Pete Radcliff, University of Derby
Pete Radcliff is the manager of the e-Dev team, which works to promote the use of new learning technologies at the University of Derby within the Centre for Educational Development and Media (CEDM). In response to the current survey, he outlines some of the virtual world activities at the university.
What are you doing in virtual worlds?
Over the next 6 months we hope to have a number of small projects starting. These will be mainly in the form of replicas of small real physical environments including such things as hazard identification but also some aspects of social environments, such as virtual theatres where students can look at aspects of organising and staging performances.
Our island is at http://slurl.com/secondlife/Derby%20University
Are you doing any teaching or learning in virtual worlds such as Second Life?
In this year, generally we are using Second Life to introduce students to the environment and scope the difficulties, both those that are technical and those related to usability. I believe Simon Bignell is currently using the environment for teaching.
Do you think you’ll do more virtual world “stuff” in your institution in the next academic year?
That seems pretty definite.
Tell me interesting “stuff” – anything you think is relevant.
We have developed a virtual quarry taking up an entire ‘island’ for quarrying students in conjunction with the Institute of Quarrying. This work is still in progress and is intended to replicate real quarrying situations (some of which are hazardous): dangerous overhangs; explosions; hazardous working vehicles and to have students moving around the quarry identifying those hazards. The island has limited access but access can be arranged on request.
Nice work Pete. We’ve seen lots of progress in Second Life over the past two-three years. The virtual quarry looks fantastic and our other Islands are developing excellently for teaching. This year development should see us in the Psychology Department extend the virtual builds we’ve got going into virtual experimentation in support of teaching and research.
Simon
Simon Bignell (Av: Milton Broome)
Interesting Work Pete, and nice to touch base with you again Simon. I’m really glad to see this kind of application in SL (i work for the HEA engineering subject Centre) I’m currently writing a chapter for a book and I’ll mention it