Debbie Jeffers
ABSTRACT
The University of Delaware (UD) has created an active educational environment that encourages learning through interaction, collaboration, and discovery among faculty and students in Second Life. In developing a Second Life presence, UD considered:
Island purchasing options
space requirements
support time requirements
faculty involvement
in-world events and features
initial endeavors
emerging educational uses
UD early adopter faculty have embraced this new learning environment and found ways to integrate it into their teaching.
Index Terms
- Is there a second life in your future?
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Reviews
Miguel Angel GarciaRuiz
Second Life (SL) is one of the new frontiers in education. SL is an addictive online virtual world, where millions of Internet users have been registered to participate in a large social network and can upload to it graphical three-dimensional (3D) objects, such as buildings. Its users can communicate and interact as realistic personifications called avatars. Among other applications, universities worldwide have been developing and using virtual classrooms in SL. SL's virtual world has special areas called islands, some of them used for educational purposes, that can be purchased or rented with real money from its creators and from SL users. As Jeffers describes in this paper, the University of Delaware (UD) has purchased virtual islands in SL, and is starting to implement and use them as nontraditional teaching venues, such as having a class in a virtual woodland. Thus, the educational settings and the planned activities in SL appear compelling and fun. These islands will serve to explore educational applications, taking advantage of SL's popularity and early educational uses among some of UD's teachers and students. One of UD's goals in SL is to "encourage learning through interaction, collaboration, and discovery among faculty and students." UD's educational islands in SL show great potential for supporting education. However, it remains to be seen whether SL is an effective way to actually promote learning and how technically effective it will be in its long-term use. I would like to see, in my lifetime, experimental studies that will confirm this. Online Computing Reviews Service
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