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Eloise Pasteur

Research Article: A Second Life PCR lab evaluation - 1 views

  • This study examines students’ reactions to the virtual biosciences laboratory developed in Second Life® (SL) at the University of East London. Final year undergraduates and masters students studying biotechnology took part in a trial of a virtual Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) experiment in Second Life and evaluated their experience by anonymous questionnaire. Learning gains were measured at various points during the study using pre- and post-tests, and interaction with demonstrators was monitored and compared during the real life (RL) practical. Both groups showed a significant increase in learning gain over the pre- and post-tests, although no difference in gains between the two groups was detected. However, students who conducted the PCR experiment in SL required significantly less demonstrator assistance during the subsequent RL practical. The SL practical was well received by students, with 92% of participants reporting that they would like to use the system again and many requesting other experiments to be made available in this manner in the future.
  • The aim of this study was to determine whether conducting the PCR experiment in the virtual world of Second Life produced similar learning gains to those observed in the physical world laboratory and to see if working in the Virtual Lab enhanced students understanding of the experiment. The student perceptions of the Virtual Lab as a teaching mechanism and the perceived impact on their learning was examined through questionnaires.
  • The SL group completed a pre(virtual) Lab quiz and then individually registered for Second Life to create an avatar under instructor supervision. Each student completed some orientation exercises on UEL Island to become adequately skilled in using the Second Life environment (e.g. flying, putting on clothing etc.). The student avatars then met in the Virtual Lab to perform the PCR experiment. This was initially demonstrated by a member of staff before each student completed the virtual experiment themselves. Throughout this teaching session the students received face to face and virtual communication from their instructor.
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  • Participants in both groups then completed the physical world PCR practical individually in the laboratory. During the physical world practical the number of questions asked of staff and demonstrators by students in each group was recorded. After the real-world practical all participants completed the in-class quiz once again as a measure of overall learning gain.
  • Pre-, mid- and post-tests were used to examine the learning gains seen in the students at each stage of the teaching process. The learning gains of each group at the three stages of testing are illustrated in Figure 2. Using a mixed (or split-plot) ANOVA there were found to be no significant difference between the learning gains achieved by the SL and non-SL groups, with both groups achieving the same mean increase in test score between the pre and post tests. Interestingly however, there was a significant difference between the scores achieved by students in the SL and non-SL groups overall (p<0.001), with the initial average pre-test score of the SL group being significantly higher than the initial average pre-test score for the non-SL group. Quiz scores increased significantly across the study for students in both groups (p<0.001).
  • The number of questions asked by students during the physical world laboratory practical was recorded for the non-SL and SL groups. As can be seen in Figure 3, the non-SL group (Demonstration) asked significantly more questions (p<0.001) during the practical than the SL group. Furthermore, the staff supporting the practical sessions reported the SL group students to be more organised in their conduct during the class and appeared to take less time to complete the task.
  • Overall, satisfaction with the Virtual Lab was high. Ninety-two percent of respondents said they would use Second Life again and many had commented during the teaching session that they would like to see other experiments in the Virtual Lab. There were no significant differences in opinion between the sexes and between those who are re-sitting the module (11 students) and those that were not. Students who had already completed one Semester of the course joining the programme in October 2008 (21 students) found the in world instructions on how to complete the Virtual Lab experiment more useful than those (29 students) who started in Semester B, February 2009 (p<0.05).
  • A moderate negative correlation was found between age and overall satisfaction (r= -0.54, p<0.001). Younger students were generally more satisfied with Second Life than older students.
  • Those who had used Second Life before the study (16 out of 50 students) differed significantly in their expectation of in-world feedback whilst undertaking the Virtual PCR experiment from those who had no prior Second Life experience (p<0.05). Of the 16 students that had used SL before 6 students answered Q11 of the questionnaire (Table 1) with 3 or lower while only 4 students out of the 34 who had not used SL before answered Q11 in this way. Those who had used Second Life before thought that they had not received sufficient feedback during the experiment.
Eloise Pasteur

