The Second Life of Library and Information Science Education: Learning Together Apart

摘要

When people can earn their living in virtual worlds, go to classes and get their education in them or just go to art exhibitions or concerts, the barrier between the physical world and the virtual world starts to fade [3]. Van Kokswijk [10] sees this as a hybrid of the two worlds, as they get integrated into one another in the user's experience. He describes this phenomenon as interreality. We suggest that interreality may be an advantage in distance education, if it can minimize cognitive, emotional and social distances. Unlike according to the contemporary idea of treating classroom education and distance education distinct of each other, the emergence of interreality suggests a possibility to effectively bring them together. Following the theoretical reasoning of Gintautas and Huber [13], we propose explicating in practice the outcomes of a bi-directional immediate coupling of inputs from the real world and virtual world. If the inputs from both realities are highly correlated in reducing distance [4][7][12] in education, the resulting hybrid state of interreality could contribute to its success. The goal of this research is to study whether interreality can give outcomes and satisfaction for lectures in virtual worlds that equal face-to-face education and hence can enhance distance education.