An Experienced Austrian Educator's View on the 3-D Skills Implemented to Design and Integrate an Alien Mystery in OpenSim

Introduction

Goal-driven learning experiences in virtual learning environments often need to challenge traditional epistemological beliefs on learning and teaching practices in institutional contexts and offer a new “epistemology of practice” (Shaffer, Squire, Halverson, & Gee, 2005) where learning, socialization practices, identity, and skills are constructed in new ecosocial learning contexts. Second language educators, researchers, ICT professionals, and other practitioners in the field need to be skillfully adept at leveraging the semiotic resources of virtual learning environments in order to construct game-driven learning experiences for language learners that have potential pedagogical, learning, and socialization implications (see Gee, 2003, 2007, Thorne, 2008; Barab, Gresalfi, & Arici, 2009; Reinhardt & Sykes, 2012; Zheng, Newgarden & Young, 2012; Godwin-Jones, 2014; Hadjistassou & Molka-Danielsen, 2016). As Shaffer, Squire, Halverson, and Gee (2005) postulate, “The epistemology of a practice thus organizes (and is organized by) the situated understandings, effective social practices, powerful identities, and shared values of the community. In communities of practice, knowledge, skills, identities, and values are shaped by a particular way of thinking into a coherent epistemic frame” (p.107).