A spring semester class in SL
Writing by Anthony Curtis on Thursday, 26 of April , 2007 at 9:32 pm
Here is an update on my Second Life experiment — A spring semester class in SL.
As the folks at Linden Labs say, Second Life offers almost unlimited potential for using simulations to prepare for real-world experiences in a safe environment - to enhance experiential learning, allow individuals topractice skills, try new ideas, and learn from their mistakes.
To that end, I used SL simulations in my Online Journalism (JRN-410) class in the Spring 2007 semester here at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke.
I had 13 students enrolled in my course and exploring the SL world. Their goal was to identify prospective subjects for feature stories to be published by the class in its “traditional” Web news magazine called Brave News World. That magazine is in its third year and this was the first time its subject matter focused on another virtual world. The students were excited by the thought of one virtual world covering another in a mass media project for the real world.
The class was diverse, including Native Americans, African Americans and Hispanic Americans as well as other Caucasian students. Many of the students have very poor technology at home and limited access to broadband services. The wireless broadband technology in the classroom was vital to the
success of this pedagogical project.
I found the trade paperback Second Life: The Official Guide by Michael Rymaszewski, Wagner James Au, Mark Wallace, and Catherine Winters, to be a well-rounded resource for the class. It’s not an expensive text at around $25 from online retailers.
I also asked students to locate and write abstracts of four relevant articles about SL in consumer and trade periodicals.
To carry out the project, students enthusiastically climbed what for some of them was a steep learning curve into the SL world. After a period of exploring for familiarization, they individually identified possible article coverage of several unusual and interesting areas of social, cultural, political and commercial life. They proceeded to locate reporting resources including SL residents to interview, places to investigate, and sites to photograph.
The classroom activity was highly interactive and employed peer learning. In addition, their excitement with the project promoted a great deal of peer support outside of class. Students brought back to class news of many experiences they shared while exploring the SL world with each other.
As but one important example among many that reveal SL’s impact on my teaching, I have found the simulations provide wonderful opportunities for interview experiences. People in SL appear as graphic avatars on screen, of course. However, there are real people with real aspirations behind those avatars, so their responses to interviewers are real and variable.
Students learned how to form relevant questions and employ feedback. For instance, one class member may log on while the others watch via overhead projection. They seek an interviewee. As the student who is logged on engages the interviewee, the class discusses and proposes relevant questions to be posed. I have the opportunity to act as guide and mentor as they develop their interviewing skills. Out side of class time, students practiced their interviewing skills with other SL residents.
Another important example among many is the photojournalism aspect of this experience. Photojournalism is about people, places and things, and Second Life is teeming with those. Real-world photojournalists record the human condition in good times and bad. My students did that using the Snapshot feature in the SL Viewer to illustrate the articles they wrote. SL was a visual adventure in which they learned the basic visual and technical aspects of “seeing” photos and recording images.
Journalistic publication was the ultimate goal of the semester project. The students wrote proposals for my review of their planned articles. With those approved, they submitted outlines showing their planned organization of articles. Ultimately, they wrote at least three separate articles based on journalistic research and interviewing in-world. Some eagerly write as many as six.
Articles were evaluated on three concurrent spectra - content, organization and mechanics. These parallel tracks ranged from weak to strong.
Even as they dug up and reported stories from SL, the same students were learning how to prepare what now has become a traditional Web site for their magazine. Eventually the Spring 2007 issue of Brave News World was produced with than 40 feature stories about social, cultural, political and commercial aspects of SL as written and edited by the students.
Business management interested some class members who worked overtime to add a simultaneously-published Second Life edition of Brave News World. They repurposed the Web magazine for circulation inside SL. To that end they designed newspaper-style vending boxes and figured out where to place them across the SL world. They wished for more text styling in Notecards — color, bold and italic type — and embedded art.
Class members were intensely motivated to complete this project, even to the extent that they Photoshop’ed a group photo of all 13 avatars standing in front of a well-known RL campus building for the Web magazine. I will send the magazine URL to this list in a subsequent e-mail.
In summary, I agree with Linden Labs when they say that Second Life provides a tremendous opportunity for controlled experimentation, instruction and guidance in a presentation mode available for individual instruction or to an entire class at the same time. SL is an exciting new place for distance learning, educational collaboration, etc. It is useful as a platform for virtual classrooms, research into new concepts, and real-time communication among multiple participants.
I am planning to deliver other courses in SL in the future and establish a UNCP outpost in the campus region.
Comments (1)
Category: Uncategorized
- Add this post to Del.icio.us - Digg
