Exploring student teacher roles in 3D virtual world projects
in modern language and teacher education
Ton Koenraad
TELLConsult
The Netherlands
Ton.Koenraad@gmail.com
Abstract: The increasing availability and diversity of web-based social networks is good news for education in
general and - because of their inherent communicative dimension- for language education in particular.
The authentic and interactive contexts they offer obviously provide interesting opportunities to open up the
classroom and support meaningful language practice and actual language use in written and oral modes.
Equally evident however is that new competencies are needed for teachers to successfully integrate effective
participation in these communities in modern language teaching programmes. In this paper we discuss the
implications of this conclusion for initial language teacher education. We focus on teacher competence
development to organize and run networked interaction projects involving synchronous computer mediated
communication in voice-enabled, multi-user 3D platforms. We refer to a number of studies and initiatives
reporting related curriculum experiments in teacher education and provide a more detailed description of two
projects we participated in ourselves. Finally we list the common elements in experiences with and conclusions
about approaches to prepare future teachers for the use of 3D worlds for language learning and teaching.
1. Introduction
The initiative of a number of universities, schools and teacher education institutes to collaboratively
explore the potential of 3D virtual worlds for language learning and the development of particular language
teacher competences can be said to have been inspired by a combination of developments in modern language
pedagogy, education and EU-related policies and initiatives1, teacher education in general and language teacher
education in particular.
The importance attributed to intercultural communicative competence (ICC) development and
collaboration between educational organisations in EU-policy documents2 in relation to the local implementation of
a competence based teacher education curriculum and the increasing relevance of workplace based learning
triggered the actual first steps to experiment with telecollaboration. A convincing number of projects in the EU Life
Long Learning Programme show that the Modern Languages-domain is fertile ground par excellence for
internationalisation, collaboration and project based learning in education.
Meanwhile, innovative trends in modern languages teaching pedagogy, inspired by Second Language
Acquisition (SLA) research, support a move away from structural views of language and related instructional
models and towards more constructivist, sociocultural approaches such as (post) communicative, collaborative and
content and task-based language learning (Nunan, 2004: 6-16). Also, with the accompanying focus on the
development of learner autonomy, an awareness is developing of the need to address the potential of social and
informal and game-based learning experiences.This calls for a different use of computers in language education as
the effectiveness of the computer’s traditional tutorial role is restricted to the training of form focussed issues and
memorization support (vocabulary, language chunks, grammar patterns). And –even more importantly – it will
greatly change the role of the teacher.
Although there are studies that demonstrate the feasibility of project work in networked language classes see e.g. (Felix 2003) - there is still comparatively little documentation of experiences and the related pedagogy in
mainstream education. Among other impediments, the lack of teacher and teacher educator competencies at
designing learning arrangements using web based tools, platforms, social networks and telecollaboration is seen as
a possible cause (Dooly 2009). Besides, this scarcity of installed practice in mainstream education impacts heavily
on the preparation of the next generation of teachers. Student teachers have, generally speaking, not experienced
this way of language learning in secondary education or, for that matter, in their role as students during their
1
For relevant documents consult: http://europa.eu.int/comm/education/policies/2010/objectives_en.html#basic
Action Plan 2004-2006 for language learning and linguistic diversity, available at:
http://europa.eu.int/comm/education/policies/lang/policy/index_en.html
2
language studies and consequently have not been confronted with related model teacher behaviour nor have they
had opportunities to develop personal perspectives on language learning and teaching in such contexts.
In the majority of the current teacher preparation programmes students are at best informed about
telecollaboration but they lack the practical experiences necessary for the development of the relevant teacher
competences. Yet, to be able to meet the demands of communication modalities in a globalising world and the
related, potentially network-based, classroom they will need the competences to arrange and facilitate project based
student learning with the help of tools for computer mediated communication (CMC) (Guichon 2009).
The opportunities the second-generation web technologies offer to remedy constraints in current language
education provision and the relevance of CMC in promoting the acquisition of foreign languages are being
emphasised by an increasing number of second language acquisition researchers (Warschauer & Kern 2000; Guth
& Helm 2010; Lamy & Goodfellow 2010).
