Quotes which caught the eye

While compiling the forthcoming ‘snapshot’ report into the use of Second Life and virtual worlds in UK universities and colleges, some quotes ‘caught the eye’.

“Hard to sum up 18 months of experience in a sentence! Overall my experiences have been exciting, perhaps especially when I have been the one learning from teenagers who have developed not only technical and other skills in the environment, but a really effective sense of how to teach!” (Julia Gillen)

“Educationalists need to embrace the idea that environment and interaction are inseparable.” (Simon Bignell)

“There may be a whole range of virtual worlds emerging which might be used for different purposes and subjects. I think that there will still be value in a ‘messy’, more heterogeneous world like SL, as life is messy and heterogeneous and I don’t think students would be done any favours if they were only allowed in sanitised ‘education only’ silos.” (Sheila Webber)

“It has taken around 15 years from the birth of the web for web-based e-learning to become thoroughly institutionalised (with ongoing pockets of resistance throughout academia). The 3D internet could easily take as long.” (Daniel Livingstone)

(On how virtual worlds are perceived in UK universities) “One-third mixture of excitement about the potential, one-third trepidation about the user requirements and the lack of support forthcoming from IT ‘service’ departments and one-third bewilderment about what the value of this for education could be.” (Mark Childs)

(Same question) “Some real enthusiasm, some disgust at moving away from the real-world, some apathy.” (Lorna McKnight)

“In general, adapting our learning approach to virtual worlds has forced us to re-examine our beliefs about education, and we have developed a deeper understanding of what we do well. Abstracting and testing different learning approaches in virtual worlds has enabled us to apply them more effectively on the real life courses that we manage.” (Ian Truelove)

“I think the idea of virtual worlds will not be a dead-end novelty as long as the software gets better with less bugs and continued development, and enough people in UK education see the potential and create examples of virtual world experiences which can be shown to positively benefit the users.”(Lindsay Da Silva)

“Although Second Life is virtual it was clear that a number of experiences can have an unexpected emotional impact: in a positive light when students were complemented on their work by casual passersby and in a negative light with students being harassed, and once imprisoned.” (Simon Walker)

“It reminds me of the early days of the web when HE web pages were put together by some very unlikely people purely because they had the skills and interest. And there were all the pitfalls of having people working on ‘official’ sites who were basically hobbyists who didn’t necessarily have a great understanding of communication and marketing but who liked playing with HTML.” (Kriss Fearon)

“Generally very successful in meeting the needs of distance learners – I have better retention than I do with face to face groups.” (Anna Peachey)

The report will be public in a few weeks.