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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.

Experiential learning focuses on learners, their activities, experiences, and how they process and reflect upon them. Experiential learning about sustainable development in general and about Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in particular has to consider specific challenges of sustainable development, such as interdisciplinarity, trade-offs, conflicts of interests, ambiguities, as well as the need for critical thinking, creativity, and communication skills. Although experiential learning offers a broad range of benefits, well-documented course designs are rare, especially in business education. The purpose of this chapter, therefore, is to present a course design that we have implemented more than 50 times over the last 10 years. By providing insights into the course design, its main components, and the experiences we have gathered from it, we hope to inspire and motivate other educators to apply similar methods of experiential learning in relation to the SDGs in business education. The modular course concept consists of a kickoff meeting, three thematic trainings, three academic assignments, and two days of simulation games, role-playing, group exercises, and several rounds of reflection and evaluation. In the following sections, we describe the core elements of our course design, provide insights into success conditions and potential pitfalls, explain how the course can be adapted and replicated, and discuss the requirements for experiential learning.

This chapter presents a poverty simulation as a critical pedagogical tool that breaks down preconceptions and provides information about real-life challenges experienced by those who are poor. It allows students to develop the critical thinking skills, perspective-taking, and empathy. It provides an opportunity to take social and intellectual risks, and motivates civic engagement for positive social change. As such, this chapter contributes to the volume’s focus on curriculum and pedagogical changes using education to promote social change. Simulation participants attempt to successfully negotiate four 15-minute weeks within families of various sizes and resources. At the conclusion of the simulation, participants take a few minutes to reflect in writing on their experience. Students identify and discuss the social structures that they felt helped to perpetuate their poverty, as well as how micro-level interactions (i.e., with service providers, teachers, police, people in their neighborhood) affected their outcomes. Results show students increased understanding of the social issues contributing to poverty as well as consequences of poverty, and they report an increased desire to take action to affect positive social change in their community. The chapter concludes with thoughts and recommendations on how students from various disciplines could benefit from this poverty simulation.

The social and environmental challenges facing our society, coupled with financial scandals and crises, have led to increased focus on and expectations for corporate social responsibility (CSR) (Ditlev-Simonsen, 2009; Knox, Maklan, & French, 2005; Midttun, 2007; Samuel & Ioanna, 2007). However, in order to meet this expectation, business students need education in the CSR field. The amount of attention to CSR in business education varies widely (Evans, Treviño, & Weaver, 2006) and the lack of a CSR curriculum in some countries has been severely criticised, with calls for more focus on the subject (Aronsen & Bue Olsen, 2009). In Norway, for example, propositions to the Parliament about CSR urge The Research Council for Norway to pursue and strengthen their programme for financing research in this field (Utenriksdepartementet, 2009). CSR addresses normative and ethical issues, and students’ self-awareness, attitudes and understandings of others are key elements (Banaji, Bazerman, & Chugh, 2003). CSR-related situations comprise a set of dilemmas with no absolute ‘right’ or ‘wrong’. In this sense CSR education is different from most of business school education format, and therefore requires different educational tools.

Higher education institutions (HEI) are acknowledged as a key driver for the development of sustainable societies, so much so that some profess education for sustainable development to be the most fundamental of the United Nation’s (UN) 17 sustainable development goals (SDGs). This chapter provides an overview of the chapters in the book: Higher Education for the SDGs, divided into two themes, namely (i) Research from the Global North and Global South and (ii) Rethinking curriculum.

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 pedagogical benefit of active learning environments such as simulations within University teaching is widely recognized and there is a burgeoning literature on their impact (Raymond & Usherwood, 2013; Schnurr, De Santo, & Green, 2014). Much of the empirical evidence to date has mobilized quantitative data drawn, for example, from Likert scale questionnaire responses. There remains an absence of qualitative studies that explore the in-depth views of participants involved in simulation activities and this chapter goes some way to filling that void. This chapter uses an expanded dataset comprising responses to open-ended questions gathered via a pre- and post-simulation questionnaire completed by participants at five secondary school-based EU simulations undertaken in 2017 and 2018 on the topic of the Brexit negotiations over the freedom of movement. It builds on earlier work which demonstrated that simulations can be an effective University outreach and recruitment tool to widen participation in and raise aspirations toward entering higher education (Heard-Lauréote, Bortun, & Kreuschitz, 2019) by analyzing the experience of approximately 100 secondary school participants who undertook the simulations. By exploring the educational value of EU simulations as perceived by participants, this chapter provides a snapshot of the pedagogical impact of this type of activity to the benefit of those devising such activities for delivery in the future.

Educators are increasingly required to develop creativity and entrepreneurial capabilities amongst students, yet within the fields of entrepreneurship and innovation these are presented as separate processes. We explore the theoretical and conceptual similarities and differences between these processes, and relate this to a range of experiential and digitally enhanced learning activities in formal education settings.

We present a conceptual model of the iterative nature of creativity and entrepreneurship as separate cognitive and social processes leading to aesthetic or sense-making outcomes. This leads to a discussion of how these processes may be experienced by students within an educational setting.

We propose a framework of learning activities which support the development of creativity through teaching entrepreneurially, at primary, secondary, and tertiary education levels. A range of different approaches is critically evaluated according to their relevance, including business planning, simulations, roleplay, co-creation, and flashmobs. Flashmobs are proposed to be most suitable and an outline learning activity design is mapped in detail against creative and entrepreneurial processes.

This chapter supports educational practice and research on learning through entrepreneurship in allowing educators and researchers to evaluate how learning activities may directly contribute to students’ learning through experience and the development of their creative and entrepreneurial mind-set.

This chapter is of value to educators as it explains how creative and entrepreneurial processes may be experienced by students through different forms of learning activity. It is of further value to research on entrepreneurial learning in considering how the creative process may inform entrepreneurial action.