All Annotations of Learning to Teach in Second Life «[Preview]

saved by11 people, first byRose Ann Morris on 2008-05-26, last bySue Shick on 2008-08-13

• Our experience suggests that educators can use SL in combination with a conventional VLE to enhance the experiences of distance learners, and benefits can be achieved with relatively little technical expertise.

• We found that the SL sessions contributed to the social aspects of the distance course, supporting student confidence and engagement (and thus possibly retention) in the process. Students commented, for example, that the SL sessions were

  
  

  interesting in that I felt as though I was actually meeting the rest of the class for the very first time (from Af’s report).

• I could feel the ‘real class’ when I saw bunch of you gathering at the outside of the ground floor. I felt that finally I would meet all my classmates (even though it was not real). Can you imagine in real life when you meet your classmates for the first time and you will automatically introduce and ask around about people? It was fun (Ae’s report)
• n all honesty, I felt I learnt more from the single ‘lecture’ in Second Life than I have done through the weekly discussions on Blackboard. That’s not to say Blackboard is of little use or Second Life is a revelation in terms of teaching and learning: the fact it was face-to-face and as close to a real lecture as we have had on this module made a great deal of difference. (G’s report)
• Second Life sessions were regarded as anarchic, chaotic, ‘live’, motivating, compelling and nerve wracking.
• Second Life sessions were regarded as anarchic, chaotic, ‘live’, motivating, compelling and nerve wracking.
• [In Second Life] There is the need to keep up and be seen to be active - little time to think. So I thought the second session was great with the small groups.
• when making a posting on Blackboard, I do put a lot of thought into it - I often type them up in Word first, read them, correct mistakes, and then post onto Blackboard.
• But what is missing from blackboard, I think, is the sense of a class as a social entity. The academic [side of it is] really well covered - students read academic journals, and are given tasks that are potentially more intellectually sophisticated than what they might be asked to do in class. In Blackboard I mean
  
  Carr: right…So ‘content’ works well in Bbd…
  
  CP: But the sense of a group going through this together isn’t really there, apart from a few highly enthusiastic students. And my guess is, that must remove some of the pleasure of studying, but also the richness of the experience, of discussion between students
  
  Carr: and that’s partly why they were so ‘buzzed’ about SL?
  
  CP: Yes, they didn’t want to leave the place.
  
  (For a longer excerpt of this interview, see appendix 1).
• It was good to bump into other people who were in the same boat as me. […] It was good to see avatars helping each other to learn new tricks by giving each other instructions using the chat facility and also showing each other how to actually do something. (Student report, I.)
• The Second Life was a good experience but at times I found it to be very confusing when everyone started to say things at the same time. It was also difficult to know who you are talking to as many people gave their avatar a different name to their own.
• The Second Life was a good experience but at times I found it to be very confusing when everyone started to say things at the same time. It was also difficult to know who you are talking to as many people gave their avatar a different name to their own. (If’s module debrief)
• I initially did not like Second Life because I was familiar with World of Warcraft. WoW felt smooth, [but] Second Life did not feel streamlined. The constant freezes and crashes I have experienced in SL did not help either. The empty nature of the world was a bit disappointing. And I do remember one instance of logging into SL where I walked into an area with music playing that was rather ‘rude’. It did put me off a bit, and I went straight back to WoW! (Student AM interview)
• As this implies, SL is time consuming, even before classes start. Students collaborated on Blackboard to assist their peers through this process.
• e asked the students to sit down on the grass. A few sat down straight away, but the majority of avatars walked in circles pointing at the sky and bumping into each other, while the text box was deluged with requests for instructions. Those teaching an entire course in SL would face new users at term commencement, and (potentially) expert users by term’s end.
• One issue that relates to competence that will need to be taken into account when planning sessions is communications and the text box. This involves the lines of text typed by users to ‘chat’ to each other. Users can choose to have the text appear in a box on the screen, or as ‘speech bubbles’ floating over their avatar’s head. Managing to follow and input text-based discussions is an acquired skill. In discussions with experienced groups, the material in the text box tends to ebb and flow, incorporating asides and jokes, as well as serious exchanges, questions and commentary. Following chat involves ‘surfing’ the text. We found ourselves using chat for class content and ‘talking to everyone’ and using the in-world instant messaging (IM, IMing) among ourselves for traffic control, directing lost people or latecomers. We have written about the distribution of these roles across the team on the project blog.
• Managing to follow and input text-based discussions is an acquired skill.
• ‘talking to everyone’ and using the in-world instant messaging (IM, IMing) among ourselves for traffic control, directing lost people or latecomers.

• With a text-based discussion in Second Life, when one nominated person ‘talks’, it feels very organised, but it can get boring very quickly. When everyone talks, some students enjoy it, and others feel like they are drowning.

  
  

  The only disadvantage I found in participating in online virtual worlds it was that when it involves lots of people its harder to know who is talking; you have to rush and write your ideas because the people write their opinions very fast and the subject of the conversation changes rapidly. (Student report, M)

  
  

  It is possible to impose structures on the spontaneity of group text chat (in the form of an automated or human chair, hand-raising equivalents, or through the use of an architectural ‘hint’ such as a lecture room that suggests a single presenter, etc.). These tools or conventions will slow the text down, rendering it more comprehensible. But these same structures can ‘suck the life’ out of an event, converting a living dialogue into a polite series of mini-monologues (or perhaps this only happens with a serious and yet not particularly experienced SL seminar audience?)

