly, we introduce the people behind the experiences and their contacts. Keep in touch to share

your own good practices.

Introduction

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Professional and personal lives often go head-to-head. Training and education often get crushed

amidst this conflict, and professionals facing serious time and location constraints in terms of

availability for attending training and education is an all too typical situation. For this reason, e-

learning approaches (in the sense of distance learning) have long been used to help overcome

those constraints.

However, the detached and autonomous nature of traditional e-learning is not entirely

comfortable for many learners, particularly those with decision-making responsibilities. For

instance, heads of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) ―exhibit activist and pragmatist learning

styles, prefer learning by doing and favour problem-centred approaches that offer flexibility‖ (NJM

European, 2000, p. 3). We thus envisage and analyse the opportunity of using new e-learning

approaches with virtual worlds in support of active and pragmatist learners, as a way to better

provide real world training and education to professionals.

Virtual worlds offer interesting potential in this regard, since they are increasingly being used for

learning contexts where students and teachers interact cooperatively, immersed in context-rich

situations (e.g., De Lucia et al., 2008; Hetherington et al., 2008).

Attributes and Advantages of Virtual

Worlds for Learning*

* Adapted from Morgado et al. (2011)

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Let us first clarify the meaning of Virtual Worlds.

We could consider that a plain text adventure game – where the player plays a role as if present

within the game, regularly receives textual descriptions of the places where he/she ―is‖ and uses

textual or iconic commands to cause changes in the game state – is indeed a virtual world. But

using this concept in such fashion is confusing, not enlightening. Therefore, we add the concepts of

multi-users and inter-user communication, thus limiting the concept of virtual world just to

software platforms, such as games or social environments, where several players/users can be

telepresent, and able to communicate amongst themselves.

Furthermore, we add the concept of avatar-mediated interaction; that is, those worlds with which

the user interacts by controlling a virtual character – the ―avatar‖. It is the user avatar that actually

interacts with the world and is affected by it. In this sense, multi-player text adventures are virtual

worlds, as would be a multi-player PacMan, as long as players can communicate with each other;

but social platforms such as MySpace or Facebook – where several users are telepresent and can

communicate but don’t use avatars to interact with the environment – are not.

One of capacities of virtual worlds is the simulation in 3D environments.

Various research approaches have provided significant information regarding the full technological-

cognitive process of the use of virtual environment simulations for educational purposes.

Attributes and Advantages of Virtual Worlds for

Learning

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There is now a consensus that the use of simulations within virtual environments is, generally,

beneficial to learning of procedural knowledge and various theoretical and practical concepts.

Simulation is not the single option: in many cases we may experience real situations in virtual

worlds, not just simulated ones – and in such cases the simulation perspective gives way to

alternatives, such as service-learning, on-the-job learning, learning traineeship, or apprenticeship

learning (henceforth, we’ll simply mention ―apprenticeship learning‖ as a shorthand version of

these different approaches).

Also, real-life learning can happen in unstructured situations, such as, intergenerational learning

(Kurniawan, 2008) or learning of foreign languages (Bryant, 2006), apart from the elements of the

games or predicted virtual ―storyboard‖.

In fact, current accounts focus on these cases, (e.g., Reeves & Malone, 2007, for an example

related to management) but we dare propose an expansion: we believe that in many situations we

can immerse virtual activities in everyday activities. In other words: we believe that it is possible, as

part of many day-to-day activities, to use virtual worlds as a component of those activities, rather

than a replacement for them, as we’ll explain in the coming sections.

However, such benefits are not something that is automatically attained or ensured by the plain act

of using a simulation for educational purposes.

Attributes and Advantages of Virtual Worlds for

Learning

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Research efforts must not ignore how strongly their results may depend on factors which they

may not be directly analysing. That is, we cannot analyse a virtual world in a vacuum, if we want to

ascertain something about its educational impact: one must take into account the actual content of

the virtual world (at the pedagogic and technological levels), the context within which the

technology is being used, the constraints of the computer hardware, software, and networking, the

pedagogical strategy being used, the social and educational context, including cognitive, experiential

and emotional dimensions (Castello et al., 2009), ...

