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Online courses are ok for learning Microsoft Word, but you cannot possibly teach real science. Think again. Actually, an online course can be much tougher than a traditional course

I do not have time for such nonsense as online teaching as I must focus on my research. Actually, if you have time at all for teaching, online teaching is probably more research-friendly. For one thing, there are fewer unwanted disruptions with online teaching.

Online courses will empty the classrooms. That is very unlikely. Universities have been offering bachelor and graduate degrees online for years, how many graduates do you know? Many, many students feel that they need 3 hours of classroom lectures per week to learn.

Third, a secure multi-age virtual world would provide educators with a rich environment in which to study instructional practices.

Individuals using computer resources belonging to The University of Arizona must act in a responsible manner, in compliance with law and University policies, and with respect for the rights of others using a shared resource. The right of free expression and academic inquiry is tempered by the rights of others to privacy, freedom from intimidation or harassment, protection of intellectual property, ownership of data, and security of information.” Although this policy seems fairly straightforward, the ten “Acceptable Use Guidelines” meant to clarify this policy instead introduce confusion. For example, Guideline 3, which instructs the computer user to “clearly and accurately identify one's self in electronic communications,” adds: “Do not forge or misrepresent one's identity. Concealing or masking the identity of electronic communications such as altering the source of an email message by making it appear as if the message was sent by someone else is a violation of this policy.”14 So a student knows that altering the sender of an e-mail is against policy, but what about creating an avatar? And what about the faculty member who asks students to create an avatar with a totally fictitious name? Are the faculty member and the students in violation of this policy?

an instructional technologist at the University of Arizona,was supporting the implementation of Second Life in a General Education class. She was concerned about the interesting style of dress, or lack thereof, that is often seen in Second Life and felt she needed to develop a dress code for the virtual class.15 But when the vice-provost for instruction and I were discussing the process for modifying the current dress code of the university, we discovered that the university does not even have a dress code for everyday life.16

For example, at the University of Arizona, faculty have expressed frustration because they cannot learn how to sit down in virtual worlds or because they cannot figure out how to correctly set the hair on their avatar. Because of these frustrations, they tend not to invest the time needed to explore the world as an instructional resource. However, as the NMC’s Levine has pointed out: “In our first life, it generally takes us maybe eighteen years . . . to get to be fully functional adults. It’s an evolutionary process. A virtual world that had a short learning curve would be something not very interesting. So I think an ideal virtual world needs some of that complexity.”17 The challenge thus becomes how to select a virtual world that has the necessary complexity to keep users engaged while developing strategies and structures to support them as they learn.

Even more important is that if an institution wants to implement a virtual world of any type, it needs to convince faculty that the early adopters are, in fact, not all mad and that the tool does have value. Instruction may just be in a form with which the faculty is unfamiliar. Therefore the institution must begin by offering faculty, staff, and students the time and support to perform simple tasks like learning how to navigate the environment. Faculty must then be assisted in visualizing something outside of their understanding of what it means to be a teacher.

Perhaps as important as setting goals and providing resources is developing realistic assessments of the project’s success. For example, in a virtual world such as Second Life, what are the metrics that will be used to determine the institution’s return on investment?

In an instant messaging conversation during Robert Washburn’s journalism lecture at Loyalist, Urqhart, whose real name is Tyson Jewell, reveals his frustrations with Second Life. He says the heavy computer requirements can be a hassle for students who can’t afford sophisticated video cards or a faster Internet connection. Because of this, some students have to come to school anyway to use a computer inside a lab or a library to attend their Second Life classes. There are various other technical problems, such as the glitch in the program that caused Mr. Jewell’s classmate to be locked out of his account. And, ironically, Second Life battles against the one thing that has propelled its popularity: the rapid advances in technology.

Finally, everyone who was interviewed for this article agrees that virtual worlds like Second Life won’t completely overtake normal classroom settings. However, they do believe that three-dimensional online classes and assignments will become a staple in Canadian education – and that’s for real.

Respondents didn’t feel that using the Second Life client was too difficult. The majority of the respondents answered that moving (73.3 percent) and navigating (66.7 percent) in Second Life was easy or fairly easy. Almost all of the respondents felt that it was easy to take part in Second Life–based lectures and discussions, and that they gained additional information from other students in discussions.

