The Time Factor: Leveraging Intelligent Agents and Directed Narratives in Online Learning Environments

• Main Authors: Greg Jones, Scott Warren
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: taiga
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.186.3491; http://innovateonline.info/pdf/vol5_issue2/The_Time_Factor-__Leveraging_Intelligent_Agents_and_Directed_Narratives_in_Online_Learning_Environments.pdf

Recently, there has been much excitement in the field of education about the emerging use of games, simulations, and other three-dimensional online learning environments as alternatives to traditional classroom experiences (Barab et al., "Embodiment, " 2007; Dede, Ketelhut, and Ruess 2006). Research is beginning to show that the use of this technology in educational settings may affect learning positively (Squire et al. 2005; Cox 2006). Online learning environments facilitate meaning making by providing a sense of presence and immediacy through enhanced communication tools and learning objects that help learners construct knowledge (Jones and Bronack 2006; Tuzun 2004). These environments expand current Web- and text-based methods for instructional delivery, facilitating student interactions, increasing student engagement, and enabling deeper learning (Jones, Warren, and Robertson, forthcoming). While this research is encouraging, the amount of time required for work in these environments to produce improvements in student achievement remains a major hurdle. Students learning in an immersive multiuser environment often require more time to achieve increases in formal learning outcomes than is needed with more traditional, face-to-face learning approaches. For example, research on the Taiga virtual world, a three-dimensional multiuser virtual environment (MUVE) developed as part of the Quest Atlantis project, showed that it took 30 hours or more of interaction with the learning environment plus several additional