Attributes and Advantages of Virtual Worlds for

Learning

References

Bryant, Todd (2006). Using World of Warcraft and Other MMORPGs to Foster a Targeted, Social, and Cooperative Approach Toward Language Learning, Academic Commons [On-line]. April 11,

2009, http://www.academiccommons.org/commons/essay/bryant-MMORPGs-for-SLA

Castello, Valentina; Pescuma, Saverio; Sorrentino, Giovanni; Dell’Aiuto, Vittorio; Sancin, Chiara (2009). Ubiquitous (and) social learning. Where is the potential for innovation?. In Proceedings of the

European Distance and E-Learning Network Annual Conference, Innovation in Learning Communities, Gdansk, Poland, 10-13 June 2009. Budapest, Hungary: EDEN, Budapest University of Technology and

Economics.

De Lucia, Andrea; Francese, Rita; Passero, Ignazio; Tortora, Genoveffa (2008). Supporting Jigsaw-Based Collaborative Learning in Second Life. In Proceedings of the 2008 Eighth IEEE International Con-

ference on Advanced Learning Technologies, pp. 806-808. Washington, DC: IEEE Computer Society.

Hetherington, Robina; Bonar-Law, Janette; Fleet, Tony; Parkinson, Lindy (2008). Learning in a Multi-User Virtual Environment. In Proceedings of the 2008 International Conference Visualisation - Volume

00, pp. 99-105. Washington, DC: IEEE Computer Society.

Morgado, Leonel; Varajão, João; Coelho, Dalila; Rodrigues, Clara; Sancin, Chiara; Castello, Valentina (2010). The Attributes and Advantages of Virtual Worlds for Real World Training. The Journal of

Virtual Worlds and Education, 1 (1).

| 9 |

In VITA project, most trainers were newbies regarding educational use of virtual worlds. They

were experts in the curriculum topics (management, communication, marketing, negotiation, …)

and they had experience in traditional presential training. Therefore, it was very important to get

them confident enough to use the educational potential of a virtual world (Second Life) in the best

way, before starting sessions with participants. VITA trainers started by being learners. They were

trainees in the same environment where they would be trainers next. That training focused on the

operation of Second Life but also on how to transform learning content (whatever it might be:

either mathematics or gardening) to suit the virtual environment.

The Curriculum was supported by a set of technological SL tools, which enabled the pedagogical

dynamics of each module and allowed the trainers to make full use of the virtual learning

environment by interacting with the groups in games, demonstrations and simulations of

management situations. These were devised by trainers and technology experts, working in

concert. Trainers also benefited from practicing the use of those tools with the developers.

You can find more about the curriculum and training sessions of VITA in the multimedia handbook

―Training SME Managers in Second Life‖. available at http://vita.bitmedia.cc.

Being a Trainer in the Virtual World

| 10 |

Training in virtual worlds can be a challenging experience, specially for plain users of computer or

web-based applications. Therefore, becoming a trainer is also a learning experience. And, so we

would like to share here what our trainers have achieved and learned and how any trainer can

profit from our project.

The trainers’s perspective

Teaching in Second life (SL) and other virtual worlds differs a lot from normal face-to-face or

classroom teaching. Usually teachers aren’t very technically oriented and such 3D spaces are

something, which is very odd to many of us. That’s why becoming a virtual trainer needs a change

in mindset and skills. Also it’s obvious that a virtual trainer feels uneasy at the beginning of the

process.

Helpful things before initiating Second life training

Trainers training — Trainers themselves need a basic training to use SL. It is important to master

the technology itself before using this virtual space as a teaching environment. A trainer has to

know what kind of possibilities are offered as learning environment as well as what kind of tools

might be used to implement the curriculum. Also it’s necessary to learn how to use those tools

and how to act. Moving, for instance may be quite difficult initially.

Being a Virtual Trainer

| 11 |

Being a Virtual Trainer — The trainers’s perspective

Tentative module planning with Second Life experts — Although trainers learned a bit about, just basic

system training is not enough. You have to collaborate with technical experts. Usually a trainer is a

content expert but not an expert in technical issues. One useful experience is to do group work

with training module planning so that members are both content and technical experts. Without

that kind of cooperation, typical teachers cannot plan virtual training – or need a lot of time or/and

will learn through trial and error.

