The five case studies all use the immersive virtual world Second Life, but have several elements that varied:
The number of sessions that take place in the virtual world. Subject discipline.
Part of a degree programme or part of extra-curricular activity.
Students physically located at the same place or distanced from each other.
The stage in the students’ experience of Second Life in which the study takes place, i.e. some were the students’ initial session, some occurred after the introduction had taken place. The methods and tools used for each of the case studies.
These variations are shown in tables 3.2 and 3.3 and are expanded upon below.
The case studies all took place over the 2008/09 academic year at a range of institutions. These have been anonymised. Some relevant details of each institution are:
99 Green College is a Further Education College in the North East of England that offers
undergraduate degrees through association with a nearby university. University of Magenta is a new Scottish University.
University of Blue is a US university based in New England. Yellow University is a new university in the North East of England.
In addition a sixth case study was attempted at Cyan University, a Million + University based in the UK Midlands. Some data from this are included within this study.
A pilot study was conducted during the 2006/07 academic year. This pilot study was conducted using webconferencing to link two courses, one in Red University and one in a Dutch University. It was part of a project jointly funded by JISC in the UK and SURF in the Netherlands as part of their StreamTeam programme. Both courses focused on the cultural perspectives of theatre and were taught modules. Sessions took place over a semester and involved a webconference link between the two groups for two hours a week, as well as independent group work conducted between the two cohorts using web 2.0 technologies.
Two of the case studies (those at Green College and at Yellow University) were conducted as part of the Theatron project (Childs et al, 2009). Theatron was a two year project (2007 to 2009), funded by Eduserv and led by King’s College London, for which I was hired as an evaluator and project manager. My role in these case studies was as the evaluator of the project, not as a lecturer. The Theatron project involved the creation of twenty theatres from different periods of history, including the Globe Theatre, the Theatre of Epidavros, The Odeion of Agrippa, etc. A range of medieval temporary stages were also created. Five institutions were funded to create performance- based activities within these theatres. At Green College and Yellow University these were extra- curricular activities, the Green College activities were aimed at creating a Commedia dell’Arte performance using the medieval stages, evaluating the effectiveness of Second Life as a medium for performance and analysing the adaptations required to stage performances within it. The preparation took place over several months as a series of two-hour sessions of independent study by the students, facilitated by the group’s lecturer. The Yellow University engagement was with the Globe theatre. A series of attempts were made to run sessions aimed at giving students experience
100 of Shakespeare’s plays on the Globe stage. The first attempts at running these sessions within the formal taught sessions had not been successful due to technical issues. The session I evaluated as a case study was a one-off session conducted with paid volunteers in order to test the validity of using Second Life as an educational tool and was conducted face-to-face in an IT suite. Students were given guidance in using Second Life, and then took part in a dramatised reading of the final act of Hamlet, while working out the blocking out of the movements of the avatars on the Globe stage.
The remainder were sessions I ran for colleagues who were interested in holding Second Life sessions with their classes. My role in those cases was as a guest lecturer in an informal capacity brought in to teach on modules that were part of undergraduate or graduate curricula. These are therefore not staged experiments, but intended as authentic learning experiences for students, fulfilling requirements for curricula and learning programmes outside of this study. The Red case study and Blue case study were identified through friends and colleagues who were familiar with my research. The Red case study was part of an undergraduate module taught to second year Theatre and Performance students on the subject of Theatre Design. It consisted of a single, two-hour, face- to-face session. The aims of the session were to give students direct experience of Second Life and to introduce them to some of the potential for theatre design in virtual worlds, and identify some of the issues. The Blue case study was a post-graduate course on human behaviour and human development which was partially delivered face-to-face, partially through the institutions’ VLE (BlackBoard) and partially through Second Life. I was present as an observer for the students’ second session in Second Life, then as a guest lecturer for their third and fourth sessions. The students were predominantly training to be counsellors. The rationale for using Second Life was that the difficulties and anxieties of being a newcomer to Second Life were analogous to issues adolescents faced in the physical world. By introducing students to these experiences, it would be possible to remind students of many of the issues faced by their clients in the physical world. My sessions were on the role of identity in these virtual worlds in the first of my sessions, and in the second we discussed the issues that their clients may present in the future as a consequence of the clients’ experiences of virtual worlds. The transcripts and observations are taken from the students’ second and third sessions. These sessions consisted of one hour of presentation and class discussions.
101 In an attempt to identify additional case studies, various communities and mailbases were emailed in an attempt to find teachers who would be willing for me to show students Second Life or take part in their inworld activities, or for me to act as a free evaluator on their projects in exchange for permission to use the data in the PhD study. This only produced one response, from the University of Magenta, to run a single one hour session on a distanced-delivered course on virtual worlds. The students on this course had seen other virtual worlds, but had no experience of Second Life. My brief was to both show the students Second Life, and also demonstrate the potential of virtual worlds as educational platforms. The session activities were a recapitulation of the Red session, followed by a reflection on the effectiveness of the session as an educational activity.
In all of these cases, therefore, no selection criteria were applied to the inclusion of these as educational activities. In order to obtain as many case studies as possible, and as many data as possible for each case study, an opportunistic approach was taken to both the activities conducted and the evaluation methods applied. The learning goals for these sessions were largely determined by the students’ regular lecturer, and on my part with little prior knowledge of the students’ abilities or prior learning.
In the Red, Blue and Magenta case studies, participation in the activity was a mandatory part of the course and so participation in the evaluation was optional. Response rates were therefore sometimes low. The Green and Yellow activities were optional for students to participate in and included the evaluation as a mandatory part of participation. Participation rates are listed in table 3.4.
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Institutions Number of previously held sessions Subject discipline Part of programme / extra- curricular Location
Red 0 Theatre Design Part of
programme
Same physical space
Green 8 to 10 Performance Extracurricular Same physical space
Magenta 0 (in SL) 2 previous sessions held in other virtual worlds
Study of virtual worlds
Extracurricular Distanced
Blue 1 induction session, 1
learning session Human Development Part of programme Distanced
Yellow 0 Performance Extracurricular Same physical space
Table 3.1 The variation in case studies in main phase of study
Institutions Observation of session Transcript of chat logs Recordings of focus groups Interviews with students Version of survey used Red X X X 1 Green X 2 Magenta X X 3 Blue X X X 3 Yellow X X 3
Table 3.2 Methods and tools used in each of the case studies
Institutions Session mandatory or optional Evaluation mandatory or optional Number of participants Questionnaires completed Students interviewed
Red Mandatory Optional 15 14 0
Green Optional Optional 12 6 6 face-to-
face
Magenta Mandatory Optional 8 5 0
Blue Mandatory Optional 19 2 2 via Skype
Yellow Optional Mandatory 9 9 0
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