Abstract:

The general purpose of our running project is to analyze the use and possibilities of high educational teaching in no immersive virtual environments. In order to achieve objective information on virtual teaching, we have designed and fulfilled several test situations to compare usability and acceptance of virtual teaching by students.
At the School of Informatics, University of Vigo (Spain), a group of 22 students was taking part of a seminar under the topic “Virtual Worlds”. This seminar was in part developed on a conventional environment (a computer room with backboard and multimedia resources at the University), but also in a virtual campus (http://slurl.com/secondlife/ESEI%20UVIGO/128/93/25). Thus the students had already some experience in virtual environments, as well with the design of and interaction through avatars.
We would like to present in this paper the first test situation that was done in order to measure and compare the benefits and disadvantages of teaching in a no immersive virtual environment (like Second Life) compared with a conventional one.
A lesson was given by an invited professor using the virtual environment, 22 students were attending the lesson in two groups. The first group (10 test persons) was taking part on the lesson at the computer room, the other 12 test persons were attending the lesson at home.
After the lesson every student had answered an inquiry on the positive and negative aspects of this virtual teaching experience. The inquiry included 32 questions on five different blocks: a. benefits compared with a conventional environment, b. disadvantages compared with a conventional environment, c. communicational difficulties due virtual environment, d. satisfaction with the avatar, e. subjective perception of learning efficiency.
The general conclusion points to the acceptance and positive valuation of the teaching use of a virtual environment, but with weakness related with the lack of concentration on the lesson and with the spatial design of the virtual environment. Only under the items related with ‘comfort’ there was a significant difference between both groups.

Keywords:

virtual environments, second life, e-learning.