Ask for help and admit your difficulties — After general curriculum planning you might come across

challenges, when you have to plan the actual training sessions in Second Life. If you have a group of

people or community, ask for help. Write down your questions and your curriculum plan – what

you need and would like to do. After all, self learning may not be enough to understand and know

the SL tools. Particularly, it may not suffice to build the tools yourself nor to organize everything

according to your desires in the SL environment. It’s very useful if you can do that with the help of

some expert. Virtual worlds are a very good place to have an online meeting when you are in

different sides of the world and need to coordinate more than two people. At this, experts can

show you the tools and explain you how to use them in your training.

Challenges in Second Life teaching — It’s normal that a regular teacher or trainer finds big challenges

in virtual training after all preparations:

Curriculum plans are quite different from most real situations;

Providing training in virtual worlds requires special skills.

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Being a Virtual Trainer — differences in training

Virtual training is different from real life training

You can plan the sessions in a very detailed format, but the actual session may differ significantly

from your plan. For instance you may not be able to forecast how many trainees will participate in

your sessions, if they are not regular SL users; they may discover only at that very moment that

their network or computer are not ready to use the software. They may not be sufficiently pre-

pared to use the tools in the environment or to follow the communication. Common problems in

other online technologies, like users that don’t know how to mute their microphones, will also be

common. You can come across many surprises.

Usually you plan the whole learning process of your topic, with sessions following the previous

ones. It’s quite usual in such training schemes for trainees to miss earlier sessions, having chosen a

different learning path. So you may have to change the plan again as these trainees join the sessions.

It’s good to be prepared to change and improve.

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Being a Virtual Trainer — special skills

Virtual training needs special skills

Very quickly you’ll notice that there are many challenges for the trainer and virtual teaching de-

mands special concentration from the trainer. It differs extensively from real life training situations

– there are more challenges – and you have to be flexible. A virtual world trainer has to juggle

many things at the same time:

virtual tools, voice, writing, and talking;

pedagogy (how to lead the group, teach the tools and keep their motivation);

control of one’s own avatar and understanding possible problems faced by trainees with

their avatars;

implementing the curriculum plan and delivering the content;

time-table management;

and being able to cope with technical problems.

―At the end you have to hold your

horses – anything can happen!

Despite that, you learn a lot yourself

as a trainer.‖

Erja Lakanen

Hyria Education, Ltd

| 14 |

Being a Virtual Trainer — Useful checklists

If you are getting prepared to train in a three-dimensional virtual space, it will be useful to be sure

to have everything planned and — as much as possible — under control. As trainers, you may find

useful to use progress checklists. Below are some examples of items to check in different moments

of the preparation.

2 weeks before the tra in ing

check the objectives of your training;

check the preparation documents (target group, time plan, additional links and

documentation);

verify the administrative procedures (exact timing of sessions, time to wait for

participants, handling of the participant list, handling of eventual skill check lists);

contact your trainer colleague (if you have one) for aligning a preparation training;

check all necessary tools in the 3D environment;

check all additional websites;

check all additional documents for the participants;

train your training to feel really comfortable.

| 15 |

Being a Virtual Trainer — Useful checklists

2 days before the train ing

finalize the training preparation;

check the participants list;

verify that the timing did not change;

exchange experiences with trainers of previous modules;

check your internet connectivity on the place where you will conduct the training

verify your audio equipment;

finalize the time plan and the prepared task texts which you will want to copy to the

session chat;

check if you can access the necessary administrative files (participants list, skills

checkist);

open the 3D environment and try out all necessary tools. If possible already arrange the

tools for your session in the virtual session location.

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Being a Virtual Trainer — Useful checklists

2 hours before the tra in ing

check your internet connectivity;

check your audio equipment and setup;

prepare your office with a ―do not disturb – remote training in progress‖ sign or similar;

open the administrative files (participant list, skills check list);

open your session preparation file with the ready prepared task-texts;

open additional preparation material and websites (in different tabs of a browser

window) to check their availability;

prepare something to drink;

open the 3D environment;

check and prepare;

meet your trainer colleague for some small talk and clearing of last doubts;

if it was not possible before, arrange your tools in the virtual session location.

