Wednesday, 9 September 2009

Second Life Technology

I'm chairing this session!!! So notes may be brief as I'm keeping a close eye on the time!

1) Designing game-based learning activities in SL
Maria Toro- Troconis, Imperial College

  • Study set up to explore game-based learning in medicine
  • aim to explore gender-related differences between groups
  • Surveys conducted to examine users' feelings - no sig diffs found between two groups using or not using SL
  • Females found SL SLIGHTLY more useful than males
  • Recommendations - students had probs getting used to it; orientation really important before letting students loose for e-learning
  • what are the practicalities of sharing resources developed in SL..?
  • www.elearningimperial.com
2) If we dream it, they come? The self-efficacy of students new to SL training
Kathryn Trinder, Glasgow Caledonian University
  • Many projects already running at the university; wanted to look at SL, which had been set up predominantly for marketing
  • Aim was to look at ways to deliver rather complex mathematical concepts
  • introduction/orientation - 2 hours - 20 students in two groups; avatar creation, personalising and finding friends, basic navigation
  • Students took some time to change their mindset that SL was for LEARNING not PLAYING
  • There is a steep learning curve and the university is planing to include SL training built into general ICT training
  • Making sure students understand the purpose of the envt - that it's there for learning. Etiquette/guidlines are a good idea. Dont really want to restrict students from exploring, but they need to understand what is expecting of them.
  • New environment for existing gamers was tricky to work with
  • www.gcal.ac.uk/cuthere
3) Virtual Reality: designing learning environments in SL
Fay Cross, Unviersity of Nottingham

  • Created a replica of the university's Trent building in SL
  • Library project
  • Geography project - building scaled models of the Lake District
  • Why build building in SL when there's no weather??! It's a human want to do this as a first stage in exploring a new environment

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