Virtual Worlds: do we really need the third dimension to support collaborative learning?

The goal of Computer Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) is to enable students to work together, to emphasize and verify their knowledge by reciprocally interacting, and to reinforce their social dimension. Virtual Worlds provide several features to support informal communication and to create communities. They have been adopted by many universities and organizations to support distance learning. In this paper we report on an empirical study that assessed the value added by a Second Life based meeting system to a collaborative learning activity, as compared to a meeting system based on synchronous text-based communication. The experiment results show that the adoption of a 3D virtual environment does not either improve the perceived level of comfort with communication or introduce distraction during the activity, whereas the user perception of the feature offered is positive.

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