Final results Second Life - interviews in presentation

Interim results interviews

90 Avatars were invited to participate in an in-world interview. 2 refused and 22 did not respond to my invitation. I stopped pursuit of 30 potential candidates after I finished the 50st interview.
The approach of the interviews was based on the notion of 'likely effectiveness' and led by the assumption that educational users of SL will judge its likely effectiveness expertly in terms of a combination of (a) SL’s potential to be effective, (b) the perceived costs of achieving that potential, and the (c) perceived rewards or fringe benefits in applying that effort to achieve the potential. The interviewees were invited to meet 'physically' in-world at a chosen place. We used Instant Messaging (IM) for privacy reasons and sat down in a comfortable way to illustrate the illusion of a Real Life(RL) interview. The questions were presented as Notecards.
The questions of the 30 to 45 minute interview were based on Bernie Dodges' equation Power = Attention * Depth * Efficiency. First respondents were asked to score the different variables in 'an intuitive way, without too much reasoning'. Sometimes this lead to discussion about the approach and questions, overall almost all interviewees agreed to the method.
Then participants were asked to elaborate on the reasoning behind their scores and stimulated to 'write what they thought as in thinking aloud' about the beliefs, assumptions, experiences and expectations about SL as an environment for learning and teaching. The average scores for the variables Attention, Depth and Efficiency were respectively 7.58 , 6.75 and 5.98, which give a total score of 30.59 for Power. The table shows quite a gap between the lowest and highest score.
The standard deviation between the scores is considerable.I acknowledge that the numbers are not large enough to give a sound statistical result and from start rated the qualitative outcome more important than the quantitative.
Most participants praised the attention value of Sl, but also warned that there is much distraction. One responded that it had taken considerable effort to create a classroom atmosphere, whereas some appreciated the freedom and open environment as stimulating for learning. Creating your own avatar, making decisions about looks and personality was regarded as trivial as well as very important. I feel that this aspect is very much underestimated. Many pointed out that depth strongly depends on a sound educational concept and the use of SL without it is without meaning, where others stressed the importance of playful exploration and labelled this as extremely meaningful.
Efficiency strongly relates to age, both in real life ( younger than 18 or older) as in Second Life (time spent since birth). Many felt that the learning curve for mastering the SL - client was steep. Reading the transcriptsmy impression is that it is considered much more valuable to explore the possibilities of Sl from a perspective of playful, explorative and natural learning than to try to establish a real life school atmosphere. More detailed information from the 250 pages transcript will be published here the coming months.

Relaxed

My job is nice, it is interesting, it stimulates thinking about learning, you meet wonderful and very bright people and it can be done in a relaxed way too. I usually meet in my office or in a chair at their place. Ellie served me tea a while ago. Laelia offered me a comfortable couch to sit on. It was a good and very informative interview. Thanx!!

Major grant during session

My interviews go smooth, little problems. Sometimes a technical hiccup before or during a session, but not many or often. During my interview here however I was disturbed by a very happy occasion for a researcher. My contact heard that a major grant passed. There was no way to continue the conversation as the person must have danced through the room in real life. We 'll get in touch later, cooled down, the two of us.

Jeremy and I

He opened our meet saying: Shoot, my friend. I didn't as I am not a hunter. Maybe he is not aware of the risks he is taking. A nice guy to meet too. We sat down for an interview, Jeremy and I. As you can see in SL it doesn't matter what you look like. You could be a white male or an animal of any kind. What counts is where the mind meets. And they did.

University Ulster Magee 229/110/38

HarmonyHill and I sat down 'as students in learning' in the auditorium. He showed me around in what students had developed as an assignment. Replica's of the Ulster University, built in small groups, evaluated on quality, collaboration and result. SL has some means to show what each student contributed to a group result. We discussed to what extent 'play' in construction maybe a part of the successful use of SL for learning. Nice guy, good session.

First results

The first results on the interviews I held. So far I ve interviewed 20 SL - residents, a third of the number I target to question the coming weeks. When I put the results in Bernie Dodges' equation the spreadsheet gives a score of 24. Now this may seem very low to you at first sight, but if you test the equation in a spreadsheet, you might conclude otherwise. I will keep you posted!!

First results

These are the first results on my interview in Second Life. People are asked to score the perceived added value of SL for teaching and learning using Bernie Dodge's equation: p = a *d *e, where P=power; a= attention; d= depth and e= efficiency. The score is taken stressing the need for an intuitive approach. My guests scored an average 7,2 for attention, a 5,7 for depth and 4,6 for efficiency. I leave it to you to interpret this.
You are very welcome to join this research by giving an in-world interview of approximately 30 minutes

Testing the interview - protocol

Last night I had a session with two in-world colleagues to test the interview - technique I have developed for my research. The result was better than expected and the combination of chat and notecards works fine. In a 30 minutes walk-through we had all 6 questions covered and time for a short reflection. Nice side - effect is the availability of a logfile with the exact copy of our conversation.

P is for Power

P is for power. What is the perceived added value of Second Life as a environment for learning and personal development? Is Second Life to be valued as a supplementary world and/or is it also a world that enables us to develop new qualities and work on traditional skills in Real Life. These and other questions will be the subject of our research soon and we need you to help us to find an answer to them.