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The study aimed to capture student experience during virtual internships by identifying the facilitators and barriers during their experiential learning journey. The students were pursuing their Master’s in Business Administration (MBA) program at a business school in India. The authors shed light on the impact of COVID-19 pandemic on the current education system, specifically experiential learning through virtual internships.

About 38 Semi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted from July to September 2022 with the students of a business school located in Pune, India. Interviews were transcribed and analyzed to generate new themes for ascertaining the facilitators and barriers to virtual internships. Interpretative Phenomenology Analysis was undertaken to analyze the lived experiences of the respondents.

Students viewed virtual internships positively in terms of mentor support, active learning, flexibility, and an easy onboarding process. Poor work-life balance, lack of peer learning and infrastructure issues were some of the barriers/challenges faced by the students.

The study discusses various managerial and administrative implications. The findings help educationists design effective pedagogy by drawing insights from constructivist learning theory, where students' active role during virtual internships must be given primary attention. Corrective measures in the pedagogy can be taken while designing a virtual internship, considering the barriers found in this study.

The themes identified in the study are a novel contribution to the growing body of knowledge on virtual experiential learning. The study empirically captures student experience regarding a relatively new phenomenon of virtual internships, which is the uniqueness of this paper.

The purpose of this chapter is to explore the Occupational Course of Study (OCS) program through blended learning courses offered through the North Carolina Virtual Public School. In this program, students take classes online with a virtual content area teacher and meet in a face-to-face setting with a certified special education teacher.

This chapter offers a practical exploration of the OCS program. Its intention is to offer insight into the perspectives of virtual teachers and face-to-face teachers and provide an understanding of how this type of blended learning has the potential to deliver high quality academic coursework targeted to meet individual learning needs.

This blended environment format is a viable method for helping highly qualified content area teachers and teachers with disabilities work together to meet the individual learning needs of students with disabilities.

The OCS program is able to support large numbers of students who need transition services. Evaluation on this program reveals that collaboration between various educational professionals supports learning outcomes for students.

Many K12 districts offer alternative diplomas for students with exceptionalities, with a goal of preparing students for their transition to postsecondary employment and independent living. This chapter offers a practical description of this program for the benefit of other systems that may want to consider this model.

Preparing future teachers requires teacher educators to share both theory and its translation to best practice. Traditional approaches to this learning process include textbooks, case studies, role-play, observation, and eventually fieldwork in a classroom. Understanding what their future students need or appropriately responding to situations in the classroom is far different than the reality of teaching in schools. Although case studies provide an opportunity for perspective taking, collaboration, and developing problem solving skills in a safe environment, it is still a relatively passive experience. The use of virtual worlds to create engaging simulations offers a possibility in bridging this gap between theory and practice. The School of Education and Human Services at Seton Hall University has designed a virtual world simulation to provide college students with the opportunity to be immersed in a virtual classroom setting in which they take on the roles of avatar teachers and grade school students who may require various modifications/accommodations. This chapter will discuss the design and implementation of this project. Data were collected on the students’ experiences in order to assess possible learning gains, affordances of the technology, and lessons learned for future educators who are considering the implementation of virtual world technologies.

The ability for learners to interact online via their avatars in a 3-D simulation space means that virtual worlds afford a host of educational opportunities not offered by other learning technology platforms, but their use also raises several pertinent issues that warrant consideration. This chapter reviews the educational use of virtual worlds from a design perspective. Virtual-world definitions are explored, along with their key educational characteristics. Different virtual-world environments are briefly contrasted, including Second Life, Active Worlds, Open Sim, and Minecraft. A wide variety of virtual-world uses in schools and universities are examined so as to understand their versatility. Key educational benefits of virtual worlds are distilled from the literature, such as the ability to facilitate 3-D simulations, role-plays, construction tasks, and immersive learning. Emergent issues surrounding the use of virtual worlds are also analyzed, including cognitive load, safety, and representational fidelity. One higher education and one school level vignette are provided in order to offer more detailed insight into the use of virtual worlds in practice. Recommendations for learning design and implementation are presented, based on the thematic analysis of contemporary virtual-worlds research.

Large numbers of nursing students and the COVID-19 pandemic made it necessary to relieve the pressure on UK hospitals to host clinical placements. One hospital innovated by providing a virtual placement online, immediately before an in-person placement. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the participant responses to the online virtual placement.

This was a pilot study evaluated after the placement, including a student survey (25 responses), four semi-structured interviews with students and four with staff in spring 2021.

High levels of approval of the innovation were recorded among both students and staff. Students were pleased to be taught by clinical experts, though some found it difficult to study at home and some found the hours long. High satisfaction levels may reflect the pandemic context: the placement reduced social isolation and the sense of education being interrupted. Participating students were in their final year of study, and the placement took place in the second year of the pandemic, so mutual familiarity and well-developed information technology skills may have made the innovation more acceptable.