Respondents were asked to estimate the usability of Second Life as a learning environment by comparing it to other learning methods. When compared with face–to–face education, the respondents felt that learning in Second Life was somewhat more difficult. Face–to–face education was considered overall as a “better” (versus worse, as literally asked in the survey) form of education. But learning in Second Life was considered to be clearly more fun. Nevertheless, 60 percent of the respondents answered that lectures in Second Life could replace face–to–face lectures. This question raised strong opinions.

In addition, 83.3 percent of the respondents thought that the barrier to participate in discussions or to ask a question was lower in Second Life than in face–to–face lectures

When compared to Web–based learning platforms, Second Life was not considered to be neither easier nor more difficult. But even in this case, learning in Second Life was considered to be a lot more fun (a response from over half of the respondents). In contrast to the comparison with face–to–face education, Second Life was considered to be a “better” form of education than learning from Web–based learning platforms.

One–third of the respondents considered Second Life to be “better” — against 13.3 percent of the respondents that thought Second Life was “worse” — than Web–based learning platforms. The respondents graded a lecture in Second Life to be “better” than webcasting and discussion boards, almost as good as videoconferences, but clearly not as good as face–to–face lectures and meetings.

A question about how the students experienced the presence of other students gave very mixed answers. Compared to Web–based learning environments the interaction between the students was thought to be more comfortable by almost 50 percent of respondents. It was considered to enhance interaction and the feeling of presence was stronger. Most of the students (56.6 percent) felt that other students were actually present in the virtual classroom. The respondents said that it was “fun” to meet all of the other students in the same location without having to leave their homes and that the campus–like atmosphere made it feel “real”.

Second Life was also considered to be a functional environment for teamwork. Assignments that students resolved in teams were considered to be fun and productive. The respondents felt that their teams produced more than they would have done individually. Students also felt very strongly that they were part of the team (56.7 percent).

When the respondents were given a chance to freely express their opinions about their experiences in Second Life, it became apparent that using Second Life in education may even have somewhat surprising positive consequences. One of the respondents wrote that using Second Life in education had brought her closer to her 16–year–old son’s world.

Another surprising observation outside the survey was that some of the students used Second Life on their own time to improve their language skills. One of the students told us that she spent a lot of time in the French–speaking areas of Second Life exercising both her written and spoken French. This discovery strengthens our belief of the huge potential that Second Life has for language education, an area certainly requiring further research.

In general, Second Life was considered to enhance interaction between students and between the instructor and the students especially when compared to Web–based learning environments.

Provided that participating face–to–face education does not require too much traveling and learning outcomes are satisfactory, Second Life does not necessarily provide any significant benefits, at least not when using it only as a platform for lectures and teamwork.

When considering distance only as a physical measure of separation, Second Life provides a means to overcome it. The existence of multimodal and non–interfering means of communication and socialization by using chat, instant messages and voice calls in personal and group interaction provides users a wider range of possibilities to communicate than in face–to–face sessions. Of these varied means, each student can select an option one that feels most comfortable, an observation also made by Paquette–Frenette (2006). In this study, all of the students were participating at a distance through Second Life, avoiding problems noted in Paquette–Frenette (2006).

The mixed responses to questions about Second Life being comfortable or better than other environments of learning indicate a variety of emotional and cognitive reactions. This study did not give clear answers to the interplay of different distance variables (Nooteboom, 2000; Duval, 2006; Hargreaves, 2001; Garrison, et al., 2000) in Second Life–based learning. However, the results indicate that the feeling of presence and distance is a multidimensional issue that needs further attention in future studies.

In comparison to lectures, the benefits of using Second Life in teamwork were more obvious. The physical presence of avatars, the possibility to communicate in real time and the existence of a shared local space explain why Second Life produces a more realistic feel of presence than discussion forums or chat rooms. In a sense, Second Life brings distance education closer to face–to–face education, supporting Jones, et al. (2005). The strong feel of presence noted by respondents and the immersive nature of Second Life seem to do just that.