Staffordshire University in Second Life: an update
Christa Appleton submitted a detailed update for snapshot #8; thanks, and here it is.
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To pick up where we left off in the last snapshot, I have continued my Second Life learning journey avidly in order to reach our goal of delivering some sessions in Second Life. Mainly my intention has been to develop an awareness of virtual worlds among academic and support staff in our university, allow them to experience Second Life for themselves and decide whether or not it has potential for teaching in their faculty. I also hoped to offer some events to the wider educational community for the purpose of trying things out, learning more about success, failures and good practice. I’m pleased to say that we have made progress, generated some interest within Staffordshire University and fulfilled our goals in a modest way.
Our first problem here was finding a computing lab with an adequate spec to run Second Life. Finally, we established that we had a room with 10 machines capable of the task and we were able to make a start. Working with one of our Computing Lecturers, Hamza took a group of Games Technology students into Second Life, during a lesson, so they could experience Second Life first-hand. This fits well with their particular course and was a better way to consider virtual worlds than just watching a video. I joined them in-world where some of them were certainly active and enjoying the experience. I gather a few members of the group were less keen to participate, so mixed responses overall.
Having a lab equipped with Second Life enables me to plan face-to-face sessions, I scheduled two before Christmas but unfortunately had to cancel because there was not enough interest. I did however succeed in hosting an in-world discussion entitled “Virtual Worlds are they the Future?” The event was supported reasonably well, with attendees’ from all over the country. About half a dozen people attended the whole hour, a few others dropped in when they could. Attendees were a good mix of experienced Second Life educators and those much newer to the environment; discussion flowed well and was interesting. One attendee commented afterwards how good it was to meet up with others from different establishments interested in Second Life as previously he had felt isolated; others said they enjoyed the event. I used Snapshot 7 as a reference document for this discussion; my full write-up on the event and a link to the discussion recording can be seen on our wiki.
Encouraged by the fact that I hadn’t had to talk to myself, and the positive feedback, I am planning to run a similar event in the spring. An unexpected benefit of this session was a spark of interest from the University Law Faculty, who had seen the event in progress on their E-Learning Facilitator’s machine during a break in faculty training. Also during December, in a further effort to find university staff with an interest in Second Life as well as offer something to the wider educational community, I hosted (with Jane Edward’s sterling support) a social event for educators. A couple of Staffordshire University staff made it along to this event and I hope made some new contacts.
During February Hamza and I have put on two beginners face-to-face workshops for University staff. The first was attended by a mix of Computing and Business staff; the second was specifically for the Law faculty, following up that spark of interest from the discussion event. The technology did not let us down and feedback from both sessions was positive in terms of being enjoyable and enlightening. What is less clear at this stage is how much long term interest there will be, given the issues of implementing activities in an environment which itself take considerable time to master for students and staff. Conversations for the long term are continuing with the law faculty in the background. To continue our objective of raising awareness across the whole University, Hamza and I are planning to offer another beginners workshop in the lab and an online session for intermediate users in April or May if there is sufficient interest.
We have a University network SUN (powered by Elgg) where I have set up a group; “Second Life Adventurers”. Staff can join to find out more about Second Life, our activities and the plot on West Midlands Island. I have found new contacts among staff here who were already Second Life users. As a result of one such connection Dave Moreman (Senior Lecturer, Faculty of Sciences) and I submitted a Research Informed Teaching bid to trial tutorials for second year geography students in Second Life. This bid has been approved and gives us a small amount of funding to implement the trial and investigate Second Life in education a little further. I think this will be an interesting project and offer another means of evaluating and feeding back information about virtual worlds here at Staffordshire University.
Finally we hosted the West Mids virtual worlds forum in December.
Among the excellent presentations from elsewhere, I presented on my learning journey to that point, and two other members of staff here presented on the Simple project using virtual town. They were excited about it at that point but have since decided it is inadequate for what they want. This puts SL in the running as a possible alternative but things are far from certain and certainly there are no imminent development plans. You may find some of this interesting if you have time to look anyway.
