Virtual World Watch

The University of Nottingham have provided an update of some of their Second Life activities; thanks to Andy Beggan for the update and the screenshots:

Nottingham has been in Second Life for just over a year and now has 2 islands:

http://slurl.com/secondlife/University%20of%20Nottingham/100/122/22

Both teaching and research activities have taken place and this year a research project organised by one of our medical students – focused on placebo in a doctor-patient style consultation – is being supported as well.

We are keeping an eye of other virtual worlds and have participated in some conversations between Kings, Brunel and the Open University around next steps.

We have a dedicated area on our island to support information skills training called the ‘Library Garden’. The Library Garden is an interactive learning experience for students to explore on their own, with a librarian or as part of a lecture. There are a number of pathways within the garden leading students to different activities. One pathway advises students about the research process from finding research partners and working collaboratively to finding information and publishing research in a variety of ways. Another path covers basics such as reference styles.

We also have areas supporting pharmaceutical lab simulations, virtual maternity wards, virtual wind farms and interactive performance spaces for active learning environments. Interest in language teaching is also popular, with an Arabic course run in Second Life.

We demonstrate Second Life through our e-learning community group meetings, one-to-one support, groups presentations plus releasing podcasts. To support the developments, a Second Life steering group was established, with members drawn from Schools, International Office, Marketing, IS, Learning and Teaching committee and the Student Union, the group provides guidance and advice on future development activities.

To help staff and students get used to Second Life, we have prepared support materials on our e-learning support web pages, el@n, (http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/elan/yourquestions/), as well as offering training courses in Second Life. There is also an orientation platform and a public Sand Box on the island, with examples and tutorials to help new users get to grips with the building tools available.

We don’t see Second Life as necessarily a recruitment or marketing tool, due largely to numbers visiting. A closer analogy for us is the ‘holodeck’ in Star Trek, a user defined space which you visit for an immersive experience. This has guided projects supported and our developments.

We have also opened an Open Educational Resources area on our island to start sharing much of what we develop openly. We already share quite a bit and see it pop up in other HEI’s spaces from time to time.