Second Life Education Research

I’ll admit that as I draft I wind up asking more questions than I answer but I’m getting there.
Lit review:

what areas of lit do I need to explore?

• power relationships in classrooms
• student and teacher roles
• impact of technology on communication patterns
• body language and communication
• shifting identities and dynamic identity creation

What problem am I solving:

• instructor’s role in a MUVE
• difficulties in distributed power in classrooms
• adapting pedagogy to new technologies
• adapting teaching environments to the philosophy of web 2.0, consumer/producer/collaborator roles

Methodology:

what am I looking for in the collected artifacts? How will each be measured?

• evidence of collaboration o language cues o types of activities o levels o engagement
• evidence of changing roles o tones of interaction o areas of role-changing and conflict
• Behavior differences in MUVE and F2F
• Community cohesion

Ways to measure “richness” of the learning environment

• Quality of resulting work
• Student engagement Education is changing.

More and more universities are offering more and more classes online. Instructors who used to teach face to face classes are now teaching in online spaces such as instant messaging, forums, and virtual environments The models of learning are changing with the demands of technology or rather technology is changing to suit our learning patterns in more natural ways.

However, traditional pedagogy models and classroom models of identity aren’t the most effective in these new learning spaces. Just as pedagogy shifted when professors became instructors who engaged students rather than being just those who “professed” and left the teaching to tutors who met with small groups of students, and just as pedagogy shifted in the 1970s with open universities and the development of community colleges, we’re face to face with another large shift in pedagogy.

Today, as student demands change, models of learning change and technology used in education advances, so do the models of pedagogy we use need to change as well. However, just like any other change in pedagogy, we must be critical and reflective as we make changes, while paying attention to attitudes, outcomes, learning styles, technology; all must be taken into account as we carefully refashion pedagogy to suit changing times. Related to these changes come elements of identity for both teacher and student, relationships of authority and power, understanding uses of technology and how they effect learning.

This dissertation will provide a model for approaching changes in online learning environments with special emphasis on the use of education MUVEs (Multi User Virtual Environments). We’ll start by looking at a brief history of online education while paying specific attention to how each technology influenced collaboration, power, and identity in the classroom and then pedagogy as a whole. Next, we’ll move on to focus on using MUVEs, the new frontier of online learning. To apply the theories developed, a case study will be offered to reveal the artifacts and insights gathered in one semester of composition and rhetoric instruction in a MUVE (using SecondLife as the platform). From the insights gathered, the piece will end with the implications of the research as well as direction on how instructors can learn to embrace these new learning spaces as well as anticipating what changes we’ll face next when using technology in education.

Chapter One: Justification and Background: Why are power, collaboration, and identity necessary topics of analysis in online teaching? An examination of the various theories that inform this work. Framing the questions that the research presented later is constructed to answer.

Chapter Two: History of online teaching. An overview of various technologies and how each impacts power, collaboration, identity, and pedagogy

Chapter Three: MUVEs. This history and development of MUVEs as well as an explanation of how they can be used in education.

Chapter Four: SecondLife. What the reader needs to understand about SecondLife to appreciate the research gathered there and presented in the next chapter. Power, collaboration and identity in the general SL population

Chapter Five: A case study of a semester-long composition class in SL. How the course came about, who was involved and the mechanics of the course.

Chapter Six: Analyzing the artifacts. What evidence of power, collaboration and identity were discovered during the semester.

Chapter Seven: ramifications and findings. So what? Analysis of the implications of the study’s findings

Chapter Eight: Broader analysis of ramifications to pedagogy in online spaces.

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