Second Life: Moving Learning into a New Dimension

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Second LifeMoving Learning into a New Dimension
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Ethos of the project

• Main objectives
• To investigate student perceptions of SL as a
  learning tool and resource
• To investigate ease of use and applicability of
  information transfer
• To improve learning and teaching in the
  undergraduate community
• We wanted to see if we could make students
  excited about learning again

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What we did

• Students integrated themselves into Second Life
• Learned how to move around, orient, and access
  information
• Given time to explore
• Once fully integrated they were set a series of
  educationally related tasks to complete in a set
  timeframe.

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• Tasks involved
• Searching for information within SL
• Viewing information
• Downloading information
• Communication with other students
• We showed them how to do some tasks
• Then asked them to help each other
• Teleporting
• Downloading information
• Viewing videos

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Directed Tasks

• Go to Milton Broomes Bookshop
• Download Bignell Cain (2007) (save)

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• Derby SL labs
• Sit on red mats
• Inside SL labs
• Get a copy of Paradise Lost by John Milton
  (download notecard)

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• Plymouth University
• Post a message on the notice-board
• Write down all the messages you see
• Teleport to Hertfordshire University

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• Students then followed us to a lecture theatre
  where we helped them watch a film provided by
  Hertfordshire University

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Tasks without assistance

• Go to following sites and answer the following
  questions
• New York University
• There is a poster giving information about ITS.
• What does it do?
• Rockcliffe University
• What are the courses on offer in the entrance
  area?
• RL Education Heart Murmur Sim
• How many training beds are there and how many
  test beds are there? (4 and 2 respectively)

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Focus group

• 4 students
• 2 staff
• 1 microphone
• Lots of questions
• Experience of SL
• Ease of use
• Pros
• Cons
• Opinion
• Was it good for work?
• Do they want it on their courses?

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• Basic thematic analysis of the transcribed data
• 7 aspects to SL use appeared
• Facilitation of interaction and integration
• Conduit for less confidant students
• Depersonalisation
• An improvement on typical VLEs
• VLE with fun factor
• Link between social and work
• Technical comments and concerns

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What did the Students think of it?

• They love it!
• Pilot study students gave rave reviews
• Found it easy to use
• Fun to use
• Didnt feel like learning and they concentrated
  harder and for longer!

One student loved it so much he went home and
downloaded it onto his home pc!!
Tasha Does it feel like your working?Holicity
No, you spend 2 hours on your computer (.)you
tend to spend a lot of time without even
realising it. Normally its a drag
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Facilitation of integration and interaction

• Good for social facilitation between
  students/staff
• Made it easier to talk to people in real life
• People can communicate with an electronic barrier
• Makes it easier to say what they think

Elliott I know it helpedin lectures I
wouldnt necessarily go up to everyone and have
a conversation so I speak to someone that I
wouldnt know on the internet, and also maybe if
I found out who they were in real life Id go
oh and continue the conversation in real life
so then you start to speak to someone else
Elliott some people dont talk at all when
theyre together. And when youre on facebook,
these like people will say loads and loads. I do
think its so much easier to talk and stuff on
facebook.
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Conduit for less confidant students

• Anonymity made it easy to ask questions
• Less confident students could ask questions they
  wouldnt normally have asked
• The so-called silly questions

Robie People dont put their hands up because
theyre afraid of being the centre attention in
the lecture theatre but you havent got that
problem really when you use second life.
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Depersonalisation

• Nobody looks like themselves necessarily
• And everyone has the same awkward body movements
• Depersonalises the individuals and removes
  barriers

Tasha What about barriers between staff and
students? Do you think it would help, if they
were in Second Life? Elliot Well, when there
was you that kept saying, Follow me and I just
thought, What the Hell? even when I got
there, you could talk to the staff more, like
you could other students. They were just kind of
like floating with us. Everyone looks stupid.
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Facilitation of Interaction and Co-operation

• Format of SL makes interaction with others easier

Tasha Would you find it easier to talk to
different year groups if you met them
online? Robie and Holicity Yeah Robie I
wouldnt go to a second or third year and say
perhaps you could help me on this module,
because youd look like an idiot or something,
but in the virtual world saying did you do
this in your first year, do you have an
ideas? Elliott Yeah thats one of the
things we like about it because its you but
no-body knows it you.
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• Helps to facilitate rapid interactions with
  others in and out world
• Students help students!

Shankly The obvious thing about it is that
youre not waiting if you post something on
say WebCT I was stuck, had no idea when I was
getting back up, then Robie would help straight
away and that was it, everyone that did that
straight away. Thats the obvious
advantage. Holicity Yeah, I think people were
a lot more enthusiastic having fun. A lot more
fun. They, were more willing to do things on
there, whereas on WebCT, theyre like, Aw, I
dunno, try that. But with this it was like, Oh,
Ive just done that. Yeah, Cmon here an Ill
help you with that
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Improvement on traditional VLE

• VLEs such as WebCT are functional
• Not fun
• SL has all the benefits of a VLE plus all the fun
  of a computer game
• Link between facebook and WebCT
• They get to be cool if theyre not
• Improves confidence
• Removes barriers between students and year groups
• Removes inhibitions
• Renews motivation to fulfil potential

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A VLE with the fun factor

• Students think it is better than (and more fun
  than) WebCT
• They see it as the missing link between social
  websites and educational sites
• E.g. Facebook/MySpace versus WebCT
• They dont want lecturers on Facebook
• Invasion of privacy
• Social aspects need to be left alone

BUT they dont mind discussion groups linked
with work on Facebook so we set one up! (Second
Life in Education Student Help Centre)
Holicity I think facebooks social, I dont
wanna go and read all this information. If I
wanted to go and do Uni work Id log onto WebCT,
I dont want it on my facebook profile.
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Linking social life and work

• But they do want their learning to be fun
• SL provides this
• Interactive
• Social
• Game-oriented
• FUN!
• Modern students spend a lot of time on the
  computer
• If they had more interesting things to do which
  related to work they would spend more time on
  them
• We need to compete with computer games!
• SL can manage this
• It gives them a realistic option for multitasking
  work and play

R I think sometimes when I go home and try to
do work, I just wont do any work and Ill be on
the computer. But if I had that on my computer,
then I could, you know do my work, and do
whatever else I was doing.
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Technical aspects and concerns

• Students pointed out what they did and didnt
  like
• Good aspects
• Clear, simple layouts
• Sensible layouts (information easy to find)
• Novel layouts are fun
• E.g. Greek amphitheatres rather than lecture
  halls
• Pop-up information
• Bad aspects
• Over-fussy layouts
• Made things hard to find
• Stops it being fun

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What does fun mean for learning?

• End result?
• Better student retention
• Better student grades
• Good access off-campus means more integrated
  student community
• Better working environment
• More opportunities for networking and group
  involvement
• Happy students
• Happy staff

• Students
• Focus more
• Attend more
• Retain more information
• Work for longer
• Work harder

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Our next steps

• Looking at communication between students
• Within the university
• Between universities
• Joint project with Derby Psychology Department
• Exactly how much is social communication and
  interaction facilitated?
• What can we do to apply interaction and social
  communication to education and learning?
• Experiment to take place in the autumn

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• Vanessa Parson
• vjparson_at_yahoo.co.uk / v.j.parson_at_aston.ac.uk
• Jon Wood
• j.b.wood_at_aston.ac.uk
• Peter Reddy
• p.a.reddy_at_aston.ac.uk