Tutorial overview

Use this guidance to find out about the exciting possibilities of using Second Life in education.

Second Life is great at some things but less good at others. Teaching seems to work best in there when students are interacting as much as possible with other people or with their environment. Here are a few suggestions:

Seminars and tutorials

The simplest and one of the most effective uses of Second Life in teaching is in its ability to bring together disperse students in discussions and create a real community feeling amongst the group. Of course you can arrange to meet students anywhere in Second Life and just stand around for your discussions, however, to avoid problems with people wandering off, moving out of text chat range and generally being distracted it's often useful to use areas similar to real life meeting areas.

There's a variety of meeting areas available on the university's Web Campus designed for this. On the first floor of the Trent Building is a flexible meeting area which can be customised to meet you needs. If you would like a more informal setting, try the camp fire seating area next to the sandbox.

Lectures

If your students are all in one location there may not be anything that a lecture in Second Life can give you that a lecture in a real life lecture room can't. However, if working with distance learners, using Second Life for lectures is an option and there are tools provided on the university's Web Campus to make this as easy as possible.

The virtual Trent Building contains a lecture theatre with a large video screen. With permission from the IS Learning Team you can easily change this to feature a video of your choice.

A presentation screen is available for you to copy and use as you wish from the freebies section of the Web Campus' sandbox. Images and audio clips can be uploaded to the screen to create Power Point style presentations that can be delivered to a class. Step by step Instructions for doing this are available when you take a copy of the screen.

Role play

A stage with changeable backdrops is provided in the virtual Trent Building. You and your students can meet here and use it as you wish, for example, it has been used by language students to practise conversing in a range of situations while being watched and appraised by their fellow students. Contact the IS Learning Team if you would like to add your own images to the backdrops provided.

Simulations

There's great potential for creating immersive simulations in Second Life for students to practise their skills in anything from surveying a landscape to assessing and treating patients as a paramedic. Students can receive feedback as they progress through a task and see where they are going wrong or they can be simply asked to write up their findings and submit a report as normal.

Here are some good examples of education in Second Life to use as inspiration:

• Second Life in Education Overview
• Virtual Hallucinations
• Roman Archaeology

Also see the JISC guide to Getting Started in Second Life:

'Getting Started in Second Life' answers some common questions like how to set up in Second Life, what the rules of the world are, how to plan lessons and how best to help students use it effectively for learning. The aim of the guide is to present the basics in order to help lecturers experiment, rather than them getting lost in mastering the detail of the virtual environment.