3-D Environments

3-D Environments

David Locke, Memorial University of Newfoundland

Definitions and background

3-D environments are computer-simulated, realistic settings in which users can virtually explore, interact and problem-solve (Wang, 2012). To date, most online teaching and learning has been carried out using 2-D environments in which participants can interact but are generally “limited to text” (Omale, Hung, Luetkehans, & Cooke-Plagwitz, 2009, p. 482) when doing so. 3-D environments are able to remove this limitation by providing each participant with a customizable, virtual character – called an avatar (Lim, Nonis, & Hedberg, 2006) – which can then be used to “interact with other avatars as well as objects within the environment” (Berns, Gonzales-Pardo, & Camacho, 2013, p. 211). Until fairly recently, these 3-D environments were only used by a minority of the population and very few of them were specifically designed with education in mind (Livingstone, Kemp, & Edgar, 2008).

Over the last decade, however, this has begun to change and some educators are taking advantage of both types of environments; Sloodle, for example, combines the immersive 3-D environment of Second Life with the more common 2-D learning environment of Moodle (Livingstone et al., 2008). Developers have also started creating 3-D environments specifically for education, such as Quest Atlantis, which consists of learning quests and unit plans but also has many game-like features (Lim et al., 2006).

Affordances

Edirisingha, Nie, Pluciennik, and Young (2009) argued that 3-D environments can afford students a more authentic online social presence via their avatars, through which they can engage in realistic, synchronous conversations and build real relationships with one another. This increased social presence makes students more aware of their fellow learners which, in turn, can lead to increased “information sharing, collaboration, and discussion” (Barkand & Kush, 2009, p. 223).

Collaboration is another affordance provided by 3-D environments; for example, in their study of the effects of 3-D environments on fifth grade Mathematics students, Bouta, Retalis, and Paraskeva (2012) concluded that the students achieved learning outcomes by collaborating with one another and interacting with the environment. In a similar study conducted with doctoral students, Boniolo and Spadaro (2010) reported that the students enjoyed interacting with their peers during collaborative activities and that such collaboration made them feel like part of a community.

Downey, Mohler, Morris, and Sanchez (2012) found that students are better able to follow the flow of online conversations in 3-D environments than in 2-D environments. Students are also better able to recall the actual content of these conversations when they take place in 3-D environments, although this may not be the case for some auditory learners (Downey et al., 2012). This increased learning retention was also observed by Berns et al. (2013) in their study of 85 adult foreign language students; 63% failed a pre-test before completing some applicable activities in a 3-D environment. Subsequently, only 2% of the students failed the post-test (Berns et al., 2013).

3-D environments can afford students opportunities to learn in online settings that are both risk-free and “contextually authentic” (Jones, Squires, & Hicks, 2008, p. 377). Wood and Willems (2012) described how this can be particularly beneficial for students who have various types of learning disabilities because the environments provide “mediated havens where learning can be optimised without the […] consequences found in the physical educational setting” (p. 462).

Finally, 3-D environments can serve as an excellent way to gain experience in dangerous or expensive procedures without needing to put either safety or money at risk (Dalgarno & Lee, 2010). For example, medical students can use 3-D environments to practice medical procedures and astronauts can use them to practice repairing space telescopes (Dalgarno & Lee, 2010).

Constraints

The degree to which students are able to fully engage in a 3-D environment can be significantly constrained if they lack the requisite technical skills (Downey et al., 2012). Merchant et al. (2012) asserted that struggling with technical issues within the environment can drain students’ cognitive resources, leaving them unable to fully benefit from the activities themselves. Without the proper amount of technical support, some students may feel disempowered because they’re unable to project their identities and this may cause them to give up on the endeavor altogether (deNoyelles & Seo, 2012). This potential problem can be addressed by developing and providing guidance tools which can then be used to train students in the effective use of 3-D environments in order to facilitate their tasks (Allison, Ajinomoh, & Miller, 2012).

Student focus and time-on-task are also constrained at times because some students can easily get distracted in 3-D environments (Lim et al., 2006). For example, in their study involving graduate students, Omale et al. (2009) observed that the 3-D environment was “fun and engaging, but it was relatively easy for participants to get off task” (p. 487).

While student collaboration is widely considered to be an affordance of 3-D environments, Hämäläinen, Manninen, Järvelä, and Häkkinen (2006) found that the puzzles in these environments need to be hard – perhaps even frustrating – in order to strongly promote such collaboration. Also, in a gender-concerned study of undergraduate communications majors, deNoyelles and Seo (2012) reported that, when using the 3-D environment, men tended to interact with men and women tended to interact with women, which negatively influenced the level of collaboration. Collaboration can also be considerably constrained if there are too few participants in the environment (Burton & Martin, 2010).

Finally, realism is an affordance offered by 3-D environments but it can also be considered a constraint when one considers that the technology is still essentially in its infancy; for example, Prasolova-Førland and Wyeld (2008) explained that avatars are still limited with respect to their abilities to realistically move, gesture and use facial expressions. As Wang (2012) concluded, a 3-D environment “cannot fully replace traditional instruction at the present stage” (p. 423).