Learning in Second Life

Leren in Second Life, summarising the results of my research among early adopters in using SL as a tool for learning and teaching. In Dutch, but I will produce an English summary after Xmas. Hopefully you like the pictures if you cannot read dutch. If you have any questions or would like to receive the conclusions from the transcript in english, please send me an email.

Presentation Added Value of Second Life

Some people gave me the opportunity(!) to present a concise overview of the research project. In not a second more than 5 minutes I showed them 18 slides with information, while I read a carefully prepared text to them. I timed myself with a stopwatch and trained several hours in using the exact lines of the script. An ordeal, I can tell you as it is not a problem for me at all to elaborate on this subject for several minutes longer. The English presentation can be viewed here.

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.

'What is the perceived added value of Second Life for education?"

As a follow - up to the Aggiornamento II - project the Dutch Ministry of Education, more specific her agent Kennisnet (www.kennisnet.nl, the national educational portal for K16 and vocational education) has asked me to investigate the perceived added value of Second Life for education by interviewing educators and researchers within the SL - community.

In the absence of any formal or certain evidence that the use of Second Life will be totally effective within the current teaching/learning system, we assume that educational users 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.

To assess SL's power for learning we will use the Bernie Dodge - equation P = A x D x E. More information on this equation can be found here. I would like to invite you for this interview, preferably in - world. The interview itself will take about 30 minutes. You will obtain a transcript of your contribution to evaluate or comment and a full summary of the results in English. The transcripts will not be shared with third parties.

Please leave a note of your interest below and your SL avatar- name, I will contact you for an interview as soon as I can.

User acceptance of Virtual Worlds

A report by M. Fetscherin and C. Latteman that can be viewed on their website. Their results show that 90% of respondents have less than a year experience, 70% access Second Life from home and 54% with a desktop. There are 67% of respondents who are not afraid of giving personal information. Almost 60% are very likely to buy virtual goods from Second Life, and 42% are willing to use their credit card to purchase on Second Life. About 70% perceive Second Life improves collaboration and communication, and more than 60% perceive that it improves cooperation between people. 56% of respondents perceive Second life as easy to use. Finally, the results indicate that people are using Second Life not to change their identity, but rather to explore and visit new places and meet people.

The schome-NAGTY Teen Second Life Pilot

It is difficult to find documented experience on the use of SL for educating teens. The SCHOME - project delivers its final report on the OU - website. A summary of key findings and lessons learnt. A must - read for those interested in first hand experience.

Acceptance of Virtual Worlds in SL

The report assesses the user acceptance of Virtual Worlds, specifically Second Life. By means of a survey with almost 250 respondents this report provides first empirical results of the user acceptance of Second Life. The data has been gathered during spring 2007. The results show that 90% of respondents have less than a year experience, 70% access Second Life from home and 54% with a desktop. There are 67% of respondents who are not afraid of giving personal information. Almost 60% are very likely to buy virtual goods from Second Life, and 42% are willing to use their credit card to purchase on Second Life. About 70% perceive Second Life improves collaboration and communication, and more than 60% perceive that it improves cooperation between people. 56% of respondents perceive Second life as easy to use. Finally, the results indicate that people are using Second Life not to change their identity, but rather to explore and visit new places and meet people. If users accept Virtual Worlds as a new way and channel to communicate, collaborate, and cooperation and if institutions arrive to provide value to users, Virtual Worlds might become then next generation platform for Internet users. However, in order to become mainstream, Virtual Worlds like Second Life have many challenges to overcome and where user acceptance is probably the most important one.

Get the report on http://secondliferesearch.blogspot.com/2007/06/study-about-user-acceptance-of-virtual.html