Perceptions of Educators in Higher Education regarding Educational Affordances of Virtual Worlds in Turkey

Abstract

The primary aim of this study is to develop a deeper understanding of educators' perceptions and feelings in using virtual worlds (VWs) for their teaching in Higher Education. VWs have been used by a great numbers of the institutions across the various disciplines in developed countries, yet few implications can be seen and there is still lack of awareness amongst the educators in Turkey. Likewise, the literature is well established around teaching and learning within VWs, this study seeks to find out teaching approaches and methods specifically used in their practices from the educators' perspectives. Therefore, in our work, we specifically examine whether educators perceive any significant pedagogical advantages of VWs as an educational environment. This study includes educators from different universities and disciplines. In-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted into SL to gather the data. We analyzed the data collected through chat logs by using the general inductive approach in order to construct emerged themes. We draw the conclusion by discussing educational benefits and limitations of VWs in Turkey context and by recommending how educators could adopt VWs in their teaching practices.