Using Second Life in Your Online and Campus Classes

Dr. Cynthia Calongne

Lyr Lobo in Second LifeColorado Technical University

Second Life Education Support Faire

January 25-30, 2009

Licensed under aCreative Commons

Share Alikewith Attribution License

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Using Second Life for Learning• Self image

• Social networks

• Mentor, feedback

• Class projects

• Roleplay

• Tool integration

• Immersive learning

• SL skills

• Build simulations

• Sense of presence, identity

• Attend classes, collaborate

• Office hours, facilitation

• Applied learning activities

• Immersive learning, case studies

• Web 2.0, course tools, media

• Context-sensitive or stimulating

• Camera, navigation, to socialize

• Create content & an environment

80% of the world’s Internet users will be in a virtual world by 2011 (Gartner, 2007)

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Presenceand Identity

Lyr, Joanna, Pathfinder Linden

& Nye

Enjoying the Meet-n-Greet

at the Second Life Education

Support Faire

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Basic Second Life (SL) Skills

• Appearance– 1st self or ideal self?

• Move and look – Arrow keys or Navigation

menu

– Camera controls

• Communication– Voice, text, gestures

• Group Notices, IMsLyr and her robot avatar

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Virtual Office Hours

Meetings in an underwater office. Come on in! The water’s fine!

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Migrating a Course into SL

• Course design – Course objectives

– Desired competencies

– Content (slides, media, handouts, resources)

– Rubrics and grades

• Delivery– Interactive

– Discussion

• Measurement instruments– Discussion

– Case studies

– Learning activities

– Projects

– Problem-based learning

– Research papers

What else do you need?

How do we get our content into SL?

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The floating book holds course handouts as Lyr prepares for class

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Communicating with studentsin Second Life

Left to right

TeleportGroup Notice

2nd rowVoice Chat (*)Instant MessageURLs embedded

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Ingredients

• Learning environment– Public or private?

• PowerPoint slides– Signs & textures

• Create 3D class content that explores the course concepts

• Student content

• Does size matter?– Island, parcel or sandbox

• Save as JPGs– Bulk upload into SL

• Context-sensitive scenes, interactivities, content givers

• Projects and activities

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Interactivities

Human barometer activityFuturing and Innovation students

take a standCTU students

shop for academic regaliaat the NMC Orientation island

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Budget and Quality Concerns

• Student stipends? ==>

• Create content?– Requires skills & time

• Buy and use content?– Custom design? – Field trips!

• Grade and archive student assignments

• To upload textures

• Own, control & adapt– Reuse and share

• Quality site & content– Professional image– Explore other sites

• Set permissions, store, display and retrieve

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Colorado Tech Examples

• CTU Learning Spaces

• Field trips

• Teen grid classes

• Class projects

• Opportunities for collaboration ==>

• CS 820 case study from Winter 2008

Wright State’s MBA class with Shu SchillerLyr comes by to help - they have a great start!

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Colorado Tech Island

Virtual learning spaces

Collaborative classes and live music festivals at

Colorado Tech

Student projects are displayedon the Boardwalk and onLyr Lobo’s class islands

An NMC Virtual Worlds design

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Student and instructorrobots on a public class space

A 3-week course activitywith real world, virtualand 2D robots designed

Amusement park of student projectson a private space

Students choose thepreferred class location

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Field trips to science sites

National Physics Laboratorypresentation on nanotechnology

innovations

Lyr explores theNanotechnology Lab

Interactive objects demonstrate the

procedure and give info on notecards

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Immersive Literature

Roleplay and conflict, an immersive

literature experience on the Teen grid.

Suffern Middle School

students at Ramapo portrayed the roles

from the book, Of Mice and Men

by John Steinbeck.

A juror hollers “Boo!” when Curley takes the stand

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Teen Creates Cool Technology

Ryl mentors an8th Grade studenton the Teen gridas he applies a

script to a keyboardoverride he created

with futuristic display textures.

It appears whenhe types and

disappears when heis silent.

At Ramapo on the Teen Grid

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CS 672 First day in class

StudentProjects

CS 383 Game maze & scoreboard

Ferris wheel rotation problem & duck shoot

Duck shoot

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Underwater fun house

First day in world - created particle star

CTUStudent Projects

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CS 820 Winter 2008 Case Study

Newsstand for low vision users, Electronic Voting Machine

Refrigerator for wheelchair use

From early ideas to testable projects

Students collaborate andwork independently

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CS 820 Class ExampleProjects Designed for Accessibility

• For vision and mobility impaired users

• Asynchronous and synchronous design activities

• 3D graphics, sounds, gestures and interaction

• Models, textures, sounds, animations, scripts

• Focus on user characteristics and task performance

• Collaboration in class and among students

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Students new to SL learn to build and texture for class activities

Early Skill Development

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A self-guided tutorial for building a 20-minute project

Modeling in Second Life

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Students new to a virtual world create low fidelity interface designs

and conduct usability tests in a virtual world

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Project Prototypes

Newsstand for the lowvision users; selecting

option 4 to hear

Refrigerator for wheelchair users;

shelves move out and down

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Usability and Interaction • Human interface design in a virtual world

– Presence– Environment– Tools– Collaboration– Interaction– Project creation– Usability testing– Assessment

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Interaction and Empirical Testing• Observed behavior

– Test plan– Test procedure– Roles– Volunteers– Observation– Measurements– Analysis– Results

Student interface with objects thatrender new information when touched

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Guests from other schools

perform usability testson student projects

Community Collaboration

TCC Online Worldwide Conferenceattendees visit to

examine student work

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The Value of Education in SL

• It takes effort to create content, train faculty and adopt a new course delivery paradigm, & it’s worth it

• Course delivery shifts from the sage on the stage to interactive discussions and activities

• Fosters student-led learning and collaboration

• Educators monitor activities and mentor

• Class sessions take less time and are focused

• Builds community and crosses boundaries

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Experimental Design Classrooms

Bardic circle for storytelling

Open spaces where students

experiment, explore ideas and get messy

What is your ideal virtual world classroom?

