Educational Research

ISSN: 0013-1881 (Print) 1469-5847 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rere20

Eventedness and disjuncture in virtual worlds

David White & Alison Le Cornu
To cite this article: David White & Alison Le Cornu (2010) Eventedness and disjuncture in
virtual worlds, Educational Research, 52:2, 183-196, DOI: 10.1080/00131881.2010.482755
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00131881.2010.482755

Published online: 14 May 2010.

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Educational Research
Vol. 52, No. 2, June 2010, 183196

Eventedness and disjuncture in virtual worlds

David Whitea* and Alison Le Cornub
a

Technology-Assisted Lifelong Learning (TALL), Department for Continuing Education,

University of Oxford, Ewert House, Summertown, Oxford, UK; bUniversity House, University of
Warwick, Kirby Corner Rd, Coventry, UK

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(Received 13 November 2009; nal version received 30 March 2010)

Background: Many of the potential benets of using virtual worlds for teaching
and learning are dicult to dene and often become overly focused on the
functionality of the technology or on its ability to support informal or social
forms of learning.
Purpose: The aim of the paper is to highlight the experiential nature of virtual
worlds and to relate this to theories of experiential learning with a view to
providing educators with a conceptual framework by which they can analyse their
practice.
Sources of evidence: The paper principally draws upon our own experience as
professionals who have used virtual worlds for teaching purposes with the specic
purpose of better understanding and analysing their characteristics. One
signicant source is the Open Habitat project, which, during 2008, piloted the
use of virtual worlds with undergraduate art and design students based at Leeds
Metropolitan University and lifelong distance philosophy students studying with
the University of Oxford.
Main argument: Virtual worlds have a culture specic to themselves. While
aspects of this parallel real-life, the overall experience of learners when they
immerse themselves in these worlds can be signicantly dierent from that of real
life. Rather than attempt to eliminate the dierences, or simply focus on the
technological aspects of teaching online, educators are encouraged to familiarise
themselves with some of the dierences, place them within the context of theories
of experiential learning, and harness the opportunities for their own purposes.
Conclusions: Teaching practitioners wishing to take advantage of virtual worlds
should approach them as an other cultural space as well as a platform with given
technical functionality. This will allow them to harness moments of disjuncture as
key educational events.
Keywords: eventedness; disjuncture; experiential learning; belonging; co-presence

Introduction
In educational literature, virtual worlds (VWs) are rarely portrayed as a cultural
environment. Many educational discussions focus on VWs as a platform for social or
informal learning (Minocha and Roberts 2008; Edirisingha et al. 2009), but it is rare
to nd a discussion about the worldness (the type of world, with associated culture
and salient characteristics) of the environment, especially relating to multi-user

*Corresponding author. Email: david.white@conted.ox.ac.uk

ISSN 0013-1881 print/ISSN 1469-5847 online
2010 NFER
DOI: 10.1080/00131881.2010.482755
http://www.informaworld.com

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virtual environments (MUVEs). This paper explores the use of MUVEs in

