ABSTRACT
Virtual presence has evolved from text-based chat rooms, in which participants interacted in real time by typing into their computers, through to web conferencing and virtual learning environments that include text, video, still images and graphics. Despite the negative publicity, higher education institutions have primarily used the virtual world Second Life. With the implementation of virtual worlds across education sectors, several reports and case studies have highlighted the barriers, problems or limitations that are impacting on the capacity for virtual worlds to be more fully adopted. The entertainment industry has helped to spearhead the development of virtual reality and virtual worlds; however, the potential for the application to education has been consistently noted. M. Bower recommends that the educational designer should consider the affordance requirements of the task with knowledge of the affordances of the technology to avoid the development of impractical implementation.
