Virtual Reality in Interior Design Education: Enhanced Outcomes Through Constructivist Engagement in Second Life

This paper describes an implementation process of Second Life (SL) virtual reality as a pedagogical tool in an interior design foundations course. SL was found to advance learning, collaboration, engagement, and critical thinking among students who brought disparate levels of preparation. The case study presented represents a process evaluation approach, documenting and analyzing the development and implementation of the curriculum within an environment that was new to most stakeholders. Output measures reported include student evaluations of the course, peer evaluations of student products, and final grades. Important to successful incorporation of SL in interior design instruction is ensuring that the training students receive in SL align with the assignments they are expected to complete. Also important is the ongoing, cooperative support of university technical staff in providing the needed training and developing the virtual environment. Effective, informative hard-copy and on-line visual aids for students unfamiliar with SL or other virtual reality applications are also necessary. Alignment of SL activities and the course curriculum into a workable sequence was achieved by trial and error during two years of development. Since incorporating SL, the researchers have found that virtual reality enhances student engagement and outcomes.