Educational Gaming Commons - Press Start

What is It?

Second Life is a virtual world, a 3D online environment created by Linden Lab. This environment mimics the real world, but also contains the impossible, such as flying castles. You participate in the world by creating an avatar, a representation of yourself that may look like you do in real life, or vastly different. You control your avatar, moving about, creating things, and interacting with other avatars. While the 3D environment shares many visual characteristics with some current games, Second Life does not come with any preset objectives or goals. It’s up to you to create them.

Who’s Doing It?

As of March 2008, over 250 colleges and universities have a presence in Second Life. Activities range from simple exploration to full-scale immersive courses. See http://sleducation.wikispaces.com/educationaluses for a variety of examples.

At Penn State, Education Technology Services, the College of Information Sciences and Technology (IST), Penn State Berks, and Penn State World Campus own islands and have a variety of faculty projects underway. See http://ets.tlt.psu.edu/gaming/current for more information on Penn State’s involvement in Second Life.

How Does It Work?

Step 1 - Download and install the Second Life software from http://secondlife.com.

Step 2 - Get a Second Life Account at http://sl.nmc.org/join/.

Step 3 - Start up Second Life, and (automatically) proceed through the NMC Orientation Island.

Step 4 - Explore! See http://ets.tlt.psu.edu/gaming/VirtualWorlds for more information.

Why is it Significant?

Students are becoming accustomed to these worlds and expect to participate in them. Second Life can foster constructivist learning, virtual teamwork, and new media research, such as investigations into online identity. Social presence is built into the learning environment – you are there; you have a stake in what happens. Because the space is persistent, virtual field trips, museums, and replicas and simulations of real-life places are all possible. Real-world physical handicaps are minimized, enabling equitable participation.

What are the Downsides?

Second Life does experience downtime, when the system is unavailable. Sometimes these outages are announced, sometimes not. They are especially prevalent immediately after an upgrade to the client. Therefore, when scheduling a synchronous session in Second Life it is recommended you have a backup plan, alternative activities, and a "rain" date.

Running Second Life in Penn State Classroom and Lab Computing labs is difficult. Many locations cannot install it on the lab machines for various reasons. You can run Second Life off a Flash drive in these labs, however. See http://ets.tlt.psu.edu/gaming/SLOnAFlashDrive for more information.

Second Life has no inherent goals. It’s up to the educator to establish learning goals, assessment strategies, and mold the virtual environment to accommodate them. This requires a great deal of knowledge about Second Life, and that requires time to acquire.

Second Life is actually divided into two parts – Teen Second Life, for people less than 18 years of age, and regular Second Life, for people 18 years of age and older. Teen Second Life is restricted and PG. If you have some students under 18 and some 18 or older, it is impossible to have them all in the same Second Life space.

Students require an acclimation period of four to eight hours in Second Life to utilize the environment well.

Where is It Going?

Educators are still in the early stages of use and adoption of Second Life. In the past year, many educators have released their tools and builds to the general public, making it far easier to get up and running with a particular educational endeavor. Educators with Second Life expertise are also joining together in online communities to discuss and share possibilities. Researchers are beginning to publish papers in accredited journals, pushing valid questions and research possibilities forward.

What are the Implications for Teaching and Learning?

Second Life can and is being used to mimic traditional educational environments; for example, classrooms. The true potential for Second Life and virtual worlds in general lies in coupling the 3D environment with valid, educational social interactions. While either an immersive 3D environment or social interactions can provide for good learning experiences, in multi-user virtual worlds the natural coupling of these two possibilities may be what multi-user virtual worlds do best.

Who to Contact

For more information on Second Life at Penn State, contact:

Brett Bixler, Ph.D.
Lead Instructional Designer & Manager, Instructional Support and Research
Education Technology Services (ETS)
  Teaching and Learning with Technology
    Information Technology Services
The Pennsylvania State University
210G Rider Building
227 West Beaver Avenue
University Park, PA  16801-4819
814-863-7763 (voice)

Also, see http://ets.tlt.psu.edu/gaming/VirtualWorlds for more information and examples.

Case Study

Dr. Gloria Clark, assistant professor of humanities and Spanish, Penn State Harrisburg, developed a virtual Hacienda for Spanish 1-3 students so they can experience the culture and physicality of the Spanish language. In the past two semesters Gloria has discovered an interesting thing – her students are writing more. Immersion in the environment seems to be a critical factor here. Gloria has the students creating object and events as well, including virtual T-shirts with Spanish writings and a fashion show where each student introduces another student and describes their clothing.

Gloria’s efforts are a springboard into new research and publishing opportunities for her. Her program was featured in the February 2008 edition of the Language Educator, a national publication of the America Council on the Teaching of Foreign Language (ACTFL). As a result of this and other efforts in Second Life, she is now contacted regularly by other universities for her advice, and has received an invitation to do a six-hour workshop on SL at ACTFL's National Convention.

Gloria’s students also find the immersive environment ideal for learning. One student claims the most exciting thing is the active part of the learning process. She says that she is learning Spanish and actively using it at the same time: "After all, we learned our first language actively. The best way to learn a second language is to be active in that language." Gloria reflects on this: “This generation of college students, generally speaking, really responds to doing. Second Life makes available a rich, constantly changing, interactive, immersive environment for our students to experience.”

The Hacienda

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