Engaging students in blended and online collaborative courses at university level through Second Life: comparative perspectives and instructional affordances

Students’ opinions about the degree of impact, status and socio-cognitive viability with the utilization of emerging three-dimensional (3D) computer-generated technologies may vary. Indisputably, 3D technology-enhanced environments have provided considerable benefits and affordances to the contemporary e-Education. In these circumstances virtual worlds (VWs) like Second Life (SL) have generally intensified with an extensive perpetuation and penetration of innovative performances that encapsulated or enacted from the vast majority of Higher education fields. At the same time, there is growing a widespread recognition of reasons affecting the high or low degree of students’ engagement in online and blended course delivery methods held in 3D VWs. Notwithstanding that most notable studies have disclosed SL functional capabilities from a plethora of pilot case studies; however there it is still lacking an experiential-based research approach to determine the degree of students’ engagement in blended and online courses at university level through SL. The present comparative study explores students’ engagement overall as a multi-dimensional construct consisting of emotional, behavioral and cognitive factors. A hundred and thirty-five (135) undergraduate and postgraduate students in almost identical blended and online instructional conditions held in SL took part in this project. Preliminary results have decoded students’ satisfaction for both methods, despite the fact that the voluntary sample composed of different educational disciplines. The quantitative analysis showed that postgraduate students of the online course had more positive results and the degree of engagement was significantly increased compared to those who enrolled with the blended course delivery method. The instructional affordances from the utilization of SL were the collaborative climate between users (instructor and students) that eliminated various intractable boundaries which predominantly observed by several conventional methods. Specifically it was revealed that the online course delivery method engaged more students with the collaborative activities. Educational implications and recommendations for future research are also included.