The Virtual Worlds Teaching Guide produced by University of Derby and Aston University in collaboration and funding from the Higher Education Academy Psychology Network and JISC is now available in hard copy.
Please email Simon Bignell (s.bignell (@) derby.ac.uk) if you would like a copy or to save paper you can download it directly:
The JISC (Joint Information Systems Committee) have made available an introduction for people in academia to Second Life:
Getting Started in Second Life’ answers some common questions like how to set up in Second Life, what the rules of the world are, how to plan lessons and how best to help students use it effectively for learning. The aim of the guide is to present the basics in order to help lecturers experiment, rather than them getting lost in mastering the detail of the virtual environment.
Information includes ‘Common mistakes and assumptions’, and ‘Practical concerns for your institution’. As well as being useful for academics new to Second Life or virtual worlds, the document is also useful for those making a case for virtual world use within their institution.
You can download it, or order a print copy, from the JISC website.
The special edition of Educational Research in 2010 will focus on learning in and from virtual worlds (where a virtual world is defined as an environment within which users are represented by and operate through an avatar and can interact with others over the internet or local area network). This call for papers invites reports of original research, reviews of recent research and discussion articles from colleagues working in the area.
Articles must be accessible to the generalist reader and relevant to the journal’s international readership. Contributions from outside the UK are welcome.
We are particularly interested in articles that:
Papers should have a clear focus on ways in which virtual worlds might impact on pedagogy and educational practice.
Articles should begin with a structured abstract, include up to six keywords, and should not normally exceed 5,000 words.
For further guidance on submission, including instructions for structured abstracts, see the journal website at http://www.informaworld.com/EdResearch – select the Instructions for Authors tab.
Articles must be submitted by email to the Guest Editor, Peter Twining at P.Twining@open.ac.uk by 14th July 2009 at the latest. Emails must be clearly labelled ‘ER Virtual Worlds Special Issue 2010 submission’. Late submissions cannot be considered.
In May of 2008, the NMC conducted its second annual survey of educators in Second Life, provided as a yearly snapshot of the demographics and activities of educators who are active in Second Life. A link to the survey was sent to by email to individuals within the NMC’s Second Life communities and to the Second Life Educators Listserv (SLED). This year, 358 individuals responded to the survey.
The NMC snapshot is a global one, as opposed to the UK-only nature of the Virtual World Watch snapshots and associated surveys. The highlights can be found here, as well as downloadable summaries and results.
A few of the highlights, which may be indicative of trends (though it should be noted that we are still talking of small numbers of SL educators):
The primary activities educators are doing in Second Life remain the same. The top five activities that educators report as doing in Second Life have not changed from 2007:
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Wander around the literature base for Second Life for even a short while, and you’ll notice that SL URLs are written in a variety of formats.
Pete Johnston from the Eduserv Foundation suggests the following:
Personally, I prefer the http URI form, e.g.
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Eduserv%20Island/97/41/30
…not secondlife/Eduserv%20Island/97/41/30 as
- It makes them URIs.
- It makes them “clickable” in tools that render http URIs as hyperlinks.
- If you do click on them you get a useful representation (a Web page) even if you don’t have SL client installed.
Though longer, and the shortness of SLURLS has been debated elsewhere, that seems more sensible from a usability point of view. It’s also the predominant URI scheme format.
So, unless there’s a counter-argument we’ve missed, we’ll stick with that for written references.
Andy Powell from the Eduserv Foundation, funders of Virtual World Watch, has created and obtained a set of MOO cards for the project:
These cards are for giving out at “Real World” (how that phrase grates after a while) events, the next one of which is the JISC Services Skills event in Oxford on Thursday 25th September. Andy will be talking about how virtual worlds such as Second Life can be used to support events.
He plans to do the whole talk in-world, to give the RL audience a better feel for what is possible. It starts at 15.30 (UK time – UTC+1) and runs for about an hour. In Second Life, he’ll be in the Virtual Congress Centre on Eduserv Island – drop in and ask questions during the talk.
