Second Life as Experiential Learning

Second life as experiential learning.
Dan Riordan, 12-20-09
Second Life should be viewed as a spot for experiential learning, not as a game. This thesis holds a number of implications for educators wishing to use this 3D immersive environment.

One avenue of thought about the use of Second Life, or a 3D immersive virtual environment, is that instructors should reconfigure courses so that they provide the same type of environment as video games, thus providing the learning benefits that those games provide. Games are intriguing, but hard to pin down for this stage of use of SL. Games include, as Michelle Dickey explains, narratives that are used to solve problems. Educational narratives would contain an initial challenge, potential obstacles, personal roles, an environment with specified dimensions, a back story, and ‘cut scenes’ (basically check points that affirm a decision or set a new course of action).

While there are similarities between Dickey’s framework and the structure of any investigation, at this point most instructors are unable to visualize their course as a narrative. Even if they can so envision a course, the technological difficulties of creating the interactive environment in SL are insurmountable for most instructors. Just as the web did not become a popular site for educators until it became extremely easy to upload items to a website, so SL will not become a site for redesigning courses into games until the creation mechanism is simplified. Many, probably almost all, instructors will not spend the time and energy needed to create a game environment/narrative for learning, for instance, quadratic equations, microeconomics, or inorganic chemistry.

A key game possibility, however, is that games allow participants to create identities. Educational spaces also allow students to create identities. Sarah Robbins, in a talk at the University of North Carolina, discusses how all spaces project and create identities. She points out that a lecture hall creates two identities, the person in charge and everyone else. She notes, though, that a lab creates an identity where a student can ‘play’ (or practice, or assume the identity of) a scientist.

In terms of Second Life, then, a different and interesting question presents itself: Can an immersive 3D virtual environment help instructors create the identity we want students to assume in our courses? Robbins uses examples from her own experience of teaching composition and rhetoric in Second Life. She assigns research problems, requires students to create solutions, then requires them to create ‘poster sessions’ to which residents of SL are invited. Students become the kind of researcher that most composition courses require. The 3D environment provides a space for them to conduct and report on research, in addition to the activities and writings in the face-to-face component of their course.

Experiential learning implies face-to-face as well as outside-of-class activities. The goal of such experiential assignment is to help students focus “on the two fundamental activities of learning: grasping and transforming experience” (Holzer and Andruet). In Humanities courses these experiences reflect “the desire to restore to the humanities its liberal education mission of fostering involved citizenship and active ownership of ideas” (Nikitina 43).

Typically in introductory experiential learning situations (as opposed to advanced situations like an internship where students are usually not in a formal class) students are centered in a face-to-face class, working with an instructor. In the class they familiarize themselves with essential skills related to ‘playing,’ or practicing, the type of expert that this particular class develops (historian, mathematician, engineer). For the experiential assignment, they spend large amounts of time outside of class engaging in activities that require them to use the skills and build the attitudes and expertise that the course promotes in the curriculum.

Could immersion in a virtual world provide the experiential learning in a course? Like hybrid web-enhanced courses, students would meet regularly face-to-face but then spend research/experiential time in Second Life, completing assignments that fulfill the call of Nikitina and Holzer and Andruet to experience, own, grasp and transform their in-class learning. At present it seems to me that this should be the chosen path of those who wish to experiment with teaching in a virtual 3D world.

It is possible that eventually we will be able to create a ‘math space’ or a ‘grammar space’ where the student, given the identity of problem solver in a narrative game world, overcomes obstacles and collaborates to achieve the status grammar hero. But for now, it seems much easier for us to consider thinking of and using virtual 3D worlds as ‘field trips’ or ‘in-class service learning’ or ‘internships’ in which we send students out from our classrooms into the ‘world’ in order to experience situations that will encourage the expertise we desire.

Michele D. Dickey. “Game Design Narrative for Learning: Appropriating Adventure Game Design Narrative Devices and Techniques for the Design of Interactive Learning Environments.” Educational Technology Research and Development 54.3 (2006), 245-63. Viewed 12-20-09:
http://www.springerlink.com/content/h3gn553h68002q47/

Siegfried M. Holzer and Raul H. Andruet. Experiential Learning in Mechanics with Multimedia
Viewed 12-20-09: http://www.succeed.ufl.edu/papers/Expmechmult.pdf

Svetlana Nikitina. “Applied Humanities: Bridging the Gap Between Building Theory and Fostering Citizenship.” Liberal Education. Winter 2009, 36-43.

Sarah Robbins. “Creating Authentic and Engaging Community-Oriented Learning Spaces.” March 17, 2007. UNC-Chapel Hill. Viewed 12-20-09 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ueAcz7ZyFpM&feature=related