“WHY ARE WE IN THE FLOOR?” LEARNING ABOUT THEATRE DESIGN IN SECOND LIFETM

As part of a module in Theatre Design at the University of Warwick (UK), learning sessions were conducted using theatrical spaces within the Immersive Virtual World Second LifeTM, with the intention of introducing students to the environment and some of the design and performance considerations that this may present. The sessions used recreations of actual historical theatres, produced as part of the Theatron project, as well as stages created by some of the communities within Second Life.

An analysis of the responses of the students, and a post-course debriefing revaled that although the students had acquired the technical ability to navigate through the environment within the sessions, there were additional barriers that precluded their ability to engage with the activities. These were (i) the distracting nature of the features of the environment, (ii) the need to experience presence within the environment, and (iii) the need for familiarity with the culture of the virtual world.

The authors propose that different learning activities in immersive virtual worlds require different degrees of immersion. Effective teaching using immersive virtual worlds requires the tasks set to be appropriate to the level of immersion the students are likely to have obtained. A model is proposed for the sequence in which immersion is developed, with example tasks appropriate to that level of immersion.