Implementing Collaborative e-Learning Techniques in Collaborative Virtual Environments: The Case of Second Life

This paper reviews and compares the most promising collaborative virtual environment platforms, which have been used or proposed for supporting educational activities in terms of their potential to support collaborative e-learning. The most promising environment according to the results of this review is Second Life. Second Life is further examined by validating the platform's features, philosophy and policies against some basic design principles for collaborative virtual learning environments in order to better assess its design adequacy for online learning. Furthermore, this paper presents the features that we have implemented within the Second Life platform, in order to facilitate the jigsaw collaborative e-learning scenario. Finally, we present a case study concerning the evaluation of Second Life by undergraduate students in order to assess its potential to support collaborative e-learning techniques.