21731f


 * Proposal submission #21731**

Designing Instruction for Second Life
 * Title**

Mauri Collins, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, USA, mauri.collins@unlv.edu
 * Presenter(s)**

Second Life, a 3-D virtual world, is increasingly used as a venue for teaching and learning. While it is a new and unfamiliar technology to many, it is functionally akin to a combination of a real-life classroom and a "traditional" online classroom. The presenter has developed a useful instructional design model that is used for traditional online courses and has now been adapted to developing courses for Second Life. The model is represented in simple BluePrint form and assists the instructor to align content, learning outcomes, activities, discussion, and assessment.
 * Description**

When considering the transposition of this model to Second Life, the following are some considerations:

Learning Outcomes You still have to have some kind of outcome(s) in mind for Second Life lessons and courses, besides "I am the TEACHER. I will cover XXX amount of content in this lesson period." This fact is becoming more pressing on faculty as departments, schools, colleges, and universities are being asked by their provosts (chief learning officers) to list program outcomes on public web sites, and this initiative is gradually being pushed down to chairs and then to faculty. The age of accountability has finally caught up with universities. Nursing and Engineering, for instance, are no strangers to creating measurable outcomes and requiring students to demonstrate competence.

Learning Resources Students still have to have learning resources. In Second Life, the opportunities for immersive learning experience is much greater than in the classroom, so the learning resources are at a whole other level than the directive to "read the book, review the videotaped lecture, then discuss the chapter with your peers." It may be that learning resources in Second Life are more difficult for the students to access (in terms of just operating avatars) but may be more engaging than classroom lectures (live or taped).

Learning Activities Students still have to have learning activities in Second Life where they can practice with what they are learning. Taking the example of a recent class, students did a great deal of learning by doing. Lectures are boring, regardless of the transmission media ("Poke that avatar, which has obviously nodded off"). Medical students can have some very nerve-wracking learning experiences, as they become as emotionally engaged in Second Life as they would in real life.

Assessment Learning still has to be assessed, or how will ANYONE know whether the student's time spent in his or her learning experience has any value at all. This fact does not change with the location of the classroom. In Second Life there are added considerations because upper administrators want to know if theirfinancial investment in both money and employee-time-spent in Second Life have any ROI.

Interaction There still has to be interaction between the student and the course content and the and student and the faculty member (for guidance and feedback), and it really helps if there is interaction between students.

The added layer in Second Life is an astonishing elaboration of interaction between student and "interface." Students have to "create" themselves and their avatars and make a series of complex, sometimes emotionally-laden decisions about how they wish to project themselves in this new "world.". The student then has to learn to interact with the "world," including learning how to walk, sit, and fly.

When it comes to PLANNING educational experiences in Second Life, the Collins model will be just as valuable as it has shown itself to be in "traditional" online learning and even in the classroom.

What is significantly different for instructors in Second Life are the technical difficulties of working with an avatar and learning to choose and use a new set of teaching tools. Teaching tools are being constantly developed and refined in SL, so I think that will become easier bus is still a pioneer environment. Many faculty are just getting comfortable with using the Web and computers in their "smart classrooms" and keeping their PowerPoints to 6 lines at 36-point type.

The asynchronous discussion will be based on a paper describing the Collins design model and its use in designing learning experiences. Participants will have the opportunity to ask questions and use the model to design a Second Life lesson/workshop/learning experience.

This discussion is for those who are new to teaching in Second Life and who have some, however brief, experience in this world. The topic of the discussion will be instructional design for virtual worlds, not the choice of avatars nor design of learning spaces.

Asynchronous discussion Not previously published Intermediate, Advanced
 * Notes and Comments**