―Relax, enter mentally into your

virtual 3D classroom, which gives

you lots of more tools than a

traditional classroom, relax again,

concentrate – and enjoy!‖

Gerhard Doppler

bitmedia elearning solutions

| 17 |

Here is a final list of tips and tricks to make your virtual training successful:

Create a mailing list (or online group such as a Google group) of your participants and start

communicating with them before the sessions in the virtual world: present yourself, allocate

them ice-breaking tasks, send reading materials, …

Set up a behavior regulation for all the participants and yourself. Be sure that all people

comply with the rules as they have signed a contract.

Realize a live session/video conference with your participants. Let them know each other

and you in person, so that everyone has a real image of the one behind the avatar. This

strategy will develop the social relations within the group and increase their motivation and

responsability, avoiding drop-out.

If you can, use two computers during the session: one connected to the virtual world and

another where you can manage your materials and support to implement the learning

activities.

Create a online repository of study materials (for example, at Google docs or a Youtube

channel).

Plan the session so that every first minutes are dedicated to check if all the technical

features of the virtual world are operating for all: sound, text, move, interaction with the

learning objects, …

Prepare a detailed protocol of the session

minute by minute.

Good Practices and Lessons Learned

| 18 |

Have a partner. A more experienced co-trainer or a technical assistant will support you to

manage all the things and control the capacity of the trainees to follow the session.

Remember that this can be also the first experience for some trainees and they will need

time and help to understand some exercises and to control their behavior. You can share

this tutorship with a partner.

Track the learnings of your students at the moment those happen. For example, if you

propose an exercise, fill in a table aside where the expected achievements are marked for

each trainee. Compliment the trainees for their successes.

Allow space and time in the virtual world for the social informal contact between the

trainees. For example, by having ―coffee-breaks‖ in a decorated café with sorrounding music

in the pauses of the session or after.

Ask for feedback after each session. A simple way of doing this is to create a survey online

with simple and fast questions about the feelings during the session. Send the link as last

moment of the session everytime. The trainees will soon get used to this ―ending‖ and you

can get information that allows you to revise your strategies in time to change for them.

Use a variation of learning resources — remember that you are online, students can also

search for information themselves, but you might make them use the information in

different exercises and learning activities, further than presentations. If you are in lack of

creativity speak with the technics about the potential of virtual worlds.

Good Practices and Lessons Learned — Final list

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C O O R D I N A T I O N

Aura Haidimoschi: graduate from the Academy of Economics Bucharest in International Economic Relations and

holder of postgraduation in management and business ( 2000 ). Experience in human resources, adult education and

project management. Since 2005 working for Bucharest Chamber of Commerce and Industry in adult education and

project management.

Erja Lakanen: master in Education, graduate from Helsinki University, she holds grades in Social Psychology and

Management Education Program of Aalto University. Vocational degree in business and marketing. Over 10 years

experience as Human Resources Manager and Developer of research organizations and private enterprises. Since 2006

she works for HYRIA as consultant and trainer of Management and Organizational Development of SMEs.

Gerhard Doppler: After studies in telecommunication, informatics and business sciences Gerhard Doppler has

collected sound experience in giving training, in software development and creation of e-learning content. Development

of educational programs based on Blended Learning methodology is one of his major fields since 2001.

George Velegrakis: Electrical and Computer Engineer, graduate of the National Technical University of Athens

(2007). He holds a M.Sc. in Environmental Policies and Development (2009) and he is a postgraduate student in the

Architecture School of the National Technical University of Athens. Since 2008 he works for IDEC as project manager.

Giovanni Sorrentino: graduated in literature from the Rome University Tor Vergata, he was a software analyst

developer from 2001 to 2003, when he became an e-Learning consultant for Didanetwork.

Contributing Trainers

Contacts

P A R T N E R S H I P

In addition to this publication you can find more information on VITA project webpages:

http://vita.bitmedia.cc

http://vitaproject.blogspot.com

http://www.youtube.com/user/Vitaproj

Or contact the project team using the following address:

vita-project@googlegroups.com

C O N S U L T A N C Y