• ‘suck the life’ out of an event, converting a living dialogue into a polite series of mini-monologues (or perhaps this only happens with a serious and yet not particularly experienced SL seminar audience?)
• Polite turn taking might help with readability but it can also mean spending time waiting and watching while somebody types, which is not interesting. Anyone contemplating group text comprehension will need to take user-expertise into account, because for users who are familiar with ‘text chat as genre’ these issues might be moot.
• We found that discussion ‘tools’ that are improvised and basic can be effective in inserting an unobtrusive degree of structure. For instance, during the presentation on ethics, live comments were mixed with the ‘cutting and pasting’ of short passages from a prepared document. It’s not a technically impressive solution, but it worked (see similar points here). The resulting 3 line entries to the text box were stylistically and visually distinct from the (shorter, less formal) live type. This basic ‘sign-posting’ meant that the students were able to distinguish the ‘taught’ content, from the various comments and questions and answers that were being circulated. Even so, some students felt ‘at sea’.
• ‘text chat as genre’ these issues might be moot.
• There may be a host of more sophisticated ways to input content or organise discussion contributions within Second Life, and it would have been important for us to explore these options if a longer series of sessions was planned.
• The students were reassured that a chat-log would be posted to Blackboard after the session, in case they ‘missed anything’ during the discussion.

• I enjoyed the experience of the meeting/lecture with the rest of the class last week although policing such a session (from the leaders point of view) appeared somewhat challenging, especially if there are a few people giving their responses at the same time, or others who were heading off-topic (G’s report).

  
  

  …so I might ask a question and he might ask another one and ten people can come up with twenty different questions and I think it’s difficult to mediate questions from the point of view of a teacher, I don’t know I’m just guessing, it could be hard to have the full situation under your control (D’s post-session interview)

• When the session begun it was very nice that we had someone to lead us. However, when we had to give an answer it was difficult to participate in a harmonious way. I mean that everyone gave his answers and we did not have the opportunity to comment on the answers given. Even when we broke in small groups the conversation was not so easy. Some of the participants did give answers, some others made questions, or some of the answers given were so delayed that they were not relayed to the discussion that was taking part. I feel that we had the above problems because we are not used to this way of conversation. With time we all will become more experienced and will handle such situations in an easier way.
• One student suggested that using voice technology would have been preferable to text. Following live text may be particularly difficult for those working in a second language. Then again, following a group of voices over mixed quality audio might be just as (or more) challenging. There could be interesting ways to mix these modes, for instance, a presenter uses voice, but a group that ‘talks back’ in text – although the suggested power dynamic would raise questions. We were also wary of the fact that using voice adds an additional ‘layer’ of technology, when SL is still unpredictable in this respect. Some days, bits of it just do not work.
• Because following text is demanding it is important to put a time limit on a session, even if it means cutting into an interesting discussion. Sessions can be broken up in various ways of course (different exercises, etc.) and the structuring of a discussion might impact on how demanding it is, so it is difficult to recommend a specific time limit. Student numbers also need to be considered. As the number of participants increases, so will the volume of text and the level of complexity. One option would be to arrange to adjourn to a virtual space ‘marked’ as informal and social at a specified time (i.e. go to the pub after class) so that participants who wish to continue can do so.
• there were 2 or 3 tutors at each session, taking on different roles in relation to content and class management.
• He was confused about the topic, and confused about the ‘status’ of the presenter (who was at once a role-player and a researcher of role-playing). Such encounters might be very productive if, for instance, they lead to discussions about the relationship of research ‘subject’ to research ‘object’. It can be challenging for a teacher to identifying such opportunities as they happen, even in a classroom.
• There may be very little to indicate a student’s engagement, assumptions, pleasure, confusion or boredom.
• There may be very little to indicate a student’s engagement, assumptions, pleasure, confusion or boredom.
• (Erving Goffman. 1974. Frame Analysis: An essay on the organization of experience. Cambridge: Harvard University Press)
• The fact that so many things are possible in Second Life also means that every decision is open to question. Why take the appearance of a humanoid? Why ‘sit’ in a chair? Why reproduce a lecture theatre?
• If you are taking a class in Second Life it can be difficult to tell who is bored, excited, drunk, anxious, or who has gone off to make a cup of tea.
• Virtual worlds and disability: Second Life as a ‘case study’ offers researchers a venue to explore questions of disability as a social construct. In discourse on this topic, disability is continuously framed in terms of technology and interface, and discussed in relation to accessibility. The opportunity posed by virtual worlds and their communities for the examining of disability as a social construct has thus far been largely ignored. Consider, for instance, the anxieties and debates that surrounded the introduction of voice to Second Life, and the manner in which deaf users attempted to intervene in such debates - and the ways that they were effectively silenced, all of which speaks volumes about the social construction of disability. Throughout the discussions about the introduction of voice, for example, disabled (deaf, in this case) users and the business and educational communities were assumed to be distinct. In SL discourse on related issues disabled users tend to be either homogenised as a distant ‘other’, or yanked into sudden prominence in order to be placed in competition - as per the refrain “deaf people can’t complain about voice, because that is unfair to X, Y, Z disabilities who are disenfranchised by text”. This argument appeared on the forums and in Linden Lab PR during the roll out of voice. Such arguments employed disability to silence deaf users, while invariably failing to acknowledge the problems posed by the SL interface as a whole for the very groups that they refer to. While the question of whether SL complies with EU regulations about accessibility is certainly an issue that educators will need to take seriously, the social construction of disability and normative identities in SL is also an area that calls for further investigation. Accessibility in terms of hardware and broadband will also be an issue, more easily resolved in some instances than others depending, for instance, on where our students reside.