The growing attention of teachers for the development of speaking skills, promoted by the implementation
of Standards specified in the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR) in a number of EU countries,
has also increased the interest of language teaching professionals in the affordances of innovative digital
environments such as video-web communication and voice-enabled 3D virtual worlds as students can collaborate
synchronously with their classmates, with foreign language learners elsewhere or with native speakers. In voicedenabled 3D virtual worlds students participate as avatars (participants cannot see the real “me”), can engage in
textual and voiced interactions with other avatars and can undertake all kind of actions (walk, sit, go cycling, sail,
dance, ride a car) in different virtual locations (a museum, a restaurant, a shop, the parliament, ancient ruins).
The realistic nature of the environment provides authentic learning conditions that are otherwise difficult to
recreate in traditional classroom settings.
This trend is demonstrated by the relative large representation of project partners (n=8) involved in
language teaching in the recently started network ‘Euroversity’3 involving nineteen partners from nine European
countries and Israel. This EU-funded, three year network project (2011-2014) aims to help organizations and
individual teachers in getting started with virtual worlds for the delivery of education and training in their
specific contexts. To this end a good practice framework will be devised based on the systematic collection of
experiences and expertise and the organization of knowledge and resources from previous projects.
Below we report in some detail on two projects (ViTAAL and NIFLAR) that were designed to
a) investigate the potential added value that integrating opportunities for engaging in authentic social interaction
with expert peers through virtual worlds has in language acquisition and ICC development and b) to provide an
experiential modelling approach (Hoven 2007) to serve curriculum objectives both for language learning and
language teacher education
2. The project ‘ViTAAL’
2.1 Introduction
In the project ViTAAL (2007-2008) a partnership of two secondary schools, their affiliated teacher
education institutions and an educational service provider worked together to explore activity designs to tap the
potential of voice-enabled, 3D virtual worlds to enhance the attractiveness of language learning and support taskbased methodologies with a focus on oral skills.
The project was inspired by the experiences with telecollaborative school projects and the provision of
technology-rich experiential learning in language teacher education (Koenraad 2005) and ideas on potential uses
of and educational projects in 3D virtual worlds as published (Svensson 2003; Molka-Danielsen et al. 2007)
Realization was possible thanks to a research grant by Kennisnet, the Dutch (NL) national Schoolnet.
Three pilots were defined. One centred around the virtual version of Language Village, targeted at
empowering a current, real-life assessment practice for lower secondary education. In a second pilot a crossmedia, adventure-like form of the WebQuest ‘ Panique à Bord’ was developed. A third pilot focused on
materials development for activity formats to promote informal learning. This involved the provision of online
events and ‘in-world’ fun activities such as Quizzes, fortune-telling and karaoke competitions to be offered in
both the 3D locations mentioned. A special website was developed to support planning of and registration for
3
http://www.euroversity.eu
events and the provision of materials (e.g. cultural information) and asynchronous opportunities for practice of
oral interaction tasks (Koenraad 2008). Below we will describe pilots one and two in more detail.
2.2 The Language Village pilot
A Language Village is a school-based assessment practice for secondary and vocational school pupils,
mostly beginner to intermediate level, gaining popularity in a number of European countries. It is a real life
simulation with settings created with the help of physical props as scenes for everyday communicative situations
such as a shop, restaurant, tourist information, camping site office etc.
This annual event - usually set in the main hall or gym of a school- is organized with the help of
teachers, native or competent L2 speakers taking on interlocutor and assessor roles offers pupils an opportunity
to show their communication skills in carrying out realistic tasks and/or solving authentic ‘problems’. A number
of language departments of teacher education organizations provide support to their affiliated schools by having
student teachers produce customized practice materials or taking on specific roles.
Over the years the Faculty of Educational of Hogeschool of Amsterdam has developed a special variant,
the Mobile Language Village. As a regular part of their curriculum student teachers offer the event as a service,
taking part in the local organization and providing the actual props. For more information on this mobile variant
see Eisberg (2007).
The rationale for the ViTAAL project then was to research if a 3D version of the Mobile Language
Village format could meet a number of the challenges the real life version brings with it, including:
limitations in the number of settings for communicative tasks and availability of competent interlocutors.
The permanent accessibility of a virtual version was also seen as a favourable condition for more practice of oral
skills on a regular basis as the organizational and logistic hassle prevents real life versions of the Language
Village to be realized on a more frequent basis.