education, and proposes that these virtual environments require participants to
immerse themselves in that cultural space. Engaging with this culture is necessarily
experiential, and therefore educational appropriations of VWs need to adjust to the
cultural norms that exist and develop within them. The paper explores the role that
experiences in VWs can play in a learning context, drawing on examples taken from
higher education and exploring what the distinct cultural features, the otherness, of
VWs can tell us about that learning process. Focusing on the immersive nature of
VWs, the paper opens by arguing that VWs are experiential, and explores this by
looking rstly at ways in which people belong to virtual communities. Secondly, it
introduces two concepts, co-presence and eventedness which it proposes serve as
analytic tools that enable educators to understand the nature of experiential learning
in this environment. It then moves to apply these considerations to concrete learning,
drawing on our experience of a JISC-funded project, Open Habitat. A range of
learning characteristics are introduced and explored with reference to theories of
experiential learning. While the Open Habitat project provided useful data that
contributes to the discussion, the paper is not a research report (it can be found at:
http://www.openhabitat.org) and its purpose is principally to highlight the role and
nature of experience when using VWs in an educational context. The paper
concludes by emphasising the importance of treating VWs as an experiential
environment in their own right.
Two types of VW
The denition of an online virtual world is currently in ux as technology and
business models mature. However, is it useful to identify the two dominant forms:
(1) MUVEs, such as Second Life, which have no prescribed structuring of
activity and allow varying degrees of creative freedom; and
(2) Massively multiplayer online (MMOs) games such as World of Warcraft,
which provide roles, goals and an underlying narrative or mythology that the
player is required to buy into.
In educational circles, MUVEs are seen as holding the most potential for learning
because their inherent openness puts control into the hands of the users, allowing the
design and delivery of a broad range of potentially radical teaching and learning
opportunities (Savin-Baden 2008; Cormier 2009; Twining 2009). In contrast, it is
dicult to see past the specic genre of MMOs to take advantage of their potential
as a platform for learning. Substantial learning can take place in games of this type
(Steinkuehler 2004; Nardi, Ly and Harris 2007), but examples of using MMOs in an
institutional context are rare. Educators nd it almost impossible to see beyond the
dragons and the goblins. Nevertheless, it would be a mistake to disregard the value
of research carried out in and around MMOs for educational purposes. The
designers of these platforms have 30 years of experience in drawing players in, often
by tackling challenges that closely parallel the concerns of contemporary online
learning. Examples include balancing the social with the goal-orientated, assessing
progress, providing structure, easing participants into the environment, providing
roles and facilitating group work (White, 2008b). Key to the success of the MMO
format in terms of participant engagement is their ability to generate a sense of

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belonging within the player. It is important to consider the nature of this

phenomenon when approaching any VW as a teaching environment.
Ways of belonging
Both MUVEs and MMOs provide the opportunity for individuals to connect in
an intimate social context. In many regards, they are the most sophisticated
example of the ongoing transition away from simple provision of content and
tools online towards platforms that facilitate interpersonal relationships. The use
of 3D avatars to represent individuals allows participants to project their identity
or persona into the VW (Meadows 2008), creating a sense of presence. Driven
predominantly by visual cues, participants are persuaded to feel that rather than
simply using the VW they actually reside in that virtual space. The importance of
this is something that MMO games designers and researchers have long
understood (Taylor 2003; Castronova 2005; Ducheneaut et al. 2006; Steinkuehler
and Williams 2006), but which the educational sector has often overlooked when
considering MUVEs. This form of belonging in the parallel world that the virtual
environment provides could be described as cultural immersion, which in
traditional educational terms is of course not new. Every institution has a culture
with implicit social codes, modes of communication and ways of behaving.
Educationalists have often highlighted the frequency with which educational
institutions assume the role of promoting and maintaining the prevailing social
culture, with some, such as Freire (1966), writing strongly against the banking
system of education, which Freire characterises as a deliberate means of
oppressing the poor and maintaining the status quo of the rich and powerful.
Brookeld (1986) similarly bases his endorsement of critical thinking on the need
for individuals to step outside their culture and ideology, and learn to see them in
a new way. VWs are a cultural space, which exist in tandem with that of the
physical institution. Understanding what it means to belong in a VW gives a
context for critical thinking on roles and practice in the real world.
To capitalise on the educational potential of VWs it is then crucial to
understand this sense of belonging in the culture of the VW, in addition to the
sense of belonging to a social group that meets within that environment. This is
not to reduce the importance of social belonging, which is important if communal
activity is to take place eectively in any environment (Edirisingha et al. 2009). We
simply intend to emphasise that both social and cultural belonging are relevant to
learners experiences in VWs. This counters the frequent assumption that a
utilitarian approach to the functionality of VWs is all that is required to increase
student engagement, ignoring the eects of cultural dislocation that underlie much
of the alienation experienced by new participants (Warburton 2009). There needs
to be an understanding of how to engage with others by appropriating the
technology to achieve socio-cultural ends, and not simply an acceptance of the
surface functionality of the platform. This requires a level of immersion in
the culture of the environment as well as an understanding of how the technology
has been appropriated by those who currently reside/belong in the VW. Indeed, the
cognitive overload suered by students when they rst enter a VW is often an
eect of cultural and technical demands being overlaid, suggesting that inductions
to VWs should follow the lead of the MMO designers and separate these two
factors (White 2008a).

