Teaching using scenario based simulations in Second Life - Case study Video Lecture | Teach Online: A Comprehensive Approach for Teaching Online - Professional Skills

Second Life is an online virtual world
where users can interact create
collaborate and socialize it is often
used in education to facilitate
role-playing activities or scenario
based learning that can't be achieved in
the real world
Simon care is keeper of the media zoo at
the University of Leicester in the UK
Simon explains how Second Life was used
to help students generate an emergency
evacuation plan for an oil rig as part
of their study in a fully online master
of occupational psychology Simon
outlines the technical considerations of
teaching in virtual worlds and explains
their potential in the future of
Education it was all part of the
darkling project and it was the MSC in
occupational psychology the aim of the
scenario on the oil rig and second life
was to give these students a more
collaborative and immersive learning
experience Second Life is a 3d virtual
environment and it's a it's a place that
doesn't exist which is the way I like to
think of it and yet it's so real as an
avatar you you can choose pretty much
anything you want you choose your
appearance choose the way you want to be
encountered in Second Life we were going
through possible artifacts that could
serve their purpose and we came across
this wonderful wonderful oil rig which
had huge potential it was big it was
open and very well built and that's what
we focused on as it's an oil rig I put
up some workshops with some functioning
artifacts within which gives a little
bit of interactivity to the students
it's an environment that is not in no
way could it be incorporated in the real
world there's no way you can afford to
go to an oil rig there's no way you'd be
allowed on an oil rig ok it's a virtual
oil rig and it's not exactly the same as
a real oil rig but you do still have the
same principles you still have the same
idea they had two purposes when they
came on this rig to work together there
was a health and safety team and to
develop an evacuation plan I went around
and I lay burning
barrels blocked off stairwells blocked
off doors and set fire to the rig and
then once everything was ready I press
the Klaxons and at the same time typed
into the chatbox evacuate evacuate I
also had my mic on so I was saying
evacuate evacuate please make your way
to the embarkation point at the boats
stairwell one
right for me
now all the blue helmets si
you
in terms of from how the learners
responded to this experience they
responded very positively the students
said they found it very enjoyable but
also quite realistic with the Klaxons
going off having to remove quickly
people saying evacuate evacuate it did
give them a feeling although it was in
world as avatars it did give them a
feeling that perhaps well definitely
they would not have got off paper just
reading about it we lost possibly 30
percent of the volunteer participants on
the project simply through being unable
to access Second Life through their
hardware or through their bandwidth or
the the network collapsing while they
were in world so was a demanding
technology the ones that did get in did
find it very beneficial
if you're a Elektra perhaps interested
in using Second Life I think you would
need some help from someone more
experienced the good thing is there's a
lot of experienced people out there
the two main technical challenges are
bandwidth it's a bandwidth hungry
technology when you're in world it
requires a lot of broadband the second
major technical challenges you need good
Hardware the costs of working in Second
Life are not considerable if you own an
island which is where you need to to
develop your projects it's about a
thousand US a month and then I think
it's about 300 u.s. a month just to to
maintain it to set up a client and
avatar in Second Life is free so it
doesn't matter to the student or the
number of students you have because they
can all register for free
in terms of
with in Second Life it's very similar if
not the same as the salmon 5 stage model
where the the same five stage structure
has been applied to to the virtual world
we felt well the psychologists felt that
perhaps if they were working together in
a collaborative environment actually
learning from each other it would
actually improve their learning
experience it's about applying the
principles they learn on their course in
a specific environment
as an educational tool it's fantastic
this potential is huge once these
technological challenges are overcome so
what I would say is take a punt and have
a go but think of it in 10 years time
think of it in 15 years time think of
100 make broadband speeds and an
expectation from the learner that
they're moving away from a lecture
scenario to a passive recipient scenario
and that slotting into avatars clothes
and going to do some learning for half
now is not that unrealistic if you can
learn if you can undertake learning in
the virtual world that perhaps there are
barriers to in the real world then
that's got to be a significant advantage
you