Two schools participated, each with one class. The pupils were 13-14 years of age and had had two
years of French, their CEFR language levels ranging from A1 to A2. A blended approach was used involving
teacher-led f2f preparatory activities and so called in-world sessions with fellow pupils and student teachers as
mentors. A team of student teachers (n=18) of the Faculty of Education in Amsterdam were made responsible for
the production of the paper-based teaching materials.
The specifications for the classroom-based, preparatory training materials and the selection of locations in the
virtual village (such as a police station, a baker’s etc.) were based on an analysis of the content of the textbook
covered at the start of the project. The building of the virtual world using the Active World (AW) platform and
some additional avatars for specific roles (e.g. a baker) was done by a member of the school IT-support team.
Fig.1. Implementing the real life Language Village format (left) in a 3D World environment (right).
Three training sessions were organized for the local teachers and some interested colleagues. The
project ran for three weeks during which two lessons were spent on f2f exercises and two sessions in the virtual
world. Each student teacher was assigned to mentor 2 to 3 pupils offering opportunities for in-world fluency
practice. Online mentoring activities included assisting in familiarization with the interface,
rehearsing in-world tasks and activities, providing feedback on performance and advising on further preparatory
activities. On average student teachers spent 1.5 hrs in-world to help pupils prepare for their assessment session.
The sessions took place during regular lessons at school and after school hours, from pupils’ homes.
2.3 The 3D WebQuest ‘ Panique à Bord’
In this pilot a team of first-year student language teachers (n=7) were challenged to develop an
enhanced version of the WebQuest concept using interactive story development and embedding ‘live’, inworld
interaction tasks for the French classes of students in secondary education, aged 16-17.
The activity was part of a first-year Modern Language Methods course in which task-based approaches
and the LanguageQuest concept in particular were introduced. Applying the related design principles (Koenraad
& Westhoff 2003) the student teachers developed a detective-like problem solving CEFR-based task involving
inputs & activities leading to integrated training of a variety of language skills. The resulting LanguageQuest
was carried out by competitive teams (n=5) during teacher-coached f2f team sessions.
Fig.2. 3D Titanic SIM with additional objects for the Panique à bord’-Quest.
For the development of the original storyline, set on a 3D version of the Titanic, web researches, written
reports and in-world meetings and interviews with the avatars of the story characters (impersonated by the
student teachers) were needed. The keys to disclose the various assignments, dispensed through a specially
designed webquest template, were provided by the teacher based on the assessment of (interim) products of the
teams.
2.4 Evaluation
The project evaluation - based on data collected from a variety of sources (pre- and post questionnaires,
focus groups and teacher (educator) observations) showed that the majority of the pupils who filled out
the post project questionnaire (n=12) thought it was an interesting experience and reported to have spent more
time than usual on their work, also in after school hours. Half of the respondents felt they had learned more,
especially vocabulary, and were now better capable of talking about self, ordering things and giving directions.
They also reported greater awareness of personal skills gaps and the relevance of grammar and pronunciation
for communication.
The local teachers (n=2) confirmed that in general pupils were enthusiastic and they had noticed an
increase in motivation, more time on task and less inhibition.
The student teacher respondents (n=7) considered their participation in the project as a great learning
opportunity, particularly mentioning the instructiveness of collaboratively designing materials and practising
(online) teaching skills such as giving feedback to pupils. They also reported organizational problems (pupil
online presence and teamwork) and technical issues (voice functionality, AW-interface skills).
The teacher educators involved (n=3) considered integration of the project in the curriculum module a
great chance for linking theoretical input to practice and a powerful experiential learning opportunity in teacher
education.
3. The project ‘NIFLAR’
3.1. Introduction
The NIFLAR project (Networked Interaction in Foreign Language Acquisition and Research) was a
two year project (2009-2010) which received a grant from the European Commission within the Lifelong
Learning Programme. The project, a partnership of language teachers, teacher educators and student language
teachers and researchers from five European countries, cooperated to explore the opportunities and effects of
innovative e-learning environments for creating authentic and interactive contexts for foreign language learners
and for (future) teachers in a blended learning system. The project aimed to introduce modules related to the
pedagogic implementation of synchronous tools for language teaching in teacher training programmes.
