herding cats virtually: managing a multi-disciplinary university island in second life a university...
TRANSCRIPT
Herding cats virtually: Managing a multi-
disciplinary university island in Second Life
A University Island and Modern Languages Project
Fiona Grindey and Julie Watson 29th January 2010
Overview • Development of the UoS island
• Our collaboration model
• Maintaining contact, sharing ideas and sustainability
• Island tour
• Modern Languages in SL
• M3 (MUVE, Moodle and Microblogging) Project and the Language Café
• Future directions
• Questions and discussion
3
Collaboration Model • Joint approach between
Administration and Education
• Creative space – education/research projects internally funded
• Ground level – structured space for University
• Range of Schools from across University
4
Information points for Archaeology and Education
Sandbox area for Archaeology Sandbox area for Education
Maintaining contact, sharing ideas and sustainability
• Coordinator of all activity on the island (Fiona Grindey) within Learning and Teaching Enhancement Unit
• Southampton Educators Group (in world)
• Regular updates on activity within Second Life
• Wiki – for all projects to update progress so far (real teams)
• Training events
• Individual meetings – formal and informal
• Sharing skills across projects in world/real world
• Seminar events – ‘show and tell’ (one big event)
7
M3 (MUVE, Moodle and Micoblogging)Project aims:
• To integrate Second Life and Twitter with an existing (pre-arrival) online Moodle course for international students
• To see what value this might add to students’ experience of the online course
• To explore one way of using Second Life and Twitter for educational purposes
Moodle• Arrive UK
• 5 week online course for international students coming to study at UoS
• Focus on living and studying in the UK
• Blend of technologies (learning objects, podcasts, videos, discussion forum, chat room)
• E-tutored
MUVE and MicrobloggingCreate a purpose built environment in SL where the student
community can
- experience part of the online course more immersively
- meet and take part in activities with tutor
- use course learning materials adapted/enhanced for SL
Create a Twitter plug-in for Moodle and a Twitter link from SL
- use Twitter to link students for social networking and discussion about course resources (e.g video)
Second Life development• Disaggregate and adapt selected Learning Objects
for use in SL:
Example: ‘Finding out about Southampton’
– THINc book ( history of Southampton, tourist attractions, climate etc)
– Google floor map of south of the UK
– Set of interactive local maps ( differing scales)
– In world quiz
Project successes
• Model for integration of new technologies within an online course
• Adaptation/ enhancement of course learning resources (Learning Objects and videos) for use in SL and with Twitter
• Open source Twitter plug-in for Moodle
Project challenges
• Web 2.0 services unreliable and subject to change/frequent updating
• New technologies lack of accommodation to needs of non native speakers (Eng)
• Supporting participants at distance with new technologies
• SL Learning curve and participants’ lack of time
Future directions• Steering Group
• Student evaluations
• Expansion - interest from Careers, International Office, Widening Participation, The Library
• Collaborations with Winchester University and Coventry
• Investigating other virtual worlds
Thank [email protected]
Second Life: University of Southampton region:
http://slurl.com/secondlife/University%20of%20Southampton/132/126/26
M3 project:
http://www.elanguages.ac.uk/secondlife/index.html