Crossing boundaries: Learning and teaching in virtual worlds

The January 2010 special issue of the British Journal of Educational Technology presents papers on virtual-world environments into teaching and learning practices. A theme that is present in all papers in this special issue is that of sociability and the capabilities of VirtualWorlds to support groups or communities of learners. Dalgarno and Lee review the unique characteristics of virtual worlds, identifying opportunities for researchers and practitioners to use virtual worlds in education in relation to the potential learning benefits they provide. Bellotti and colleagues in this issue focus on describing the development of tools and processes that allow for the development of re-usable learning tasks that can be embedded across virtual worlds. Veletsianos and colleagues focus on intelligent and conversational pedagogical agents/avatars. The issue ranges from the directions of research and practice in the use and application of virtual worlds for learning and training.