Guidelines for Meetings and Presentations in Second Life
Khalid M. Dubas, Jackie Hill · The Academy of Educational Leadership Journal · 2013
INTRODUCTION Challenging Economic Times Many governments, for-profit, and non-profit organizations throughout the world are facing limited resources to meet existing demands. The adverse economic conditions in the US and in much of the world have created challenges for US organizations. As of June 2012, the U.S. total national debt was $15.87 trillion. The Congressional Budget Office projects a $1.1 trillion federal budget deficit for fiscal year 2012. For the last several years, the US total national debt has been increasing along with increases in the federal deficits. In addition, many states have been running deficits for a few years and will continue to do so for some time (CNN, 2011). The financial situation is not much better for many businesses and non-profit organizations. There are strong incentives in most organizations to reduce expenses while maintaining or increasing productivity. Many universities and colleges are faced with limited resources to serve an increasing student population. This calls for innovative solutions to current problems and challenges. One way to more efficiently utilize scarce resources is by offering online courses and degree programs and many educational institutions either already offer such programs and/or have plans to start offering such programs. Typically, such online programs utilize the Course/Learning Management Systems (C/LMS) like Blackboard/WebCT, Moodle etc. While quite useful than simply web-based alternatives, these C/LMS are for the large part limited to the use of two dimensional technologies; they support interactive teaching/learning opportunities but such interactions are limited compared with what could be accomplished in a virtual 3D environment. After all, people are 3D and interact more naturally in a 3D world whether virtual or real. There are many virtual worlds (http://www.virworld.com/virtual-worlds-directory/) and Second Life (SL) is the most mature 3D virtual world and is best suited for educational organizations. The Destination Guide for SL http://secondlife.com/destinations/learning lists 75 Educational & Non-Profit Organizations that have a presence in SL at this time. Linden Lab, based in San Francisco, is the creator of Second Life. Over time, their SL viewer has become very user friendly and Linden Lab provides a lot of helpful information within the SL viewer and also at the SL website. In addition, books by Rymaszewiski et al. (2009), Rufer-Bach (2009), and Wood (2001) provide an excellent introduction to the various aspects of SL and serve as a good reference for the new comers to SL. Purpose and Scope We will describe here various uses and benefits of a virtual world like SL. We will also present guidelines for effective use of SL for meetings and presentations in SL and a list of places to visit in SL. These guidelines are developed based on our experience from the use of SL at Mount Olive College in North Carolina and elsewhere during the last three years. MANY USES AND BENEFITS OF SECOND LIFE Uses of Second Life The possibilities for learning in SL are limited only by the imagination of the learners. Ussery (2010) presents utilization of SL at Texas State Technical College, Abilene, Texas. To this we might add other activities like teaching in SL, selling in SL through a retail store, socializing like joining dance clubs, creating families in SL with virtual spouses and even virtual children. Other uses could be product design, test marketing, conducting training of airplane flight; learning or teaching a foreign language. Atkinson (2009) mentions numerous resources in SL and provides a SL Activity Rubric that includes beginning activities, intermediate activities, and a final activity. He postulates that the use of constructivist content and social interactions may result in robust learning environments that better engage learners in SL compared with the traditional situations that involve simply viewing the media or communication by e-mail, text-based chat rooms, or traditional classrooms. …