Journal Aims

IJTEL fosters multidisciplinary discussion and research on technology enhanced learning (TEL) approaches at the individual, organisational, national and global levels. Its key objective is to be the leading scholarly scientific journal for all those interested in, researching and contributing to the technology enhanced learning episteme. For this reason, IJTEL delivers research articles, position papers, surveys and case studies aiming:

• To provide a holistic and multidisciplinary discussion on technology enhanced learning research issues.
• To promote the international collaboration and exchange of ideas and know how on technology enhanced learning.
• To investigate strategies on how technology enhanced learning can promote sustainable development.

Subject Coverage of Special Issue

This special issue seeks to bring together research, from different perspectives, on a range of 3D technologies that may be used to enhance or support learning.

Suitable topics may relate to, but are not limited to, the use of a range of 3D technologies in enhancing learning:

• Virtual Worlds
• Game-based Learning
• Immersive Simulation
• Augmented Reality
• Cross and mixed-reality
• Assessment in 3D environments
• Pedagogies for TEL in 3D environments
• Communities of Learners in 3D environments
• Standards and Interoperability

Submission

Prospective authors are invited to notify the intention to submit a paper by sending a one-page abstract to the editors by 6th August 2010 and submit the full paper by 6th September 2010.

Abstracts may be sent to the editors at cdk@it.uc3m.es or daniel.livingstone@uws.ac.uk Final papers should be submitted electronically via the InderScience online submissions system at: http://bit.ly/ijtel

Important Dates

• 6th August 2010: Title and Abstract deadline (optional)
• 6th September 2010: Full paper submission deadline
• 15th October 2010: Decision notification
• 12th November 2010: Camera-ready version
• Early 2011: Publication (tentative)

Guest Editors

• Carlos Delgado Kloos, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, 28911 Leganés (Madrid, Spain), cdk@it.uc3m.es
• Daniel J. Livingstone, University of the West of Scotland, Paisley PA1 2BE (Scotland, UK), Daniel.Livingstone@uws.ac.uk

Editorial Committee

• Ignacio Aedo, UC3M, Spain
• John Belcher, MIT, USA
• Josep Blat, Universidad Pompeu Fabra, Spain
• Darryl Charles, University of Ulster, UK
• Thomas Connolly, University of the West of Scotland, UK
• Abdulmotaleb El Saddik, University of Ottawa, Canada
• Lesley Gourlay, Coventry University, UK
• Miguel Lizondo, Deimos-Space, Spain
• Judith Molka-Danielsen, Molde University College, Norway
• Mariano Rico, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Spain
• Pilar Sancho Thomas, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain
• Kath Trinder, Glasgow Caledonian University, UK

Provisionally to be published in 2011 in Springer’s Human-Computer Interaction Series
Editors: Anna Peachey (Eygus Ltd / The Open University) and Mark Childs (Coventry University)

Invitation to Submit

We invite abstracts of between 500 and 650 words describing the proposed chapter. Abstracts should be supported further by up to 500 words explaining the theoretical underpinning to the chapter, and a brief summary describing how this chapter will contribute to the book. If the work has been previously published in any format, or is under consideration elsewhere, please indicate details of this with your submission.

Submissions should be sent as a Word or RTF document attachment by email to virtualworlds@open.ac.uk by 31 July 2010.
Authors will be notified of acceptance by 31 August 2010.
Final chapters, of between 8,000 and 10,000 words, will be due by 30 October 2010, before a double-blind review and revision period.
Completed manuscripts to be submitted on 15 December 2010.

Objectives

We anticipate that this book will:

• Explore how living, working and learning in virtual worlds is changing notions of who we are and how we mediate our identities;
• Develop understanding and awareness about the diversity of identity issues in virtual worlds;
• Contribute to the theory and development of good practice in identity management and research in virtual worlds;
• Propose visions for future practice and research relating to identity management and research in virtual worlds;
• Provide examples and case studies from key areas of professional practice.

+ + + + +

Aims

Between 1450 and c.1800, the wooden hand press was the standard type of printing press used in the West. We don’t know exactly what the first presses (as used by Gutenberg and his successors) looked like; however, by drawing directly on contemporary illustrations and surviving examples of the presses themselves, we do know that, from the sixteenth through to eighteenth centuries, the form of the printing press did not significantly change. In other words, we can say with certainty what kind of press was used to print Shakespeare and Swift, Newton and Linnaeus, Descartes and Kant. It is this kind of press that the Virtual Printing Press project will construct.

In teaching literature and history students (both undergraduate and postgraduate) how the hand press worked, tutors usually rely on photographs taken from relevant textbooks. However, these photographs are limiting: as the press is a complex three-dimensional machine standing over two metres in height, there are obvious problems of perspective, scale and detail in relying on a photograph. Students may be fortunate enough to be able to visit a real printing press and, on rare occasions, the press may be even be demonstrated for them. However, again, there are limits to how full an encounter this can be: students are unlikely to be able to work directly with the press, may only spend a short period of time examining it, and are unable – obviously – to take the press apart to see how exactly it works.

The Virtual Printing Press project aims to remedy these shortcomings by placing a highly accurate model of a hand press into the virtual classroom. Tutors and students can examine it thoroughly, from all angles; it can be taken apart; it can be interacted with; it can be returned to and reused.

The long term goal of the project is to create a working model of the hand press that is sufficiently accurate (in terms of the physical characteristics of the press) for scholars to use it for testing certain hypotheses about printing practice from the period.