Teen Second Life - Second Life Wiki - 0 views

  • Linden Lab only allows adults in the Teen Second Life who have had a background check completed, and who are either educators responsible for an education project in the Teen Second Life, developers assisting in the development of projects in the Teen Second Life, or the person responsible for managing activities on business islands in the Teen Second Life.
  • Yes, you can use the RegAPI, create your island, and bring teens onto this island through your own website. You can form groups that include teens and IM and exchange objects with teens who come in through your RegAPI. However, in this case, the Teens will NOT be able to leave your island and visit other spaces, including the Teen Second Life "mainland" (Teen Second Life). In this "closed island" model, you can form groups, IM your teens, and exchange objects with them; but all these activities are limited to your island. If teens want to participate in Teen Second Life, they'll have to create a separate account (teen.secondlife.com).
  • At this time, we do allow businesses to purchase islands in Teen Second Life and create educational content with which the Teen Second Life members can interact. We do restrict the ability of Teens to communicate with Adults, and we do not allow any selling or other commercial activity. You cannot sell in the Teen Second Life, and you can't exchange L$ with teens. If your island is not a "closed island" you cannot exchange items with Teens.
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  • The estate must be purchased by the final owner of the estate, not by a developer - because of permissions and other issues, an estate cannot be transferred in the Teen Second Life. In addition, if you are building for an educational or non-profit organization, if a developer buys it, they'll be billed the full rate rather than the education rate.
  • Linden Lab does not do content creation. We recommend you use a developer listed in the Teen Second Life Directory who has prior experience creating projects in the Teen Second Life.
  • You can request one online at ascertainsi.com. Or, contact : Ascertain Screening and Investigations, LLC 110 North High Street, Suite 201 Gahanna, Ohio 43230 614.858.0100 Dee Igo -- [Digo@Ascertainsi.com] There is a fee, which must be paid by the developer. It's about $40 in the US and $70 outside the US (fees subject to change).
  • If your instructors are members of bona-fide educational institutions, they've already been background checked by the institution, and we can substitute verification from the institution for background checks by our agency. Otherwise, each instructor needs a background check.
  • Linden Lab automatically will list any Developer who is already in the Directory; if you are not already in the Directory, you need to submit a Directory entry. Teens may submit a Teen Second Life Directory listing at any time.
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    Rules about accessing the Teen Grid in Second Life as an adult
Steven Hornik

My First Two Months at Linden Lab « Official Second Life Blog - 0 views

  • I’ve come to see a couple of use cases as future killer apps – namely virtual meetings and education.
  • 7.2 billion voice minutes making us one of the larger providers of VOIP services
  • Second Life is the only social media/social computing property where, at its core, user-generated content and the economy is the experience. As a result, our estimates place our monetization levels at 3-30x that of major media and social computing properties.
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  • We generate revenue by selling land (where merchants build stores, land owners rent houses, educators teach and companies meet) and collecting monthly maintenance fees (somewhat analogous to hosting services), charging for currency exchange services (Linden Dollars to US Dollars and vice-versa) and for search and classified ad placement. We also make money as the economy expands and we issue Linden dollars to stabilize the exchange rate.
  • You have all of the tools you’d use in a real world meeting
    • Steven Hornik
       
      I'm not sure this is accurate, I'd like to see these tools - like interactive web pages, collaboartive work tools (i.e. Office Suite). I'm sure they are coming....
  • Using the virtual meeting environment for education is an even more exciting killer app.
  • Seventeen of the top twenty universities in the US have land in Second Life.
agencynbs

Lab-grown sperm makes healthy offspring - 0 views

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    BBC : February 26, 2016, Friday Sperm have been made in the laboratory and used to father healthy baby mice in a pioneering move that could lead to infertility treatments. The Chinese research took a stem cell, converted it into primitive sperm and fertilised an egg to produce healthy pups.
ramanr

The Best Nursing College in Bangalore | Raman School of Nursing Bangalore - 0 views

