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Art Education Avatars in Action

Learning, Teaching, and Assessing in 3D Virtual Worlds

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Serious Educational Game Assessment

Abstract

Emerging 3D Virtual World (VW) technology offers great opportunities for 21st century art education. Such virtual worlds are visualized and built by their residents. In these 3D visual communities, multiple users at different locations can communicate, collaborate, and share with one another through a character representation –an avatar – in real time. Depending on its purposes, a VW could be a virtual environment for gaming, social networking, learning, business, commercials, recruiting, and entertaining, or the VW can also feature an integration of a combination of purposes. Among current 3D VWs, Second Life (SL) is the most popular and highly recommended as one of the best 3D virtual learning environments (VLEs) for teaching and learning (Chodos, Stroulia, & Naeimi, 2009; Herold, 2009) due to its hyper-real 3D visual images, unique immersive power, and intensive interaction (Lu, 2008), as well as its potential for collaborating, networking, and learning (Thompson & Garetty, 2009).

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Northern Illinois University, DeKalb, USA

    Lilly Lu

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  1. Lilly Lu
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. George Mason University, Fairfax, VA, USA

    Leonard Annetta

  2. Clemson University, Clemson, South Carolina, USA

    Stephen C. Bronack

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© 2011 Sense Publishers

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Lu, L. (2011). Art Education Avatars in Action. In: Annetta, L., Bronack, S.C. (eds) Serious Educational Game Assessment. SensePublishers. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-6091-329-7_13

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