**3D Multi User Learning Environment Management – An Exploratory Study on Student Engagement with the Learning Environment**

Indika Perera, Colin Allison and Alan Miller *School of Computer Science, University of St Andrews United Kingdom* 

#### **1. Introduction**

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3D Multi User Virtual Environments (3D MUVE), or commonly known as 3D virtual worlds, are expanding their application domains from their introduction. These simulated environments with 3D support can be seen as useful applications that facilitate our various needs. Using 3D virtual worlds for supporting learning has shown promising results, introducing a new type of learning platform, known as 3D Multi User Learning Environments (3D MULE). In effect, 3D learning environments based on Multi-User Virtual worlds are a growing feature of UK education (Kirriemuir, 2010). Leading universities are interested in, and have been researching on, applications of this novel technology for their learning needs. 3D MUVE support more intuitive activities for learning complex and advanced concepts. 3D virtual worlds are particularly appropriate for educational use due to their alignment with Kolb's (Kolb, *et al*. 2001) concept of experiential learning, and learning through experimentation as a particular form of exploration (Allison *et al*., 2008). Interactive 3D virtual environments demonstrate a great educational potential due to their ability to engage learners in the exploration, construction and manipulation of virtual objects, structures and metaphorical representations of ideas (Dalgarno *et al*., 2009).

In this exploratory study, we investigate the level of student engagement with the 3D MUVE supported learning environment with respect to the system management and administration. 3D virtual worlds are often considered as game environments, associating the entertainment and flexibility factors as intrinsic parameters. A known challenge is associating the pedagogical and formal educational practices with the 3D MUVE supported environments, without affecting the rich and dynamic nature. At the same time, students should not be let for getting overwhelmed by the environment features so that they miss out the intended learning outcomes of the learning task (Perera *et al*., 2011b). To achieve these crucial goals to facilitate student learning with 3D MUVE, we envisaged a unique approach through management policy considerations.

Our 3D MULE research activities are based on the two prominent 3D MUVE at present, Second Life (SL) (Linden Labs, 2003) and Open Simulator (2007). Second Life and Open Simulator 3D MUVE provide a similar simulated environment for the users except they have two different implementations at the server side. The high degree of compatibility

3D Multi User Learning Environment Management –

on network routing algorithms

variables.

**3. Research problem and hypotheses** 

two variables based on our previous observations.

Learning Environment management

2010; Perera *et al.*, 2011a) and the results facilitated this research.

Fig. 1. Selected projects based on 3D MULE: Left side – virtual humanitarian disaster

training environment, and right side – the Network Island to facilitate teaching and learning

This study is a crucial step of our main research on supporting policy based management of 3D Multi User Learning Environments. In this phase, we are specific to identify the major factors that contribute for successful policy considerations for 3D MULE management. Student behaviour and control through system administration have been widely considered as major aspects for effective learning environment design and management. Based on our previous studies on 3D MUVE use cases and role analysis (Perera *et al.*, 2011a) and the 3D MUVE system function behaviours, we hypothesised these two parameters to be the most influential factors for successful policy considerations for 3D MULE management. As a result, in this study we examine the three factors: student behaviour, system (environment) management and student engagement with the learning environment as the research

Therefore, we first defined the following two research hypotheses to examine the supposed

**H1** – Student behaviour with self-regulation is a major factor of the successful 3D Multi User

An Exploratory Study on Student Engagement with the Learning Environment 111

Archaeology (LAVA) (Getchell *et al.*, 2010) project allows students to engage in a simulated archaeological excavation, and then explore a recreation of the site. Similar to the Wireless Island another research project, Network Island in OpenSim, developed a learning island to facilitate teaching network routing (McCaffery *et al.*, 2011). Network Island simulates several routing protocol behavior as an interactive method. Students can create their own topologies and examine the routing behavior. As a part of the evaluation of 3D MUVE for serious learning needs a network traffic analysis of 3D MUVE was performed (Oliver *et al.*, 2010) to identify challenges. Second Life and OpenSim were used for teaching Human Computer Interaction (HCI) to undergraduate students, through creative student projects (Perera *et al.*, 2009). Research on integrating 3D MUVE with e-Learning infrastructure with the objective of formulating a blended learning environment with 3D support is conducted (Perera *et al.*,

between the two systems has been a major research benefit for our work. Current trends indicate a significant shift of preference towards OpenSim for learning activities, however (Allison, *et al.,* 2011).

This chapter is arranged into the following sections: in section 2 we describe background details along with our experiences on using 3D MUVE for learning; section 3 explains the research problem, including the hypotheses for this study. Section 4 describes the research methodology and the experiment design while the section 5 extensively analyses the research findings validating the hypotheses of the study. The section 6 discusses the contributions of the study, study limitations and the expected future work. Finally, the section 7 gives the conclusions of the research to conclude the chapter.
