This session explores how women college students negotiate in virtual worlds. Aimee used feminist methods to identify how women in an undergraduate communications class understand the psychological and contextual factors which influence their establishment of identity and interaction in a Second Life learning community. Preliminary findings suggest that issues of avatar choice and control, time and responsibility, and technical competence emerge as influential factors. This session provides insight into the instructional design of Second Life learning experiences in order to support equal access and participation for all learners.

You can’t be online all the time that your students are online. Most projects in teaching and learning in immersive environments begin on a shoestring. You don’t have a lot of support from your school or institution. You need to find ways to support the work the students and participants will be doing. Just meeting in an immersive environment is not enough. You need other ways to share, collaborate, and create content together. If you are part of a K-12 or university system that utilizes a content or learning management system, you may already have some of the support tools you need to surround your students with synchronous and asynchronous methods of collaborating and communicating and producing content. But do those systems have all the tools you need? Could there be more options out there? This presentation will showcase tools for collaborating, sharing, creating content, managing your learners, and offering the most engaging synchronous and asynchronous support tools to your immersive experience.

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World of Warcraft is typically played “alone together:” Players solo game content while chatting with friends in voice or text. However, from the beginning MMOs (massively multiplayer online games) have been built around the assumption that playing together, particularly playing with strangers, is inherently good. Game designers have evolved rules, penalties and incentives to push players together, whether they want to group or not. The ‘pick up group’ or PUG, is a product of social engineering, with its designers attempting to teach vital social, civic and political skills in the game space. This examines designers’ motives for countering demands for solo play, the player experience of encouraged sociability, and trends in the engineering of social play.

http://video.foxnews.com/v/4511179/video-game-class-offered-at-arizona-state-university

http://www.statepress.com/2011/01/17/professors-hold-class-in-%E2%80%9Cworld-of-warcraft%E2%80%9D/

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Elisabeth Hayes and John Carter McKnight describe an interdisciplinary university course that introduces students to community and governance in two virtual worlds, Second Life and World of Warcraft. Focus was on the collective class project, the formation of a class "guild," and how the combination of face-to-face meetings, along with guided and self-directed experiences in both worlds, affected the students' engagement and learning.

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It has been about 150 years since the documents we now know as course syllabi were first used in academia. The documents are rooted in the traditions of the information delivery and management models of education. See examples of next generation syllabi. The re-imagined course guides leverage 21st Century technologies and cognitive theory to provide a course communication and planning center. These documents blend the principles of Informatics, Experience Design, Cognitive Theories of Multimedia eLearning and Constructionist concepts to create living interactive resources which initiate the 'conversation' with students in a clear, approachable manner.

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Steve Zapytowski gives an overview of the vSTEM (Virtual Science Technology Engineering Mathematics) project at Kent State University - progress so far and still planning for the future as part of iLIVE (Institute for Learning in Virtual Environments)

Capturing Moments Through Machinima

Dr. Phylis Johnson and partner Lowe Runo show educators and others the potential of making machinima that moves beyond the mundane to a new level of storytelling that will captivate audiences, especially students. What is it that makes a good story, and how can that be expressed through machinima?

The authors borrow examples from their forthcoming book grounded in numerous interviews from the machinima community, as well as filmmaking research and experience, to reveal the fantastic and furious nuances of this expressive medium that borrows from animation, cinema and television, but has emerged with its own character. This presentation also shares an overview of the state of the machinima practice in virtual worlds.

See: http://slmachinimaarts.ning.com/

http://promag.ning.com/

http://www.machinimaguild.com/

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Coming Unhinged and Feeling Whole: Carbon Based to Virtual World Dialogue

Scott & Larry are both experienced facilitators and have created the Veteran – Civilian Dialogue; a social healing project designed to bring together veterans and civilians, in equal numbers, to talk about the impact of war upon both groups. In September 2010 they brought the VCD to the virtual world of Second Life and were amazed at the emotional impact and restorative effects these "virtual" sessions had on the participants.

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Find out about the fascinating neuroscience work being done with special EEG headsets to map emotions, engagement and thinking by monitoring brain patterns. Dr. Gibosn's team is from the School of Social Transformation, Equity Alliance at ASU,Arizona State University

Last year the sky fell in, or did it. Peggy explores all the new worlds of opportunity and online spaces for learning. There is no stronger advocate for innovation with K-12 kids education than Peggy so don't miss this inspiring presentation.

• Best Practices in Education