The innovation has value and should be maintained post-pandemic to increase mental health in-person placement capacity and scaffold student learning.

This study added new knowledge to understanding about the utility of virtual placements in mental health nursing education.

The purpose of this paper is to describe development of a component in a management principles course to develop university students' virtual team skills. There were several challenges in creating and implementing this new component. The paper aims to describe how these challenges were addressed and discusses outcomes associated with this virtual team component.

This paper primarily presents a case study of the evolution of a virtual team education module. Descriptive data and regression analysis are presented to support specific outcomes.

After completing the course, participants indicated the virtual team experience helped them gain useful professional skills. Hierarchical regression analysis indicated satisfaction with the virtual experience and perceptions that the virtual team experience built useful skills that were related to willingness to use this technology in the future (controlling for age, gender, working experience, and team performance).

The training method was implemented in only one institution. Additionally, limited empirical data is presented.

Results can be used by others interested in implementing a virtual team training/education component in a university setting. Non‐educational organizations may find the information helpful in successfully introducing virtual teams to employees.

While computer mediated technology is increasingly utilized to educate and train students and employees, the process of effectively training people to optimally utilize technology, especially in a team setting, is not well documented. Additionally, this paper highlights factors that influence the acceptance of technology and willingness to use technology in the future.

The proliferation of inexpensive and accessible internet communication tools coupled with an increasingly geographically dispersed workforce has increased the use of virtual collaboration in the workplace. To prepare students for a virtual work environment, educators must provide classroom‐related opportunities to build students’ virtual collaboration skills. The purpose of this paper is to examine the use of virtual collaboration in the workplace, the implications for today's college graduates, and the need to provide students with experience in virtual collaboration. Finally, the paper provides a case study example of a course assignment to build virtual collaboration skills.

This paper explores preparing students to collaborate virtually through a literature review that builds an understanding of the challenges of virtual collaboration in today's workplace and the skills students must develop in order to effectively collaborate virtually. The paper then provides a case study example of a course assignment to help students build these skills.

This paper finds that virtual collaboration skills are needed for today's college graduates. Further the case study presented provides evidence that authentic course‐based assignments can help build those skills.

While research has started to explore the effective use of virtual collaboration in the workplace, the current literature lacks direction for educators to help build the skills of future workers to prepare them for virtual collaboration.

This chapter provides information on using virtual worlds for faculty and teacher professional development. The information presented in this chapter has been discovered through an examination of relevant literature with regard to utilizing virtual worlds in higher education. Among topics explored, the authors discuss the following: information regarding theoretical frameworks of teaching and learning, including social constructivism, experiential learning, and problem-based learning; the process for teaching instructors how to use virtual worlds across a variety of curricula; modeling of good practices in teaching and learning in a simulated environment; and the process of teaching faculty how to teach with virtual worlds. In addition, issues of access, technology needs, student training, expectations, and assessment within virtual worlds are discussed. Examples of faculty development including single workshops and entire conferences are shown with specific focus on successes and challenges of conducting these activities within a virtual worlds. In presenting these examples, it is hoped that individuals in higher education will gain a better perspective of utilizing virtual worlds in their practice.

This chapter explores how Jass Easterman (the author's avatar name) teaches education students concurrently, both pre-service teachers and postgraduate, in Second Life. It discusses how a virtual world can be a valuable teaching and learning tool for the whole group even though they have a variety of overall goals and learning outcomes. Jass brings distant university students located around the world studying at the one institution together to liaise with each other in Second Life. She has created an innovative tutorial model where students go on virtual tours, visit other educational institutions, attend guest lectures, undertake role play activities, and go on Web quests and learn basic building and scripting skills, all from their own homes. Adult learning theories and communities of practice, in a virtual world, underpin all activities. Why Second Life was chosen for these students and what the students say about this type of learning are discussed in this chapter. The value of this tutorial model will be explored and reflected upon and conclusions made of its efficacy.

This chapter synthesizes findings from the reviews of education using Web 2.0, social networking, mobile learning, and virtual worlds, in light of the earlier chapters on context, technology, pedagogy, content, and design. Benefits and issues associated technology-enhanced learning are generalized, with an important finding being the quite different ways that different technologies contribute to each. Twenty technology-enhanced learning design principles are derived from abstracting the Web 2.0, social networking, mobile learning, and virtual worlds literature. The benefits, issues, and technology-enhanced learning design principles are then related to one another by virtue of 13 clusters of concerns, namely pedagogy, access, communication, content representation, collaboration, motivation and engagement, vicarious learning and reflection, digital learning capabilities, assessment and feedback, student-centered learning, learning communities, protecting students, and teacher support. The analysis enables the general learning technology literature to be linked to concrete examples and evidential sources, so that educators and researchers can construct a deep and connected understanding of technology-enhanced learning design.