Petrina, S. & Zhao, J. J. (2021). 3D Virtual learning environment for acquisition of cultural competence: Experiences of instructional designers. In G. Panconesi & M. Guida (Eds.), Handbook of research on teaching with virtual environments and AI (pp. 17-42). Hershey, PA: IGI. 3D Virtual Learning Environment for Acquisition of Cultural Competence: Experiences of Instructional Designers Stephen Petrina & Jennifer Jing Zhao University of British Columbia, Canada INTRODUCTION Research in face-to-face and online classrooms suggests that students who have diverse cultural backgrounds present challenges if instructional designers fail to design culturally sensitive learning environments (Au & Kawakami,1994; Gay, 2000; Capell, Veenstra, & Dean, 2007). With the pervasive use of educational technologies, more and more online learning platforms have become easily accessible to global learners, often with diverse cultural backgrounds. How educational and instructional designers design curriculum and courses in virtual learning environments (VLEs) to best facilitate learning is a popular focus of research (Allen & Seaman, 2013; Chen, & Oakley, 2020; Mohamed, Schroeder, & Wosnitza, 2014). With advanced learning technologies (ALTs) integrated into games, online platforms, and virtual reality (VR) systems, questions of cultural competence are intensified. New technologies provide new affordances and options for instructional designers, and the complexity of design to accommodate learners’ cultural differences increases. Research suggests the need for instructional designers to be more aware of and responsive to cultural complexity during the design process, and to prevent developing culturally blind systems or unintentionally exclude cultural nuances, which results in culturally homogeneous educational resources or VLEs (Chen, Mashhadi, Ang, & Harkrider, 1999; Kawachi, 2000; Bentley, Tinney, & Chia, 2005; Young, 2008). Shortcomings of affordances are made abundantly clear as instructors transform traditional material and resources into digital formats for remote learning during Covid-19. Naïve assumptions that remote learning merely necessitates conversion of material from analog to digital prevail as students counter with expectations and demands for cultural competence and empathy. Out of convenience, most instructional designers and educators prioritized limited VLEs (e.g., learning management system) or video conferencing systems (e.g., Zoom). For more complex remote learning, 3D virtual worlds nonetheless have great potential. To contribute to research in this area, this chapter reviews research on the acquisition of cultural competence in education and explores six instructional designers’ experiences in virtual world design. To elicit responses and insights, we used OpenSimulator, an open-source platform for hosting 3D virtual worlds and the metaverse. The design of the virtual world went through multiple design-based research (DBR) iterations and was used to develop healthcare students’ cultural competence (Zhao, 2019). We recommend four future research directions, including cross-cultural instructional designer competencies along with research into cultural personas, avatars, and guest-host relations. Although since the late 1960s, “instructional design” (ID) has often been used interchangeably with “curriculum design,” “educational design” and “educational technology,” in this chapter ID refers to the design and construction of learning objects on a micro level and learning systems on a macro level (Geis & Klaassen, 1972; Laverde, Cifuentes, & Rodríguez, 2007; Nelson, 2013; Petrina, 2004). BACKGROUND This section presents a review of the literature regarding cultural considerations for instructional designers in VLEs. Culture shapes not only how people feel, value, think, and behave, but also how people