Virtual Learning Environments

This book provides education scholars insight into current theoretical and methodological approaches to conceptualize, facilitate, and examine learning and identity in virtual learning environments such as games and simulations. Virtual learning environments (VLEs) are being increasingly designed, implemented, and researched because they offer opportunities for learning that are embodied, enactive (i.e., learning by doing), extended into the learners' environment, and embedded in authentic and potentially valuable contexts for identity exploration. Each chapter in this book uniquely illustrates the learning and identity processes, characteristics, and outcomes that VLEs can facilitate. Together, these approaches provide a foundation for use-inspired research that guides how individuals intentionally, continually, and dynamically reinvent the self for a future that requires flexibility and adaptability in both career and academic spaces. The volume will be a key resource for researchers, scholars, and practitioners engaged in the interdisciplinary fields of learning sciences, learning analytics, and learning design. It was originally published as a special issue of The Journal of Experimental Education.

Aroutis Foster, PhD, is the Interim Dean, Professor of Learning Sciences and Technologies, and Director of the Games and Learning in Interactive Environments (GLIDE) Lab at Drexel University of School of Education. His research interests include games and learning, identity exploration, STEM education, and quantitative ethnography. He founded the Drexel Learning Games Network and serves on the boards of several journals and organizations related to technology and learning. Mamta Shah, PhD is a Senior Learning Scientist at Elsevier. She is also an instructor at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education, a Faculty Fellow at the Penn Center for Learning Analytics, and a member of the Board of Directors at The Miquon School.

Citation Information Notes on Contributors Introduction: Framing and Studying Learning and Identity in Virtual Learning Environments Aroutis Foster and Mamta Shah PART I. Learning, Instruction, and Cognition 1. Influences of Game Design and Context on Learners' Trying on Moral Identities Spencer P. Greenhalgh 2. Assessing Science Identity Exploration in Immersive Virtual Environments: A Mixed Methods Approach Joseph M. Reilly, Eileen McGivney, Chris Dede and Tina Grotzer 3. Spaces of Rebellion: the Use of Multi-user Virtual Environments in the Development of Learner Epistemic Identity Michael Glassman, Irina Kuznetcova, Tzu-Jung Lin, Shantanu Tilak, Qiannan Wang and Amanda Walling 4. Successful Learning Environments Support and Harness Students' Identity-based Motivation: A Primer Daphna Oyserman and Andrew Dawson PART II. Motivation and Social Processes 5. Context, Community, and the Individual: Modeling Identity in a Game Affinity Space Amanda Barany and Aroutis Foster PART III. Measurement, Statistics, and Research Design 6. Facilitating and Interpreting High School Students' Identity Exploration Trajectories in STEM Mamta Shah, Aroutis Foster, Hamideh Talafian, Amanda Barany and Mark E. Petrovich Jr. PART IV. Commentary on Virtual Learning Environments: Unveiling Learning and Identity 7. Operationalizing Identity - Studying Changing Selves in Experimental Learning Environments David Williamson Shaffer Index