This article theorizes the functional relationship between the human components (i.e., scholars) and non-human components (i.e., structural configurations) of academic domains. It is organized around the following question: in what ways have scholars formed and been formed by the structural configurations of their academic domain? The article uses as a case study the academic domain of education and technology to examine this question. Its authorship approach is innovative, with a worldwide collection of academics (99 authors) collaborating to address the proposed question based on their reflections on daily social and academic practices. This collaboration followed a three-round process of contributions via email. Analysis of these scholars' reflective accounts was carried out, and a theoretical proposition was established from this analysis. The proposition is of a mutual (yet not necessarily balanced) power (and therefore political) relationship between the human and non-human constituents of an academic realm, with the two shaping one another. One implication of this proposition is that these non-human elements exist as political 'actors', just like their human counterparts, having 'agency' - which they exercise over humans. This turns academic domains into political (functional or dysfunctional) 'battlefields' wherein both humans and non-humans engage in political activities and actions that form the identity of the academic domain.

Professional experience (or practicum) is problematic within teacher education courses because preparation for, and the quality of, placements can be inconsistent. Preservice teachers can commence their first placement without some of the requisite skills and off-campus pre-service teachers do not always have opportunities to practise any ski lls at all pre-placement. VirtualPREX is an innovative approach to professional experience preparation, providing opportunities for practice in a virtual world such as Second Life . In this chapter the authors outline the rationale for this innovation and then report on the data from the pilot trials of the VirtualPREX role plays where pre-service teachers role-played the teacher and students in a Second Life virtual classroom. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the next steps in the project.

One major element of supply chain management education is helping learners to grasp the complexity, the challenges, and the efficient management of the multiple dimensions in supply chains. Each decision made can 'ripple' through supply chains and have serious repercussions that may include causing millions of dollars in damage or triggering a chain of events that degrade the quality of life for people, society, or the environment. We can teach relevant theory and train learners for some situations that do not require immediate responses. However, we remain disadvantaged by the constraints of time and space; observation of a real supply chain is often unpractical, and lengthy times for transports exceeding any class duration. In this paper, we present the nDiVE project which creates a supply chain story to immerse learners, provide an authentic experience in a realistic environment, and apply traditional and advanced gamification mechanisms to engage and motivate learners.

Despite significant and rapid technology improvements, educators have frequently failed to make use of the new opportunities to create more authentic learning scenarios. Virtual worlds offer an attractive proposition to create 3D representations of real business environments to provide an authentic learning activity for higher education students to take part in. However, the controls and displays are still clunky and unnatural, reducing the opportunity for students to immerse themselves in the event and focus on experiential learning. To overcome this challenge we examine the role of using a headset display that allows the user to change perspective with a flick of the head, improving their ability to 'feel' part of the environment, and thus increase their immersion in the activities that they are engaged in through more realistic control and improved perspective in the virtual environment. A series of experiments are conducted comparing the technology to established technologies and the level of control exerted by the learner (e.g., they either 'control' or they 'passively observe' as someone else controls). These experiments provide evidence that consumer-technology can improve immersion and equip educators with an affordable instrument to present classes that learners 'take more seriously'.

The emergence of any new educational technology is often accompanied by inflated expectations about its potential for transforming pedagogical practice and improving student learning outcomes. A critique of the rhetoric accompanying the evolution of 3D virtual world education reveals a similar pattern, with the initial hype based more on rhetoric than research demonstrating the extent to which rhetoric matches reality. Addressed are the perceived gaps in the literature through a critique of the rhetoric evident throughout the evolution of the application of virtual worlds in education and the reality based on the reported experiences of experts in the field of educational technology, who are all members of the Australian and New Zealand Virtual Worlds Working Group. The experiences reported highlight a range of effective virtual world collaborative and communicative teaching experiences conducted in members' institutions. Perspectives vary from those whose reality is the actuation of the initial rhetoric in the early years of virtual world education, to those whose reality is fraught with challenges that belie the rhetoric. Although there are concerns over institutional resistance, restrictions, and outdated processes on the one-hand, and excitement over the rapid emergence of innovation on the other, the prevailing reality seems to be that virtual world education is both persistent and sustainable. Explored are critical perspectives on the rhetoric and reality on the educational uptake and use of virtual worlds in higher education, providing an overview of the current and future directions for learning in virtual worlds.

