Designing and recording machinima to illustrate professional practice scenarios

Immersive virtual worlds, such as 'Second Life', have attracted widespread interest in recent years as platforms for online role-plays of professional practice scenarios. An alternative application of virtual worlds is the video recording of in-world role-play activities, "machinima", for later use as stimuli for class discussions or individual reflective activities. The scripting and recording of machinima to illustrate particular practice scenarios is seen as an alternative to recording video in authentic practice contexts, potentially addressing some of the inherent ethical and logistic issues. This paper describes the process used to design, record and produce machinima illustrating a series of classic classroom teaching practice scenarios as part of the Office for Learning and Teaching VirtualPREX project.