Virtual World Connections A pre-service teacher study on technology acceptance and adoption by Vanessa Camilleri
The prelude: In 2005 I was introduced to Second Life and like the millions that inhabit it, I got hooked. It was not just the environment. But it was who I became in world. It was the avatar which was an extension of me... not a replacement but an extension of the activities I could do. I've always wanted to see the world, and I will not say that this in any way replaces the world which I want to see but it's a diversion that can do much more than for example a normal daily activity. It is the sense of exploration which got me hooked, the excitement of creating something, the diversion of meeting people, of diving in an underwater world, of talking to people. So then I started thinking that I should share this with others, and that is when I started toying with the ideas of using these worlds to educate, to help people learn. And hence I started reading about it, and what people are doing, and about how people were using these worlds to educate. I found a great deal about them but mostly dealt with the effect these worlds were having on people's learning. I have read about a number of interesting case studies about how these worlds have been used in adult education mostly, for training on the workplace for example. First aid responders, and other health-related jobs were amongst the top categories of jobs that made use of training using simulations and virtual worlds. The military and air traffic controllers were other practice-based case examples of virtual world use. At first I set out on a very ambitious journey - almost ambiguous in its own ambition, but then I realized that a PhD is not about quantity but it is about the rigor and the depth to which I decide to take my studies into. In the years preceding those during which I was undertaking this study, my formation was pretty technical with no flourish for the human end. Most of the studies, most of the papers which were being published were more on the design and the framework of the technology being used rather than the human aspect for which this same technology should be developed. I find that many people coming from the faculty of ICT here in Malta sometimes miss the trees for the forest really. They are very interested in the actual development and the new algorithms which students propose (amongst others of course) rather than an ulterior purpose for that development. But I do guess that they leave that for us, as Educators, or Educational Scientists to work on developing the purpose to help the development of the human. So with those thoughts, I started losing focus from the development side (not that I undermine or underestimate its importance in any way) and refocusing instead on how to purposely and determinedly investigate aspects pertaining to a specific modality and use of technology. It was then, that through my Twitter network, I stumbled across the book by Blaskovich and Bailenson, called 'Infinite Reality' and I came up with so many questions, especially in the area of how learning happens inside the 3D space that I could finally find focus to my PhD