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Co-presence and eventedness in the Open Habitat Project

The JISC-funded Open Habitat project (http://www.openhabitat.org) explored the
use of VWs (predominantly the Second Life platform: http://www.secondlife.com)
for teaching and learning in higher education. Its purpose was to explore the
potential of MUVEs as a teaching environment. At the time the project started, there
had been much speculation as to what VWs could bring to a teaching scenario but
most actual practice was being undertaken by early adopters who were not
extensively reecting on their own practice. The project took an open approach,
convening a number of pilot teaching sessions with the emphasis being on a exible,
iterative approach, which allowed the pedagogy employed to be adjusted as issues
arose. Rather than establishing traditional research questions, a number of themes
were proposed, which acted as points of perspective for the piloting activity.
The project ran from January 2008 to March 2009, undertaking a series of pilots
with undergraduates studying art and design at Leeds Metropolitan University and
online lifelong learners studying philosophy at the University of Oxford. Over the
course of the project, data was gathered from focus groups, semi-structured
interviews, surveys and chat logs generated during teaching sessions. The lead tutor
from Leeds Metropolitan also kept a blog in which he recorded his reections on the
project. His experience led him to induct his students into the functionality of Second
Life by teaching them to build in OpenSim1 and equipping them with a range of
building and in-world skills before conducting the full teaching and learning sessions
in Second Life. He writes: The OpenSim standalone stu was great. Each student
had their own lag-free, empty, private island to take their rst steps on. The students
found it easy, and I felt like I had some useful inuence over the class (Truelove
2008).
Feedback from his pilots suggests the categories of belonging in the VW
culturally and belonging to a social grouping within the VW are true to their
experience too. One of the patterns that emerged from analysis of the data was a
polarisation in the students reaction to nding themselves in a social space. Take the
example demonstrated in these reections from two of the art and design students:
Im surprised you can build anything and do anything in it, really. I think thats what
surprised me. But also I think its a bit weird, like everyone is actually a person as well.
Like I avoid talking to people because I always forget theyre actually really people. I
just think its a bit weird.

Figure 1.

Thematic areas within the Open Habitat project.

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Its inspired new ideas of where I can apply my work and its a lot easier to try these
things out on SL than in real life . . . knowing that people are out there and may come
across it [her work in Second Life] makes me think about how my work is applied and
what other people think about it . . . (Truelove 2009)

Signicantly, both students are reecting on the eect of co-presence or being there
together (Schroeder, 2002) within the VW. For one student, however, having others
co-present in the VW represents a potential audience that she found stimulating and
enjoyable; for the other co-presence was alienating. In essence the second student has
started to understand the possibilities of belonging in the VW, negotiating the
otherness of the world, whereas the rst student has not yet adjusted to the idea
that the VW is a space in which individuals actually reside.
The concept of co-presence therefore combines aspects of belonging in and
belonging to. To be able to feel co-presence, participants must have a sense of being
there with others. If this is to lead to a positive experience, participants must also
have a certain level of cultural immersion in the environment. Co-presence is a broad
term, but in the context of MUVEs, the avatars give an impression of a physical
presences within a unied space. For example, may people maintain socially
acceptable levels of interpersonal distance between avatars despite them being
virtual. This is an eect of the feeling of co-presence.
Alongside the established idea of co-presence, the Open Habitat project proposed
the notion of eventedness. This term encapsulates a conceptual framework that was
developed to take into account varied reactions to the same environment by
accepting that VWs are primarily experiential spaces rather than knowledgegathering tools (Cormier 2009). Eventedness then is a method of assessing the nature
of experiences in social media such as VWs, and, like the concept of co-presence, it
is bipolar, with the two extremes represented by the experience of being an individual
and being part of a communal activity.
In this context, the denition of communal should not be confused with the
notion of community. An eective student group in which collaboration and peer
learning are taking place could be characterised as a community of practice (Wenger
1999); however, it is possible to experience the communal without being part of a
community. In the context of eventedness, the communal can be closer to the
knotwork described by Engestrom, Engestrom and Vahaaho (1999), in which small
groups form for a short period of time to perform a specic task, after which they
disband. The important factor is that participants need to feel they are part of a
shared endeavour for eventedness to occur. It is not possible to have a communal
experience of this type within social media without a sense of belonging; hence the
decreasing potential for an evented experience.
Figure 2 portrays these ideas pictorially. It is an approximation drawn from our
personal experience and is based on our perceptions of how dierent online tools and
environments cohere with and match to the inter-related concepts of eventedness and
co-presence. So, for example, the nature of activity within a Social Networking
platform such as Facebook will aect an individuals level of eventedness. A brief
period in which a small group of friends discuss a specic subject or event is
communal in nature and therefore evented. However, if their homepage becomes a
series of status updates, which are essentially autonomous in character, they are
likely to feel less co-present and therefore more isolated.
Putting the two concepts of co-presence and eventedness together allows us to
analyse a wide range of technology-based learning experiences, and Figure 2 maps