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    Raman group of institutions is one of the best institutions offering various Nurisng,Pharmacy and Paramedical courses in Bangalore. Raman School of nursing Offering GNM in Nursing, and Pharmacy College offering D Pharm, and Raman institute of Paramedical Science offers X-ray Technician, Medical lab Technician courses and more.
ramanr

Get Admission in Raman School of Nursing which is a part of Raman Group of Institutions - 0 views

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    Raman group of institutions is one of the best institutions offering various Nurisng,Pharmacy and Paramedical courses in Bangalore. Raman School of nursing Offering GNM in Nursing, and Pharmacy College offering D Pharm, and Raman institute of Paramedical Science offers X-ray Technician, Medical lab Technician courses and more.
Eloise Pasteur

TidalBlog: SL is for "People with some spare time"... - 0 views

  • ... according to an otherwise nice article (pdf) on media for science communication in the latest Society for General Microbiology's Microbiology Today. The author makes use of SL for professional purposes so is very much entitled to her opinion.
  • Of course, the mission of the CDC isn't to produce microbiology sims for use by UK teachers (though the mission of the sim isn't actually explained anywhere so I could be wrong). However, in addition to a conference centre there are some virtual labs where you can get a hazmat suit (no hazard warning signs anywhere though so presumably no need to wear?), sit at a microscope and look at some slides. The slides and adjacent equipment are not explained or apparently part of any theme or quest. There are a few computers, including one linked to the NHS website for no obvious reason (some reuse, perhaps?).Indeed, much of the open air part of the site seems to act as an interface, via signs, to the CDC website (so why not just go there?). A slightly better touch is a circular path that documents the various awareness themes for the calendar year and this appears to link into a bracelet. There are some bots with no obvious function. Compared to the adjacent Healthinfo Island, it is (i) much more polished, (ii) much less engaging.
  • However, it would still seem that neither the SGM nor CDC "get" virtual worlds in any meaningful way yet.
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    Rant about, and comment on SGM article about Second Life, podcasting and web 2.0
Eloise Pasteur

Educational Frontiers: Learning in a Virtual World (EDUCAUSE Review) | EDUCAUSE CONNECT - 0 views

