Collaborative Learning in Virtual Environments

Abstract

With regard to the increasing demand for facilities that allow self-directed learning, the Department for Educational Sciences at the University of Bielefeld in Germany initiated the project “E-Learning 3D” (EL3) in 2007. The project was designed to develop a virtual learning environment in which students as well as lecturers could interact without actually being on campus. It was expected that such a learning environment could serve as a complementary component of the university’s schedule of lectures. The EL3 project chose the virtual world Second Life (SL) as the infrastructure for the establishment of the required learning spaces. SL is an online-based system which allows the users to move and act in a seemingly three-dimensional space. At the outset of EL3, Second Life was a ubiquitous phenomenon throughout the media. Today, though the medial omnipresence of SL is gone, the number of users is nonetheless still rising. So far, more than 25 million accounts were registered worldwide for the multi-user virtual environment.This article will cover the genesis and decisions made during the process, as well as a description of the employed and adapted learning environments and tools of EL3.