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D. White and A. Le Cornu

Figure 2.

Eventedness and co-presence in online social media.

the range of potential experiences a number of multiuser, social-media environments

can provide. The inclusion of platforms in addition to MUVEs allows an assessment
of the relative intensity of experience that each might provide and the associated risk
of alienation that a poor session might lead to. For example, participants taking part
in a teaching session in a MUVE could hypothetically undergo any number of
experiences indicated by the largest quadrilateral in the diagram. So, for example, at
point a in the diagram, individuals feel isolated and alienated, all the more so
because they know that vibrant social/collaborative activity is taking place to which
they are not party. In educational terms, this is a disaster, in which a sense of copresence, coupled with a feeling of not being a legitimate participant, results in the
use of the VW having a powerful negative eect on engagement. At point b,
individuals will feel a strong sense of being part of a group and taking part in a
shared experience. When they log o, they will feel as if they were part of an intense
event in which they spent time with others. This event will have raised consciousness
of the group in a manner that approximates to village three of Weil and McGills
(1989) four villages categorisation of experiential learning. It will also have forced
individuals to reect on their own practice and their role within the group.
Participants will now feel a stronger sense of belonging to the group and in the VW.
At point c, individuals are spending time with people they know and trust. They
are socialising within the MUVE but are not attempting to achieve anything beyond
being co-present. They are comfortable within the culture of the VW and feel they
belong to a group even though there is no communal goal. This can be an
important scenario in which informal learning can take place; in terms of
environment, it could be compared to the real-life common room or coee shop.
The overall implication here is that a poor session in a MUVE can be
signicantly less evented than a poor session in many other online social spaces. In
this regard, MUVEs are a high-risk teaching environment.

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Application to learning

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The Open Habitat Project

It is possible to use the eventedness framework to map the two Open Habitat pilots
with art and design and philosophy students, and hence demonstrate the dierent
types of learning experienced by the respective groups of students (Figure 3). As we
shall go on to demonstrate, the philosophy students felt less of a sense of belonging
in the world during the ocial teaching sessions than they did during the informal
moments before and after the discussion took place. The art and design students, on
the other hand, worked individually for much of the time but during the pilots, there
was a greater feeling of belonging in the VW as a result of the pedagogical approach
of the activities.
The art and design pilots centred around the students using the Second Life VW
to further their burgeoning art and design practice. For the art and design tutor, Ian
Truelove, Second Life provided the equivalent of an unlimited canvas where
students could experiment with projects that would be physically or nancially
impossible in the real world. In addition to this, the visual multi-user aspect of the
environment allowed his students to see each others practice, thereby encouraging
cross-pollination of ideas, which does not take place in the computer lab with
isolated software.
Ians approach involved an emphasis on building 3D designs in-world, while
being mentored by the tutors and their peers. There was a focus on collaboration
that evolved as the sessions progressed, moving away from unsuccessful attempts to
get students to collaborate closely on building shared designs, towards encouraging
individual practice as part of an overarching exercise (Truelove 2009). Some of the

Figure 3.

Open Habitat piloting activity mapped onto the eventedness framework.

