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Minocha, Shailey and Tingle, Rita
(2008).
URL: http://www.open.ac.uk/relive08/documents/ReLIVE08_...
Abstract
Socialisation or 'knowing one another' is a key element of online learning and knowledge construction. Socialisation needs to be integrated and sustained in the collaboration process through the design of activities which ensure to reduce social distance amongst online learners. Virtual ice breakers early on in collaboration may not be sufficient to develop and maintain shared understanding, mutual trust and social presence. Inadequate early socialisation is a key obstacle in conducting collaborative activities at a distance, as investigated in our research with blogs, wikis and forums, and elsewhere. Socialisation in distributed environments can be enhanced through synchronous technologies such as instant messaging, phone, conference call, video-conferencing, web-conferencing, and so on. In this paper, we will present a review of our recent research which uncovered obstacles in student-collaboration due to inadequate socialisation with tools such as blogs and wikis. We will report the theoretical underpinnings for the pedagogical rationale for adopting 3-D virtual worlds such as Second Life for socialisation and knowledge creation in distance-education. Based on literature review and empirical investigations, we will discuss sample Second Life activities which aid socialisation.
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- Item ORO ID
- 19499
- Item Type
- Conference or Workshop Item
- Project Funding Details
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Funded Project Name Project ID Funding Body Not Set Not Set JISC Not Set Not Set Faculty of Mathematics, Computing and Technology - Extra Information
- Conference website: http://www.open.ac.uk/relive08/
- Keywords
- socialisation; distance education, 3D virtual worlds; Second Life; collaborative learning; virtual collaboration
- Academic Unit or School
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Faculty of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) > Computing and Communications
Faculty of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) - Research Group
- Centre for Research in Computing (CRC)
- Copyright Holders
- © 2008 The Authors
- Related URLs
- Depositing User
- Shailey Minocha