This paper addresses the largely 'inauthentic' pedagogical approaches in current classroom and distance-learning environments, and will propose a methodology that utilises existing technologies to provide an immersive and authentic experience in education; that is to bridge the gap between the academic perspective and the real-world requirements. Industry postulate that recent graduates lack requisite skills, are often ignorant of the workings of company cultures, and are uncertain how to transfer their university-acquired theoretical knowledge to effective practice. We propose an environment that increases authenticity through inclusion of real-life complexity modelled in an immersive scenario, links scenarios into a comprehensive supply chain that supports exchange of information and repercussions/effects from actions between modules, and includes gaming mechanisms to increase student engagement further. In particular, the gaming mechanisms encourage student engagement (and better manage their interaction/learning process with in a stepwise fashion, rather than 'throwing them in the deep end'), reflection, and learning from the flow-on effects of an interlinked immersive, authentic, virtual, awesome, environment.

This paper is about the role of authenticity and emotion to aid learning in immersive virtual environments; in particular the occupational health and safety in the operations and supply chain industry. With the introduction of relatively low cost head-mounted displays such as the 'Oculus Rift', it is now feasible to introduce environments that are more immersive and authentic; and allow for further experiments on induced and experienced emotions. This article describes an experimental design to evaluate how different levels of authenticity, immersion, and emotion affect learning retention, and how they relate to each other. The container terminal scenario prepares students for site visits, showing the health and safety risks by simulating the consequences of accidents and mistakes in a work place that may cause injury or death.

The higher education community has embraced the use of virtual worlds for teaching and learning. There have been many publications produced over recent years on the efficacy of virtual worlds as a teaching and learning tool. However, even though there has been increased usage, there has not been comprehensive research on using a virtual world to practise teaching in a way that is simple to use and provides a variety of scenarios for use by educators in a risk-free environment. VirtualPREX, the term coined for this project, provides this. The VirtualPREX project, part of an Office for Learning and Teaching (OLT) two year project grant, explored the validity of pre-service teachers using a virtual world to practise teaching skills prior to undertaking professional experience. Second Life was the virtual world chosen for this research as it is a tested environment and three of the participating institutions jointly owned land that could house the VirtualPREX classrooms. Additionally, a number of the project team were familiar with the Second Life environment. A classroom and playground theme had already been created, making it an ideal platform for the creation of more VirtualPREX classrooms. ... This report draws on research conducted by project team members from UNE, CSU, Curtin, RMIT and ACU over the two years from 2011 to 2012. Data was collected from surveys, observations and discussions. The research sought to examine the virtual world space created for the VirtualPREX project for pre-service teachers to undertake practice teaching and assessable tasks. The aim was to develop the space, the role-play scenarios and bots for teaching in an authentic setting to be used worldwide upon completion. The study set out to provide the higher education community with guidelines and recommendations to encourage the use of the virtual world classrooms and assessable tasks with pre-service teachers.

The moment of truth for a learner occurs when the acquired knowledge and trained skill set has to be recalled, practised and performed outside of the safe environment we find in the classroom. Reality does not provide the range of experimental set-ups where the experiment serves the demonstration of learnt theory but includes all the side effects that influence the outcome. The guidelines in textbooks, or instructions in the classroom, are replaced with an unsupervised environment where decisions include the selection of tools and methods as well as further attributes like sequences, colleagues, safety, resources, effectiveness or efficiency. In a real-world setting, failures can result in serious consequences; there is no reset button or option to go back in time for another run.

As students increasingly engage with alternative social networking (or realities) there is a scope for educators to explore whether they pose opportunities for rethinking learning and teaching spaces. The authors argue that there is a requirement to shift away from mapping traditional thinking about what constitutes a learning experience when considering virtual worlds. This chapter draws upon two case studies that have provided two distinctly different learning designs for Logistics students and pre-service teachers. These cases, alongside a comprehensive review of the use of virtual worlds in education will draw out issues and factors which need to be considered when pursuing virtual worlds as learning spaces. Specifically, discussion and recommendations will have a focus on pedagogical, organisational, equity and access, cultural, economic and social factors relevant to the use of virtual worlds in distance education.