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teaching sessions were undertaken in a computer lab on campus but much of the
piloting activity was done at a distance. The most successful example of this was the
tree building day (Figure 4), during which a group of seven students and two tutors
spent about ve hours on an empty island in Second Life each building a thematic
tree, chosen from a short list. Examples included realistic tree, surrealistic tree,
typographic tree, tree of life, family tree, naughty tree etc. In the words of their
principal lecturer, Ian Truelove:

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The tree-building day succeeded because it most closely replicated the essence of the art
school studio. Both students and tutors shared the same goal of building one of a range
of specied trees, and worked alongside each other in a communal workspace. Through
constructive dialogue, participants cooperated to support individual creative endeavour.
(Truelove 2009)

Signicant here is the side-by-side nature of the tutors and students. Each participant
could see each others practice as part of the exercise with the tutors becoming more
experienced others rather than taking the role of experts. This closely aligns with
one of the key cultural aspects of Second Life, in which traditional real-life authority
hierarchies are attened, kudos and respect being earned through the demonstration
of MUVE skills such as building or sociability.
The philosophy pilot students, however, were much more discursive in nature
and attempted to replicate a real-life seminar format. These students were at a
distance and had an average age of about 50. The process, managed by a tutor,
would centre on an agreed topic. About seven students would discuss the topic in a
single group, which was at points split into two smaller groups (Figure 5); these
would come back together at the end of the session to sum up and reect. The tutor
had experience of the impact of informal, social communication during a distancelearning course and had previously held a successful Christmas party in a VLE
forum. She saw Second Life as an opportunity to amplify the positive eect of social
engagement on a student group. In essence she was interested in the role that
embodiment via an avatar might have on the feeling of belonging to a group.
The most challenging aspect of these sessions was the use of text chat, which
forced participants to express themselves succinctly and quickly.2 In an attempt to

Figure 4.

Four of the art & design thematic trees from the tree building day pilot.

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Figure 5. One of the small groups discusses philosophy in a breakout room as the tutor
looks on.

stop discussions taking an unfruitful direction or to signal erroneous or dubious

philosophical logic, the tutor requested a function that would allow her to shout
Aaargh! at the push of a button. While it was partly meant to be a comic gesture,
this, and the tutors general approach to managing the discussion, put her in a
position of authority that caused some friction. This was mainly evident during
sessions later in the project, when some of the students had become accustomed to
the liberal cultural attitude within Second Life towards accepting alternative
perspectives (Carr, Oliver, and Burn 2008). The philosophy students enjoyed the
casual but socially immediate atmosphere of the VW, often arriving early and
leaving late to catch up with each other. However, the pedagogical authority
required to keep challenging discussions on track led to a reduction in their feeling of
co-presence and therefore of eventedness. The chat-log extract below is a good
example of where discussion management appeared harsher in the VW than the
equivalent communication in a physical classroom:
[7:31] WW:
[7:32]
[7:33]
[7:33]
[7:33]

So were always in danger of being wrong but Im OK

with that
EH:
So, we can never be certain we have true knowledge. The
best we can do is hone our justication by contesting it
WW:
I agree with you, E
SM:
E, Im sure this is the wrong way to look at the question. It
makes it harder!
MT (tutor): Aaargh! We are not talking about how we can KNOW we
have knowledge, but what counts AS knowledge!

Experiential learning?
One of the educational questions to come to the fore through the Open Habitat
project was the role and nature of experience in a VW such as Second Life, and how
this might relate to theories of experiential learning. What are learners experiencing
when they are at any of the points in Figure 1 above? How can this be made sense of
in relation to theories of learning? Are dierences signicant, and is it possible or
even desirable to control them?

