A better way

This extension of the expected physical-world teaching performance into Second Life has resulted in some heated debate amongst educators around teaching methodology that reflects debates around real-life education practice. Advocates of constructivist learning strategies see the potential of Second Life as a student focused virtual learning environment and view the implementation of didactic pedagogy in-world as a highly retrograde step. The Second Life Educators listserv is awash with requests from newbie teachers looking for ways to use Powerpoint in Second Life [21] who are instantly treated to a lecture on the error of their ways. This debate hasn’t been entirely one sided however with similar quantities of heat generated by those who insist that there is no substitute for some form of instructive content delivery context.

Once again Sarah Robbins has some thoughts on this. In her “Image Slippage” paper [22] she identifies the ways in which the nature of the Second Life environment inevitably alters the relationship between teacher and student opening the possibility of new and better ones. In particular she points to the potential for “a sense of commradery and community” to form “from the wreckage of traditional classroom hierarchy”.

What Second Life should give educators is an opportunity to re-appraise their methods as they design learning activities for a new online environment. As SL is a place where the only content is that created by users then if they don’t find what they need they have to make it themselves and therefore, before investing the time and effort required, it is likely that the educator will carefully consider whether such investment is really worth it.

Of course there may well be a potentially negative flip side to this argument. The challenge presented by the need to create content can mean that there is a strong incentive to replicate what the SL education pioneers have already devised and not formulate more individually appropriate methods and artifacts.

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[21] Barkley, CDB., (30 November 2006). PowerPointing in Second Life? Think Different. NMC Campus Observer.
Retrieved: 18 December 2006.

[22] Robbins, S., (2006). Image Slippage: Navigating the Dichotomies of an Academic Identity in a Non-Academic Virtual World, Social Science Research Network. Proceedings of the Second Life Education Workshop at the 2006 Second Life Community Convention. ISBN: 1-903978-32-7 Published by The University of Paisley, UK.

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