Since 2006, when Empire State College first introduced me to Second Life I have been fascinated by a virtual-reality (VR) media that could allow me to bridge the distance between my students and myself and provide a creative, non-hierarchical environment where my teacher-education, science-education, and technology-education classes could meet and share experiences. In addition, the ongoing challenge of making distance education as networked, collaborative, community-building, and engaging as the best possible face-to-face environment has been the impetus for my over 10 year immersive, trial and error, learning and improvement, publication and dissemination, and teaching and learning journey. The images and videos shared here and in the attachments can only give a pale glimpse of the personal engagement and interest that I have seen develop in my own students and in an emerging coterie of virtual reality developers, particularly within the area of community, engagement and knowledge building. (NOTE: learners participate in this VR setting as avatars. Newer VR and augmented reality is allowing custom-developed, application-specific educational experiences but I am addressing the broad community-building VR, internet-networked environments.)

The effective practice that I would like to illustrate is the combination of creating, repurposing, and designing virtual spaces on my own (with very limited artistic ability) that have served then as a creative and learning-empowered environment for my science education, general education, and instructional technology education students. (Note: Presently, the open-source environment and the readily available (and customizable) settings bring these environments within the everyday practice of all online instructors.) The practice of having synchronous meetings from around the country within the shared “physical” simulation has allowed me to use the research-documented effectiveness of “telepresence” to build community. The environment provides a background. As with any online or web-based platform, the community and learning itself grows from the instructional and social interactions designed by the instructor into the course. Since virtual interactions can be easily videotaped, text chats saved, and online course assignments reviewed, I have been able to study different approaches and to document what works and what doesn’t, publishing this work through a number of different conferences and peer-reviewed venues (see the attachment with publications). I began my original work in Second Life, a virtual reality environment that Empire State College, had provided. However, as the cost became prohibitive and institutional support waned, I joined the open-source movement of educators and learned how to create my own environments – a task most do-able to any educator or instructional designer.

Thus, with a modicum of determination, stubbornness, and willingness to fail, I was able to create effective virtual reality environments. I even developed several graduate courses to teach others how to make such environments; I have over 20 students who are presently or have created truly amazing virtual works for their needs. Thus, my use and practice extends from the way I use virtual reality environments in my own direct teaching to the way that my virtual-practicum students are using their virtual reality environments to create learning and simulation experiences for their students or clients. Students have created islands to teach: help-desk training within a SUNY healthcare system, corporate-level videography, social studies (through immersion in 16th century Japan), social work practices with families, field science explorations, enculturation for living in America (to English Language learners), a simulation of living in the world with a physical impairment and much more. These students have been so excited about their work that they are becoming quite insistent that Empire State College use this as a platform to connect its many distance students — the college is separated geographically across New York State. This four-minute video shows how a student is using his VR environment to connect with parent educators in various urban settings— his sound recording is a bit choppy so click on to the Close Captioning https://youtu.be/us1nZ6fp9Ds. This 3-minute video https://youtu.be/g--48VtC0tc shows how a cattle-drive setting can be used to teach historical studies. Also visit the Resources-studentWorks-Courses attachment for more links to students’ works and to Creative Commons tutorials; open the PDF which contains PowerPoint slides and embedded notes for a rich pictorial visit to my students and my various environments and activities; and peruse my publications and presentations on VR to see the breadth and level of study of educational effectiveness. See the attached institutional copy of my latest publication on using VR and self-taped student videos to help prepare students for NYS high-stakes teacher licensure exams. But I mostly invite reviewers, SUNY, and Open SUNY to join my challenge.

THE CHALLENGE: although I would most like SUNY technology staff, designers, and instructors to take my three-credit graduate courses, I am here proposing a mini-immersion to take place over 4-weeks of one hour sessions where I will guide them through the basics of gaining VR access, exploring the multiple worlds my students and I have created, gaining basic building and design skills, and making a cool–looking avatar. Completers will get a badge of my own making or maybe one from Open SUNY (perhaps?).

I hope others can join me in these educational adventures that can turn online learning into a community experience. And, since these islands can be downloaded onto a local computer and uploaded onto an institutional server, I challenge more parts of the SUNY network to embrace and serve these learning opportunities. My band of intrepid student developers can serve as guides to ease newbies into this environment. It’s a bit outside-the-box of today’s LMS, Skype for business and webinars but it’s where imagination, community, and instruction can merge, and grow. It’s how higher education can build community for its online students, creating as rich and professional an online experience as any brick-and-mortar environment. This is a powerful and affordable platform that could allow SUNY to lead the way in immersive, collaborative, and personal distance learning. Take my challenge, and see for yourself!