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D. White and A. Le Cornu

Fenwick (2001) acknowledges a range of schools of thought regarding the nature

of experiential learning: situated and action theory traditions, for which she cites the
aforementioned villages proposed by Weil and McGill (1989); the phenomenological
tradition of David Boud and associates; and the critical theory tradition of
Habermas, Mezirow and Freire. Fundamentally, however, she proposes that at the
heart of experiential learning theories is the role of reection in making meaning out of
experience. This is the basis of Jarviss (1995, 2004) development of Kolbs (1984)
experiential learning cycle. Jarvis, however, unlike Kolb, explores the nature of
experience and proposes that learning occurs at a point of disjuncture when
individuals are confronted with a situation that conicts with the knowledge and
understanding of the world they have constructed up to that point. It is the resolution
of that conict, through reection, that is the process of learning. Disjuncture is a
signicant dimension of learning through MUVEs and is discussed in a later section.
Applying these theories to the learning that takes place in a MUVE such as
Second Life, and drawing on the data gathered during the Open Habitat project, a
number of observations can be made.
Concrete, here and now experience
Many participants in the Open Habitat project expressed the impression that they
had had concrete experiences in a VW, whether these were immersive or alienating.
Their experiences in-world had a feeling of immediacy (philosophy student). At
the same time, it can be argued that these experiences were actually fantastical,
demanding a greater involvement of the imagination and of individuals projection
of themselves into a very dierent in-world environment than is typically the case
(Le Cornu 2009). Jarvis (1995, 2004) argues for two types of experience: primary
(sensual) and secondary (mediated). Traditional education is largely mediated
through the spoken word or written text. Learning in a MUVE would seem to carve
a dierent path, in which participants experience is actually secondary, mediated
through vision, yet such is its power to draw in and engage that, together with the
human ability to project and imagine, participants have the impression of learning
through primary experience. This is one of the very powerful dimensions of using
MUVEs for educational purposes: those involved appear to learn through doing
rather than learn through listening or reading, although, as the two Open Habitat
pilots demonstrated, the degree of doing diered between the groups. The concept
of presence and immersion, as mediated by technology, is a key aspect of belonging
in a VW and underpins the experiential nature of the environment. Indicative of the
persuasiveness of this virtual co-presence is the habit that participants in VWs have
of transferring social literacies from the physical world when interacting with other
avatars. For example, the maintenance of real-life levels of personal space and eye
contact between avatars (Yee et al. 2007).
Linguistic slip
Another key indicator of the experiential nature of VWs is the linguistic shift that
highlights a move in the participant relationship with their avatar from the third to
the rst person. For example, if we reconsider the student quotes above we can see
the use of terms such as person and people. This transition away from avatar or
character took place almost immediately and is indicative of the embodiment

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phenomenon. This rst-person eect encourages participants to transpose real-life

social conventions into the VW:

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I think Im always scared Im going to get into a really bad conversation and then I feel,
even though I know I can get away, I feel Im being rude, just walking away. I feel like,
as if you were talking to somebody, you wouldnt just walk away, well, Id try not to
walk away from them and be rude. (Art and design student)

The eect of immersion via embodiment is not always positive: the subtlety with
which this form of social realism encroaches on the participant can lead to a false
sense of security. The participant is enticed into assuming not only that aspects of the
VW are socially real but also that this realism should extend to all aspects of their
immersion, whereby the culture of the physical and VWs are in perfect alignment.
They forget that they are in a state of dual consciousness (Carr and Oliver 2009).
For new participants this leads to many moments of disjuncture between the culture
in which individuals reside when sitting at their computer and the culture of the VW
itself. In eect, VW participants continually have to mediate between two cultures.
Disjuncture
A variety of forms of disjuncture that occur when participants use MUVEs for
educational purposes have already been identied, generally revolving around either
the lack of participants familiarity with the platform functionality or the strange and
fantastical nature of the VW. There are other, more subtle, experiences of
disjuncture that also signicantly impact upon learners experiences.
Lack of projection: slippage
The most common form of disjuncture tends to occur at moments when a
participants avatar does not accurately project the emotions or activity of the
individual (Moore et al. 2007). One of the eects of avatar co-presence is the
implication that if an avatar is visible in the VW then the person controlling that
avatar will be fully engaged. It is not possible to lurk in a VW in the way that it is
possible in other online technologies such as forums or text-chat rooms. In a VW a
participants avatar is likely to appear to be paying attention to its immediate virtual
surroundings even when its operator is engaged in other activities such as checking
his/her inventory, perusing the in-world navigation system or a private instant
message conversation with a distant avatar (Ducheneault and Moore 2004). Most
VWs attempt to mitigate this problem by providing a selection of gestures
participants can employ to project their activity, such as the mid-air typing
animation in Second Life to indicate that the individual in question is typing a
response. However, these are rarely sucient to close the projection gap, especially
in a seminar-type session where body language is a key aspect of communication:
[7:17] MT (tutor): TS, are you OK?
[7:17] MB:
they are all aspects of a bigger whole, not one of them
individually can be said to be me
[7:18] TS:
yes im thinking
[7:18] MT:
Thats a good thing for a philosopher to do . . .
[7:18] TS:
!! trying to work out what is me

