Teaching Field Research in SL

Ed Lamoureaux of Bradely University will be teaching a field research course online in Second Life during the Winter break. At the NMC REgional conference, he shared his goals, visions, and challenges that he foresees for this course.

Ed is a theory guy who says that games suck. SL on the other hand is an opportunity to learn and teach about virtual environments for living and learning. But one cannot teach undergrad new media students with that attitude, you become a dinosaur, and you suck. In Sl, he can be comfortable doing non-shooting or sterotypical gaming stuff and stay relevant.

As a field researcher and conversation analyst, SL and this course gives him an opportunity to do field research and ethnography. Can take beginning researchers and risk less with this kind of research, than doing it in real life. Also, SL offers a distance education opportunity that may not be possible otherwise. Ed curently has 5 students on board and has agreed to take one student each from Trinity, Ball State, and University of Nevada, Reno for a grand total of 8.

Students have to have the necessary equipment, create an avi, and learn ttheir way around SL on their own by the time they start class. Students also have to have a rough idea of their topic of field research when they apply to their course.

There’s more going on in the evenings US time in SL, and that’s one of the reasons the class will meet at that time. One hour will be devoted to real life style lecture and discussion using NMC’s TeamSpeex server for voice chat. Question is: Should a real life type format be brought into Second Life? On the other hand, research cannot be taught without some element of plain good old-fashioned teaching. Establish the teaching space as a sitting space and thea vatar will stand if they want to speak in their turn. Students will get the day’s notes as a note card that they can add to their inventory.

One of the unexpected challenges that arose is that conducting research in SL could actually be more difficult than doing it in real life. Normally, this kind of research would get an exemption, but in this case the research plan has to be approved by Linden Labs as well. Also, the university is requiring individual proposals from each student prior to approval of their research. This is partly because every body in Second Life is an identified subject due to the fact that their avatar names are always available. Students will carry a notecard in their inventory to identify their research as being approved under the Human Subject Procedures.

In the event that SL goes down or if the University closes, or if Second Life is sold, students will register for a credit at a time: Section 1, 2, and 3. The students will get grades for a section at a time. The Registrar will hold their money and pay each section off as they go through the course.

powered by performancing firefox

Technorati Tags: nmc2006reg

Explore posts in the same categories: nmc2006reg