Nowadays, thought movements and technologies that will change and transform current learning conception and learning environments and perhaps move those beyond what we know are becoming an important topic. Prominent couple as predecessor and complementary of each other among these thought movements and technologies can be considered as transhumanism and 3 dimensional virtual worlds. Principles presented by transhumanism as a thought movement and impacts of 3 dimensional virtual worlds as a developing technology will create important transformation in all aspects of human life including learning activities. To understand and imagine how this transformation will occur and what the effects will be, it is beneficial to explain and evaluate these two concepts.
3 Dimensional Virtual Worlds
Virtual worlds are defined as feeling of users to be in another environment other than his/her real environment and environment created by computer to enable user to interact with this environment (Schroeder, 1996). User in a virtual world creates an “avatar” which is a character that represents the user in simulated environment and user moves in virtual world with this avatar and interacts with other avatars and objects in virtual world (Baker, Wentz, and Woods, 2009). Effectiveness of being there illusion created by virtual world can be evaluated as at what level do users feel they are in virtual world and what caused this feeling (Heeter, 1992). It can be said that most important factor emphasized in definition of virtual world that could impact learning environment is feeling of “being there”. At this point, 3 dimensional immersive virtual worlds supported with virtual reality technologies are discussed.
In line with definition of virtual worlds, 3 dimensional immersive virtual worlds can be explained as follows (Dalgarno & Lee, 2010):
A computer-based, simulated environment in which users are able to immerse themselves, and within which they are able to, through their avatars (computer-based representations of themselves or alternative selves), experience, manipulate, interact with and/or create virtual objects and places that are graphically depicted in three dimensions.
There are two important key concepts that are related and emphasized in this definition. These could be given as immersion and 3 dimensional environments. It can be said that for a virtual world to be immersive, this world should be experienced by user in personal, social and environment manner in 3 dimensional environments. This experience can be provided by virtual reality technologies (Heeter, 1992). Technologies that completely involve perspective of user in virtual environments in terms of positioning of user in simulated virtual world in his/her unique way and exploring this virtual world with various sensory ways and interacting with this world can be called as immersive virtual reality (Osuagwu, Ihedigbo and Ndigwe, 2015; Psotka, 2015). With these technologies, users can experience i.e. experience being there feeling in virtual world with natural moves in real life and without any mediator between himself/herself and environment. User can fully commit to role of avatar in virtual world, take the steps necessitated by this role, feel the environment and have the feeling that s/he is doing all these in real world. Such role, under certain circumstances, can either be similar to human roles in real world or transhuman experiences in a fantastic world. At this point, where transhuman concept is reflected, transhumanism is discussed as another concept and a movement of thought.