Pilot study

Thanks to the good offices of Brett Lucas at the English Subject Centre, the project secured a grant of £5,000 to build a ‘massing model’. Graham Hibbert (Leeds Metropolitan) was approached to be the modeller. In consultation with him, and with Drew Baker of King’s Visualisation Lab at King’s College London, we decided to build the press in Second Life. However, the aim is to make a model that could be imported into a variety of other virtual worlds; also, if we are to achieve the level of interactivity we would like, we will need to develop our own platform.

Working directly from detailed plans made of an early eighteenth-century press held by the Smithsonian, Graham has now created a full model of the press. Because of the complexity of the press’s construction and the limits of SL’s prims, the model has been scaled at 1” to 1m, although we hope to be able to scale it down by a quarter.

A version of this press is available on the Loughborough University island.

Next steps

Following feedback from our printing press consultant, Alan May (who built the press that featured in the recent Stephen Fry documentary on Gutenberg), Graham is making some minor adjustments; he is also working on some limited interactivity. Once he’s ready with this, a new version of the press will be built on the Loughborough island.

Apart from labels for each part of the press, there are currently no supporting materials to guide visitors; we aim to provide some notes.

We were planning to use the press in our teaching this year, but the timing didn’t quite work out. In particular, Gabriel was hoping to incorporate the press directly into a printing course he was running, and so use the students to help develop that supporting material. This will be something for next year.

We have circulated details of the press on various academic listservs and generated a lot of positive feedback although it seems that few if any of the scholars had any experience with SL before, and a number baulked at having to sign up for an account and download special software.

Given the success of the pilot project, we aim to begin developing a major funding bid, ideally with an engineering department.

Resources

Second Life site: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Loughborough%20Uni%20II/70/60/21
Project site, including fly-thrus: http://www.virtualprintingpress.com/
Press blueprints: Elizabeth Harris, The common press : being a record, description & delineation of the early eighteenth-century handpress in the Smithsonian Institution, with a history & documentation of the press (1978)

Please email Simon Bignell (s.bignell (@) derby.ac.uk) if you would like a copy or to save paper you can download it directly:

http://previewpsych.org/BPD2.0.pdf

Getting Started in Second Life’ answers some common questions like how to set up in Second Life, what the rules of the world are, how to plan lessons and how best to help students use it effectively for learning. The aim of the guide is to present the basics in order to help lecturers experiment, rather than them getting lost in mastering the detail of the virtual environment.

Information includes ‘Common mistakes and assumptions’, and ‘Practical concerns for your institution’. As well as being useful for academics new to Second Life or virtual worlds, the document is also useful for those making a case for virtual world use within their institution.

You can download it, or order a print copy, from the JISC website.

Articles must be accessible to the generalist reader and relevant to the journal’s international readership. Contributions from outside the UK are welcome.

We are particularly interested in articles that:

• Provide a meta-analysis (review) of published educational research in this area.
• Provide models/frameworks for thinking about virtual worlds and how they can be used in education.
• Suggest ways in which future virtual worlds might be designed to enhance their educational potential (for example by drawing on techniques from online/serious games).
• Explore previously unpublished evidence about the educational benefits and/or pitfalls of using virtual worlds (in certain ways in specific contexts) – and in so doing provide exemplars of and guidance on the effective educational use of virtual worlds.
• Discuss the implications of virtual worlds for practitioners and ‘physical-world’ learning (including future education systems and learning in contexts where access to ICT is restricted).

Papers should have a clear focus on ways in which virtual worlds might impact on pedagogy and educational practice.

Articles should begin with a structured abstract, include up to six keywords, and should not normally exceed 5,000 words.

For further guidance on submission, including instructions for structured abstracts, see the journal website at http://www.informaworld.com/EdResearch – select the Instructions for Authors tab.

Articles must be submitted by email to the Guest Editor, Peter Twining at P.Twining@open.ac.uk by 14th July 2009 at the latest. Emails must be clearly labelled ‘ER Virtual Worlds Special Issue 2010 submission’. Late submissions cannot be considered.

The NMC snapshot is a global one, as opposed to the UK-only nature of the Virtual World Watch snapshots and associated surveys. The highlights can be found here, as well as downloadable summaries and results.

A few of the highlights, which may be indicative of trends (though it should be noted that we are still talking of small numbers of SL educators):

• This year 29% of survey participants report holding virtual office hours in SL; 37 of them (12%) have taught a class entirely in SL (up from 14 or 8% in 2007).
• The percentage who have been in Second Life for 1-3 years increased from 30% in 2007 to 56% this year.
• More then two-thirds are between 36 and 55 years old [Is this a surprise? This is the main age range for educators].
• Also similar to last year, about half of the respondents find time for Second Life by watching less television.

The primary activities educators are doing in Second Life remain the same. The top five activities that educators report as doing in Second Life have not changed from 2007:

• Random wandering (86%)
• Listening to presentations and talks (84%)
• Meeting new people (82%)
• Participating in meetings (80%)
• Building things (64%) 

These cards are for giving out at “Real World” (how that phrase grates after a while) events, the next one of which is the JISC Services Skills event in Oxford on Thursday 25th September. Andy will be talking about how virtual worlds such as Second Life can be used to support events.

He plans to do the whole talk in-world, to give the RL audience a better feel for what is possible. It starts at 15.30 (UK time – UTC+1) and runs for about an hour. In Second Life, he’ll be in the Virtual Congress Centre on Eduserv Island – drop in and ask questions during the talk.