  • With very little time and a lot of content to cover, one way to accomplish this change is to use game-based metaphors that capture students’ interest. But there is no need to actually create a game to leverage the concept of game-play for class activities. After all, class activities come with goals, feedback, rewards, and recognition, and these translate well in this visual, exploratory environment. The virtual world looks like a game setting and is one in which instructors can guide, observe, and provide feedback and rewards for class activities.
  • Students worry that the class structure will be poorly defined and managed. A well-structured course includes a syllabus that defines the course objectives, learning objectives, goals, measurements, a schedule of activities and assignments, and rubrics for assessment. Virtual world courses add information on how projects will be delivered, how class discussions will be evaluated, and how students can benefit from feedback to improve the quality of their work throughout the course. Other benefits include discovering new ways to study, discuss, create, and express the course subject under the supervision and support of the instructor. In virtual worlds, the instructor’s role shifts from being the “sage on the stage” to being the domain expert—the authority who stimulates and supervises exploration while providing structure, guidance, feedback, and assessment. Demystifying complexity is not an easy task!
  • Exams or assessments of competency shift to projects and solutions to problems that are expressed in context, offering new ways to visualize, experience, and assess the solutions. This method does not replace traditional methods of evaluation, but it does offers additional ways of assessing what students know and can apply. For example, CS 382, a software design class at Colorado Technical University (CTU), created a 3D game maze and populated it with traps, sensors, flags, a scoreboard, treasures, and other game features and then played the game on the last night of class. The goal of the class was to learn to model a variety of software designs using drawings in a design specification. The students exceeded the class requirements: they designed, prototyped, and tested their designs. They discovered a minor flaw, and one student fixed the problem while the class tested it during the next run of the game. These students were so immersed in the learning experience that they did not realize they had accomplished the goals of several classes in a single term. Virtual environments are stimulating, creative landscapes. When virtual worlds are populated with the right mix of content and discovery, students remain long after class ends.
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  • Finally, as students become active participants in virtual world classes, the student who is on “cruise control” is at risk. Students shift from being passive listeners to engaging in group interaction and activities and demonstrating that they understand the course content via the completion of projects, papers, labs, and case studies. Many classes that include case studies use role-play, putting learners in roles and contexts in which they explore the content and make decisions based on the forces and constraints placed on them. One example of a class role-play is shown in Figure 2, which depicts Ramapo’s immersive literature activity in which Suffern Middle School students enact the courtroom scene from John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men. The students’ exploration of the content benefits from this social learning environment.
  • In their “lessons learned” papers, the students noted that the virtual world classes enhanced their learning experience and their perceptions of self and gave them new skills to demonstrate their mastery of the course content. The sense of presence and the customization of their avatars were high on their list of priorities for learning and participating in virtual world classes.
  • Classes in virtual worlds offer opportunities for visualization, simulation, enhanced social networks, and shared learning experiences. Some people learn best by listening to the course content, others by seeing and visualizing the content in context, and the rest by using a hands-on approach to demonstrate course competencies. In virtual worlds, we can leverage a mix of content and activity to support all learners: auditory, visual, and kinesthetic. Virtual worlds support these different learning styles and give students opportunities to explore, discover, and express their understanding of the subject. Naturally, the tool’s capabilities do not guarantee a great learning experience. The success of a course depends on effective course design, delivery, and assessment. Course designers, instructors, and IT professionals are challenged to create stimulating content, deliver it reliably, and ensure a stable virtual world learning environment. Do the benefits outweigh the risks associated with venturing into a virtual world educational platform? For me, the virtual world is my preferred learning and teaching environment. And I am not alone. Over 400 universities and 4,500 educators participate on the Second Life Educators List (SLED).1 All of us are studying how to leverage the benefits of learning in a virtual world in order to assist our students in today’s educational frontiers.
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    Reflections from someone who has taught several courses in Second Life about the teaching experience.
Eloise Pasteur

University Affairs- Studies in Second Life - 0 views

  • “I thought, ‘Gosh, this is amazing! You can teach classes in it’,” he recalls. The first time he taught a course registered in Second Life, Professor Washburn, a.k.a. Duncan Innis, led a 15-week, one-hour lecture to 25 students in the island’s amphitheatre.
  • There is no audio, just words flashing on screen like an MSN chat session. The discussion veers from “fluff journalism” to magazine branding. Nobody raises their hand to voice an opinion; an avatar makes a typing motion in the air if it wants to comment. Professor Washburn and his students often interrupt each other, since you can type whenever you want.
  • The learning curve that comes with Second Life is a drawback mentioned by all professors, online communications personnel and students, and this is one factor that makes some universities reluctant to use the program. Jason Toal, who works at SFU as an experience designer, spearheads most of the university’s projects in Second Life. “If you’re going to use Second Life for your course, you need to spend at least the first couple of classes teaching your students how to use it,” he says. “You have to walk them through what it’s all about, how to hook it on your computer.”
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  • 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.
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    Overview of Canadian HE in Second Life
Eloise Pasteur

