Empowering faculty communities for fostering and assessing student performance in virtual landscapes

This chapter presents a case study and a narrative of an experimental course, an undergraduate allied health interdisciplinary seminar, and its corresponding faculty learning community exploring how collaborative learning may be fostered in a virtual world. The objectives of the course included enhancing student technology literacy, engendering reflective practice, and creating a student-focused faculty learning community; additionally, the faculty learning community both inspired and was inspired by students, fueling innovative teaching practices which, as a result, have infused the college curriculum. Receiving mentoring from learning community members, students were responsible for the design, development, and implementation of a virtual solution to a student defined, healthcare-based, needs analysis. The last part of this case study provides explication of the RIME model of student and learning community assessment for use in teaching with a multi-user virtual environment (MUVE) which may, by extension, be applied to other emergent technologies and social media. This instrument assesses student learning outcomes in the areas of retention, immersion, motivation, and engagement. © 2011, IGI Global.