In the context of this paper we restrict ourselves to the pilots in which 3D virtual worlds platforms were
used. The experiments using video web conferencing have been extensively documented elsewhere (Jauregi &
de Graaff 2009; Jauregi et al. 2010 ).
The project experiences reported below are largely based on publications about the project (Jauregi
Ondarra et al. 2011) and the case study description provided for the development of the good practice framework
of the Euroversity project referred to before. They concern (the preparations for) a language course (Spanish B1
level CEFR) offered at the university of Utrecht in blended learning modality. The course was compulsory for
the language students at Utrecht University; the pre-service teachers were recruited during their teacher
education programme on a voluntary basis. The development, design, implementation, and evaluation of the
course are summarized.
3.2 Pre-course preparation
3.2.1 Pre-pilots
The developing process for the project started in June 2009 with a number of pre-pilots. These were set up in
order to test the quality of the tasks developed for ICC and of the scenarios built for task accomplishment in
social encounters. The participants were twelve volunteers: seven foreign language learners of Spanish at B1
proficiency level (CEFR) from Utrecht University and five native pre-service teachers of Spanish from the
University of Valencia and Granada
3.2.2 Aims/objectives
The seven week course (February – April 2010) was primarily designed for Spanish language learners, who
would have to perform tasks with the help of Spanish pre-service teachers.
The objective of the course was to provide more authentic learning conditions that those provided by traditional
classroom settings for language learners, in order to improve learning and help achieving communicative and
intercultural competence. To this end five sessions were planned to take place in Second Life (SL). Pre-service
teachers, in their native speaker discussion partner role, would be given the opportunity to communicate with
real foreign language learners, engage in action research and get pedagogical, intercultural and digital skills.
With the material gathered in this course using virtual worlds, and with material from a parallel control group in
a classroom setting, research could be carried out to compare communication and intercultural competence
development results.
3.2.3 Environment and the learners
The course had a fixed base in Second Life, where participants would meet up at the begining of each
session, to then move on to other public destinations previously selected or holodecks4 suitably adapted by
members of the project. Fourteen language learners and seven pre-service teachers took part in the course and
they communicated in triads: two language learners – one native speaker. They were grouped by the language
teacher (who did not participate in the SL sessions) and language learners knew each other from the face to face
classroom sessions in the course.
4
Holodecks in SL, as defined in a blogpost by Nergiz Kern, can be simple to complex scenes, built in advance and packed
up which can then be created “on demand” by one click in a limited space.
None of the participants had previous SL experience. Prior to task sessions they all participated in an
introductory workshop and had access to video tutorials and written documents to become familiarized with the
environment. Before the first task there were a series of informal meetings to get to know the members of each
group.
3.2.4 Logistics and timetabling
The course was implemented as blended learning and language learners met twice a week (two hour lessons)
in a classroom with a language tutor. The third session was carried out in Second Life, where two language
learners communicated with one Spanish pre-service teacher. The virtual sessions were estimated to last an hour,
but in reality this ranged from an hour and a half to two hours. These sessions were compulsory in order to pass
the course. To organize the sessions students were to fill in a timetable posted on the project’s work space. As
long as they performed one task a week, they had the freedom to decide when they wanted to carry out the
virtual session. Due to the restrictions on the number of holodecks available for each task, only one group at a
time could make use of the holodeck for a particular task. This meant that time slots had to be respected very
carefully in order to avoid clashes, since two groups could not be doing the same task at the same time.
3.2.5 Course syllabus
The course syllabus was linked to the textbook language learners were following. The content of the virtual
sessions was also related to the textbook and each task/session was linked to a unit from their textbook as final
task. The virtual tasks were designed by a member of the project who was not the actual tutor of the groups, but
who was a language tutor with previous experience teaching that course. All tasks were tested in a previous pilot,
providing the opportunity to alter any aspects that did not work in the expected ways (modifying instructions,
changing objects, use of different locations, etc.). All tasks had the same format: a preparatory document and a
session document. In the preparatory document the objectives of the session were outlined and the general task
presented, and in the session document a step by step description of the task was given, including technical help.
The public SL destinations used in the tasks were inspected by the task designer first in order to judge its
appropriateness and the other resources needed to carry out the tasks, such as modification of holodecks. The
creation of occasionally required special items was subcontracted. The virtual session were 25% of students’
final grade for the course.