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Observations on Education in SL

• It takes effort to create content, train faculty and adopt a new course delivery paradigm

• Course delivery shifts from the sage on the stage to interactive discussions, activities and projects

• Fosters student-driven learning and collaborative activities

• Requires monitoring activities and mentoring

• Class sessions take less time and are focused

• Builds community and crosses class and institutional boundaries

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SL Research Links 1• Second Life

– http://secondlife.com/ http://secondlifegrid.net/

• Cynthia Calongne’s Classes in Second Life– http://ctusoftware.blogspot.com

• Research in Second Life presentation– http://www.slideshare.net/lyrlobo/research-in-second-life

• Artificial Intelligence in SL– http://web.bvu.edu/faculty/schweller/

• TCC Preconference Wiki -- SL from a Flash drive tips– http://tccpre-conference.pbwiki.com/

• Edumuve– http://edumuve.com/tour/ and http://edumuve.com/blended/

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SL Research Links 2• National Public Radio’s Science Friday in SL

– http://www.sciencefriday.com/

• NMC Campus Observer– http://sl.nmc.org/

• NOAA’s Traffic Analysis– http://mayarealities.com/

• Best Practices in SL– http://www.slcn.tv/bpe-lyr-lobo

• Annotated Bibliograophy of SL Educational Resources – http://web.ics.purdue.edu/~mpepper/slbib

• Second Life Education Support Faire Wiki - evolving!– http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Education_Support_Faire

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SL Research Links 3• Second Life as a Virtual Learning Environment

– http://www.dokimos.org/secondlife/education/index.html

• An Educational Tour of Second Life– http://www.slideshare.net/lyrlobo/an-educational-tour-of-second-life

• A View from Second Life’s Trenches: Are you a Pioneer or a Settler?– http://sl.nmc.org/2007/06/09/pioneer-or-settler/

• Leveraging the Affordances, Minimizing the Barriers of Virtual Worlds– http://sl.nmc.org/2007/06/09/edu-panel/

• LearnScope in Second Life– http://www.slideshare.net/lyrlobo/learnscope-in-second-life

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SL Research Links 4• Using Second Life

– www.educause.edu/ir/library/powerpoint/SAC07025A.pps

• Beyond Course Management Tools: Second Life – www.educause.edu/ir/library/powerpoint/SAC07014.pps

• Virtual worlds in Online Education: Are You Ready to Teach in Second Life?– http://www.telecoop.org/conference/materials/CalogneTeachinginSecondLife.ppt

• What Can We Learn from World of Warcraft & Second Life?– http://archive.nmc.org/events/2006fallregional/materials/calongne.ppt

• SL Podcast by Bayne, Walker and Calongne– http://connect.educause.edu/blog/gbayne/podcastusingsecondli/44967?time=1188754831

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SL Research Links 5• Who’s on Second? Educational Podcasts

– http://www.rabble.ca/rpn/podcast.php?id=wos

• Second Life Development -- VITAL Lab– http://vital.cs.ohiou.edu/vitalwiki/index.php/Second_Life_Development

• Suffern Middle School in Second Life– http://rampoislands.blogspot.com/2007_02_01_archive.html

• Second Life Library 2.0– http://www.infoisland.org/drupal/ and http://www.myspace.com/73899784

• Second Life Education Wiki– http://www.simteach.com/wiki/index.php?title=Second_Life_Education_Wiki

• LSL Wiki -- programming tools– http://www.lslwiki.net/lslwiki/wakka.php?wakka=HomePage

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SL Research Links 6• Secondary Worlds

– http://secondaryworlds.com/

• Reuters -- Doors to open on Google Virtual world(s)?– http://blogs.reuters.com/mediafile/2007/10/24/doors-to-open-on-google-virtual-

worlds/

• SL and Google Earth are Transforming the Idea of Architectural Collaboration– http://archrecord.construction.com/features/digital/archives/0701dignews-2.asp

• Timeline - History of Second Life Wiki – http://secondlife.wikia.com/index.php/Second_Life_Through_The_Ages

• UberNoggin: Big Brains - Big Ideas– http://www.ubernoggin.com/

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SL Research Links 7 - News• Reuters in Second life

– http://secondlife.reuters.com/

• The SL Newspaper– http://www.sl-newspaper.com/

• Second Life Herald– http://www.secondlifeherald.com/

• Metaverse Messenger– http://metaversemessenger.com/index.html

• SLNN– http://www.slnn.com/index.php

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SL Research Links 8• New Worlds Notes

– http://nwn.blogs.com/

• SL A Virtual Universe for Real Engineering– http://www.designnews.com/index.asp?

layout=article&articleid=CA6490691

• Just Virtual– http://www.justvirtual.com/index.php/category/second-life/

• Seifert Surface - Math in Second Life– http://www.segerman.org/2ndlife.html

• Eric McLuhan in Second Life - Playing Media Ecology– http://slcn.tv/media-ecology-eric-mcluhan

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Using Second Life in Online and Campus Classes

Dr. Cynthia CalongneLyr Lobo in Second Life

http://ctusoftware.blogspot.comwww.slideshare.net/lyrlobo

Twitter Lyrlobo

For more information

Lyr Lobo

http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Education_Support_Faireor http://www.slideshare.net/lyrlobo

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