How the Google generation thinks differently - Times Online - 0 views

    • Eloise Pasteur
       
      Another take on Digital Immigrants v Digital Natives and a term I find I prefer if you're going to distinguish on age - the Google Generation. Although I'm sure our parents and teachers wondered the same about us, does the width of knowledge that is accessible lead to deep learning and the ability to reflect?
  • Rose Luckin, Professor of Learner- Centred Design at the London Knowledge Lab and a visiting professor at the University of Sussex, is working on a study examining the internet's impact on pupils' critical and meta-cognitive skills. “The worrying view coming through is that students are lacking in reflective awareness,” she says. “Technology makes it easy for them to collate information, but not to analyse and understand it. Much of the evidence suggests that what is going on out there is quite superficial.”
  • This year, researchers at University College London reported the results of a five-year study into the “Google Generation”. When they examined the behaviour of those logging on to the websites of journals, e-books and other sources of written information, they found widespread evidence of “skimming activity”. Users viewed no more than three pages before “bouncing out”. This wasn't just the norm for students. “The same has happened to professors and lecturers. Everyone exhibits a bouncing/flicking behaviour, which sees them searching horizontally rather than vertically. Power browsing is the norm.”
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  • The difference, though, is that as a digital immigrant, my mind has baseline skills in concentration, contemplation and knowledge construction. My fear - and the reason why I wrested my son's laptop away from him - is that the acquisition of those skills is being lost in the twitch-speed of our new Web 2.0 world.
  • I can see that that broadens his knowledge, but does it deepen it? “Education has always been about absorbing the facts first and reflecting on them second. Technology is not hampering that, but take away his laptop and you are just setting him up for a rebellion,” Kelly says. “The technology tide is unstoppable.”
  • “Because they have been using digital technology all their lives, our children feel they have authority over it,” says Rose Luckin. “But technology cannot teach them to reflect upon and evaluate the information they are gathering online. For that, the role of teachers and parents remains fundamentally important. You are in the hot seat. They still need you to open that conversation.”
  • NATIVES v IMMIGRANTS Digital natives Like receiving information quickly from multiple media sources. Like parallel processing and multi-tasking. Like processing pictures, sounds and video before text. Like random access to hyperlinked multimedia information. Like to network with others. Like to learn “just in time”. Digital immigrants Like slow and controlled release of information from limited sources. Like singular processing and single or limited tasking. Like processing text before pictures, sounds and video. Like to receive information linearly, logically and sequentially. Like to work independently. Like to learn “just in case”.
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    A discussion of the learning style and depth of learning of the Google Generation, this time from a parent and journalist, but with some interesting quotes from those that study the youngsters
Doctor Rose

That'SLife » Blog Archive » Language Flab - 1 views

shared by Doctor Rose on 22 Feb 09 - Cached
  • Two excellent people who I’ve had occasion to work with a few times have, over the past eighteen months, worked for Language Lab, the ‘life-based learning’ language school based entirely in SL. They’re no longer there, for reasons which are unknown to me.
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    Will Languagelab ever succeed in making a commercial go of it in Second Life? Opinion from a successful language teacher and user of SL...
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    It's very interesting~~
Steven Hornik

Innovate: Student Perceptions of a Course Taught in Second Life - 0 views

  • Virtual worlds, as digital learning objects appear to provide a space for constructivist learning at its best, facilitating more student engagement than the simple discussion boards comprising most online courses.
    • Steven Hornik
       
      A virtual world by itself can not be exptected to create engagement and contrasting virtual worlds with discusson boards is apples vs oranges. Each can serve its purpose and each can be engaging if developed an delivered properly, but alas the opposite is also true.
  • that students will become as motivated by virtual worlds as they are by video games.
    • Steven Hornik
       
      I would like to see the citation for video games being inhrently motivating, and motivated in what way? To play or to learn, they are different things.
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  • Most lectures were given in the classroom, so those given in SL, hampered by the slowness of text chat versus face-to-face conversation, suffered by comparison. Many students had to be on campus anyway during scheduled online class activities, leading to situations in which students were text chatting while sitting next to one another in a computer lab.
    • Steven Hornik
       
      This is just a Duh statement, of course students are not going to want to use a virual world platform while they are together in an actual classroom - its contrived and serves no purposed other then the oft mentioned "we hope it motivates the students" but why would it? If you don't use a virual world platform to take advantage of its unique affordances then the outcomes acheived in this study should be expected.
  • understanding the validity and creative procedure for illustrating their papers in a three-dimensional environment
    • Steven Hornik
       
      Again, why use a virtual world for presenting papers in a face2face class?
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