3.3 Course implementation
3.3.1 Technical issues and support
All participants took part in an introductory session to learn Second Life basic skills such as navigating,
using voice, chat and teleporting. During the sessions, and since at least one participant per group had to take
part from the university (due to the recording of the sessions), there was always a technician available on site.
The majority of the technical issues experienced were sound related and were solved by the participants
themselves or sometimes with the help of the technician. Other minor issues, like interaction with objects were
also mainly resolved by the students themselves, where members of the group helped each other. In the case
where major technical issues could not be resolved, text based chat was not an option to carry out the task and
sometimes sessions had to be rescheduled.
3.3.2 Interaction
The tutor of the course did not participate in the virtual sessions. Any communication related to task
issues was passed on to the task designer via e-mail and solved via e-mail or with a help session in world. The
members of the group communicated also via e-mail for timetable issues mainly and Skype for more personal
interaction. The beginning and end of the virtual sessions was used by participants for a more relaxed type of
interaction, when topics such as personal interests, studies, culture, etc. were part of the conversations. They also
had each other’s mobile number so that they could send a text message in case of last minute problems.
3.3.3 Resources
A detailed description of the tasks used in the course can be found at the project site The documents
include a general description of the tasks, task’s goals, technical specifications, preparation and session
document and a list of landmarks and other objects used. There is also a compilation of videos showing all tasks
to get an idea of what to expect from the interactions, as well as recordings from the participants reflecting on
their experiences [Link].
3.4 Post-course
3.4.1 Assessment
The virtual tasks were not assessed individually but as a whole. At the end of the course, a researcher
from the project (not the teacher of the course) viewed the sessions and awarded the grades based on descriptors
that were inspired by the scales proposed by the CEFR standards. Language learners also had to take an oral
post-test, whose results were later to be used for research purposes, however, test results were not part of the
course grade.
3.4.2 Evaluation
From the survey data and interviews it appears that the pre-service teachers had learned (1) how to use
and implement synchronous tools in language teaching processes to enhance authentic interaction in the target
language, (2) to develop adequate interaction tasks that promote intercultural communicative competence, (3) to
be aware of the problems foreign language learners face when trying to communicate in the target language and
to use pedagogical strategies to help learners overcome these problems making use, among other strategies, of
the multimodal affordances that the specific environment offers. As most positive points the language learners
reported: increased confidence and less inhibition when speaking and acquisition of new vocabulary and cultural
knowledge.
4. Conclusion
To promote a range of teacher competencies and skills relevant for initiating, coaching and evaluating
networked interaction in language education the pre-service teachers that were involved in the projects we
described were challenged to participate in three types of activities:
(1) designing tasks to promote intercultural communicative competence development
(2) participating in these tasks as native speaker interlocutors communicating with foreign language
learners
(3) researching task effects on communication, intercultural competence and language proficiency and the
affordances of the environments used.
They experienced how tasks can be carried out in SCMC environments respecting and taking advantage of
specific affordances. They reported to have become aware about problems FL learners face when trying to put
their message across in a language they are not very proficient in. They learned how to help their learners
overcome anxiety, and feel more at ease experimenting with the target language and culture. They learned to
analyze and assess sessions and transform critical episodes in pedagogical actions to be taken in the next session.
The teacher educators involved in these and similar projects are convinced that these experiences contribute
to the development of pre-service teachers’ competences to provide feedback on interaction, to assess linguistic
and intercultural growth (also see Dooly 2011), and to reflect on their own role as task designer and
teacher/interlocutor. More in general also Dooly & Sadler (2013) conclude that telecollaboration using WEB 2.0
applications, including virtual worlds, helps student teachers to link theory to practice.
In addition to organizational and occasional technical problems (Sadler 2007) and a preparatory phase
(interface training, personal introductions) other elements that these and similar projects appear to have in
common are: the involvement of student participants of methods courses, the research methodology used (action
research) and the challenge to design the project in such a way that a win-win situation is realized for all partners
involved (learning blends). Finally, what they all also share is a specific vulnerability in the sense of mostly
being the initiative of one or two individual teachers. Essential preconditions for sustainable implementation in
institutional curricula such as continuity and departmental support are as yet rarely reported.
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