Principal Investigator
Dr. Leslie H. Jarmon
Faculty Development Specialist & Senior Lecturer
Division of Instructional Innovation & Assessment
Continuing and Innovative Education
The University of Texas at Austin
512-232-3302
Dr. Leslie Jarmon is a Faculty Development Specialist and Senior Lecturer at The University of Texas at Austin with the Division for Instructional Innovation and Assessment/CIE. She has designed and taught graduate level courses at UT-Austin since 1998 with the Office of Graduate Studies. Dr. Jarmon is perhaps best known for creating the world’s first multimedia digital dissertation to be accepted entirely on CD-ROM in 1996. She is Principal Investigator for the UT System’s statewide extension of operations into Second Life, a first-in-the-world initiative that includes 16 academic, medical, and health science university campuses, and thousands of students and faculty. She is a leader in the university’s entry into virtual world environments, specifically Second Life (SL), and she is co-founder of the Educators Coop, a virtual residential community of interdisciplinary educators, researchers, and librarians from around the world (educatorscoop.org). Her avatar name is Bluewave Ogee, and she serves as editor for several journals, has published research papers (see below), and has presented at numerous conferences on education and virtual worlds, including the American Educational Research Association, Best Practices in Education in SL, the American Sociological Association, the National Communication Association, and the New Media Consortium Symposium on Creativity. She serves on the UT System Initiative for Serious Gaming.
Current Editorship and Selected Publications Related to Virtual Worlds:
Jarmon, L. (2009). Homo virtualis: Virtual worlds, learning, and an ecology of embodied interaction. International Journal of Virtual & Personal Learning Environments, 1(1).
Jarmon, L., Lim, K., & Carpenter, S. (Eds.). (2009). Special Issue: Pedagogy, Education and Innovation in Virtual Worlds. Journal of Virtual Worlds Research. http://www.jvwresearch.org/v2n1.html
Jarmon, L., Traphagan, T. Traphagan, J., & Jones-Eaton, Lynn. (2009). Aging, Lifelong Learning, and the Virtual World of Second Life. In Higher Education in Second Life. (Eds.) C. Wankel & J. Kingsley. Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing.
Jarmon, L. (in press, 2009). Displays of Trust/Mistrust in Public Meetings. International Journal of Public Participation.
Jarmon, L. (2009). An Ecology of Embodied Interaction: Pedagogy and homo virtualis. Journal of Virtual Worlds Research 2(1). https://journals.tdl.org/jvwr/article/view/624/453
Jarmon, Leslie. (2009). Learning in Virtual World Environments: Social-Presence, Engagement, & Pedagogy. In Encyclopedia of Distance and Online Learning, (Eds.) P. Rogers, G. Berg, J. Boettcher, C. Howard, L. Justice, & K. Schenk. Hershey, PA: IGI Global. 1610-1619.
Jarmon, L. & Sanchez, J. (2009). The Educators Coop: A model for collaboration and LSI communication research in the virtual world. Electronic Journal of Communication, 9(1&2). CIOS.
Jarmon, L., Traphagan, T., Mayrath, M., & Trivedi, A. (2009). Virtual world teaching, experiential learning, and assessment: An interdisciplinary communication course in Second Life. Computers & Education 53: 169-182. Elsevier.
Jarmon, L., Traphagan, T., & Mayrath, M.. (2008). Understanding project-based learning in Second Life with a pedagogy, training, and assessment trio. Educational Media International, Vol. 45(3), 153–171. Routledge.
Jarmon, L. and Sanchez, J. (2008, October). The Educators Coop: A Virtual World Model for Real World Collaboration. Proceedings of the 2008 Annual Convention of the American Society for Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T), October 24-29, 2008, Columbus, OH.
Jarmon, L., and Sanchez, J. (2008). The Educators Coop Experience in Second Life: A Model for Collaboration. The Journal of the Research Center for Educational Technology (RCET), Vol. 4(2).
Jarmon, Leslie, Keating, Elizabeth, & Toprac, Paul. (2008). “Examining the Societal Impacts of Nanotechnology Through Simulation: NANO SCENARIO,” Simulation & Gaming, Vol. 39(2), 168-181. Sage.
Jarmon, L. & Keating, E. (2008, June). NANO SCENARIO: Role-playing to appreciate the societal effects of nanotechnology. Simulation & Gaming: An International Journal, Vol. 39 (2), 282-301.