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In this example the social realism of the VW has caused a disjuncture because the
tutor has assumed that the blank default expression of TSs avatar, coupled with a
sparsity of communication from that participant, means that he has become
confused or disengaged. In this case, it quickly becomes clear that TS is deeply
engaged in the session but not in a form that can be projected by the VW: the VW
does not provide the ability to demonstrate that he is thinking with non-verbal (or in
this case non-textual) indicators. This lack of projection in VWs leads to what some
describe as communication slippage (Moore et al. 2007). The communicative ow
of the scenario is broken by a disjuncture between real-life expectations, in which
non-verbal projection is crucial, and the lack of these projections in the VW.
Trust and identity
The shifting sands of identity also cause moments of disjuncture, which for new
participants usually start with a suspicion that there is a dislocation between the
identity of an avatar and that of its owner or operator. Participants are initially
inuenced by the fact that their own avatar does not look like their real-life self, and
that therefore other avatars are probably not a realistic representation of the
individuals with whom they are now co-present. This eect is compounded when
new participants meet non-human avatars such as animals, aliens or dragons. In
addition to this, the majority of VWs do not have the capability to allow participants
to apply their real-life name to their avatar; this amplies the mask-like aspects of
identity within the VW. The inuence of the visual nature of the VW within the eld
of identity should not be underestimated, as it has been shown that, while
participants enjoy experimenting with the look or aesthetic of their avatar, they
rarely use it as an opportunity to play out a persona signicantly dierent from what
they consider to be their real persona (Yee et al. 2007). More commonly, their VW
persona will be a slightly amplied version of their real-life persona. For example, an
avatar might appear as a small blue dragon but will act socially in a style that aligns
with the character of whoever is controlling the avatar. This could be described as
social, not visual, embodiment.
Conclusions
The purpose of this paper has been to analyse the role and nature of dierent learning
experiences that take place in VWs such as Second Life. We have argued that a major
distinguishing feature of MUVEs is their ability, perhaps even requirement, to draw
participants in. Disjuncture and learning take place at the level of both functionality
and in-world culture; and, just as is the case when visiting any other foreign land, the
more time visitors spend there and the more they acquire the skills needed to
communicate and integrate, the more they feel they belong. VWs should be viewed as
more than just a social space, therefore, along the lines of Facebook or other socialmedia platforms. Instead, they support forms of culture that have arisen from the
transposition of real-life literacies into the virtual environment, and the evolving
appropriation of the technology where it does not directly map onto those literacies.
The complex relationship between these factors creates an opportunity for experiential
learning, or learning by doing, to take place. The eventedness framework marks out
this territory, acting as a conceptual tool to assess the experiential or evented value of
teaching in VWs and other online social media.

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195

Over the course of the Open Habitat project we reected on our experiences of
VWs and formulated a list of principles, available in the Open Habitat magazine
(White et al. 2009), which we consider will increase the likelihood of a teaching
session being highly evented in the virtual environment. However, if, as argued
above, we accept that moments of disjuncture are at the heart of experiential
learning, then maybe our focus as educators should move away from attempting to
smooth out occurrences of culture clash or alienation towards an better
understanding of when these moments might take place and how they could be
harnessed for learning.
The otherness of VWs can, and perhaps should, be seen as an educational
opportunity, not a technological failing or obstacle. This requires teaching
practitioners to immerse themselves in these environments, so that their understanding of them becomes cultural as well as functional, allowing them to use
moments of disjuncture as key educational events.
Notes
1.

2.

OpenSim is an open-source version of Second Life, which in this case allowed Ian Truelove
and Graham Hibbert initially to provide a single private island or space for each student.
This helped the students to come to terms with the basics of building and navigating in a
non-social space.
It is possible to use voice chat in Second Life and other VWs but our students did not have
the correct hardware to use it. Also, some of the students when asked commented that
they would prefer not to use voice chat as they found it broke their feeling of immersion.
This is a complex area, which cannot be covered in this paper.

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