W3 Article review- Farid

THE USE OF 3D VIRTUAL LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS IN TRAINING FOREIGN LANGUAGE PRE-SERVICE TEACHERS

  Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education-TOJDE October 2015 ISSN 1302-6488 Volume: 16 Number: 4 Article 9

The aim of the study

Because of the lack of researches in the use of virtual worlds to develop, train, and educate teachers teaching second language, this study is focusing on training the pre-service foreign language teachers through virtual worlds environments.

Method

The researchers have used triangulation methods in the study to collect data. So, they have used qualitative, quantitative, and descriptive research methods.

 The participants were 36 senior students in Hasan Ali Yucel Faculty of Education English Language Teaching Department in Istanbul University. The participants were given pre-test about willingness of online and virtual worlds learning. Furthermore, a questionnaire and open-ended questions have been used to gather the opinions about the experience in the virtual worlds.

Findings

1-  Most of the participants have used second life by touching. %79 of the students said that the interaction is often natural

2-  %85 engagement has been accomplished because of the 3D visuals in the environment

3-  %64 students think that practice in virtual worlds is overwhelmingly symmetric with the real-world.

4- Most of the participants are interested in virtual worlds and they have had high involvement.

5- The participant preferred to conduct lessons on second life, because of the technical problems which faced them.