Virtual World Watch

Submissions to the latest snapshot are coming in, so some of them will be run on this website (if the submission author wants) ahead of the snapshot report coming out. Here’s one from Cornwall College, submitted by Bex Ferriday (who goes into the draw to win ten pounds) – thanks:

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Cornwall College’s School of Education and Training (SET) has been successfully running the Level 3 Award in Preparing to Teach in the Lifelong Learning Sector (PTLLS) as a blended learning course for three years. This eleven week course is delivered with 7 sessions studied in students’ own time using moodle and remaining sessions taught using traditional methods in the classroom. However, with the college’s island on “Second Life” now complete, SET has decided to pilot a version of the course that replaces college-based sessions with content delivered in a virtual environment. This is a first in terms of Cornwall College and use of Second Life as a teaching and learning environment. To date several courses have taught users how to teach in Second Life – but an officially accredited course has never been offered that teaches real world, transferable teaching skills in a virtual world environment.

Twelve students have signed up to work through this pilot: by enrolling a group that are based in locations such as Italy, Portugal, France, Romania, England, Wales and Spain there are no issues with time zones and by ensuring that the group consists of qualified, real world practitioners au fait with using Second Life, any technical and delivery issues can be ironed out before rolling the programme out internationally and to people who have no teaching and / or Second Life skills. The group are enthusiastic, excited by the prospect of being part of this ground breaking new project and are all fully involved in the activities. Feedback has been wholly positive, with many members of the group commenting on how well they feel they have bonded as a group. This has led to a slight revision of the course schedule, with regular discussion-based get-togethers now being offered as a way of keeping students motivated and maintaining this group dynamic.

The course is still in its early stages and anything can happen. However, if the course continues to run as well as it has so far The School of Education and Training will be looking to offer this to an international audience, and on a regular, twice-yearly basis.

A second group of students are also making creative use of the island. The Foundation Degree in Arts and Media has begun a building project, and are experimenting with the physics of Second Life, adding textures to prims and honing their building and scripting skills in order to make works of art that simply could not be made in real life. Their tutor is building an art deco-style art gallery in which to house these creations, and currently sits at the bottom of Dozmary Pool, the bottomless body of water from which Excalibur was reputedly held aloft by the mythical Lady of the Lake in Arthurian Legend.

Experiences of teachers using the island are that there are few differences between teaching in Second Life and traditional classroom delivery. This comes as something of a relief as if there were a generic Initial Teacher Training course that contained no classroom or face to face delivery would be destined to fail. Planning is still written on traditional documentation, web-based delivery means that it makes sense to have a dry-run and to make sure there is a Plan B should anything go wrong – but this is how any session with an element of ILT should be planned. Ground rules need to be set at the start of the course, and though these may be different – for example, to only use text-based speech when the teacher is using live voice rather than ensuring mobile phones are switched off – this again is something that needs to be done at the start of all courses. The common notion that body language is impossible to read in Second Life is, to some extent, an exaggeration. Poses are sophisticated enough for avatars to be able to show how they feel by the way they choose to sit, inactivity means that the word “Away” appears above avatars’ heads – an explicit signal to the teacher that the avatar in question is distracted or bored, and the frequency and content of both written and verbal responses from students also shines a light onto the way they feel. Nuances may not be as subtle as they are in the real world – but there are enough signals to be able to get a sense of individual and group moods.

Use of the island continues to grow and attitudes towards this virtual world as a teaching resource appear to be growing ever more favourable. While the island lay empty people couldn’t really see the point. Now that things are starting to happen and both filmed and photographic evidence in available for all to see on flickr and YouTube, minds are slowly changing and the pace is picking up.