Students wellbeing within Second Life

[Iggy O]

David asked:

"have you had any negative experiences with students within second life?"

Only once, and it was my fault as an educator new to SL. I dove into
the world without planning and took a class with me. A student was
stalked by a creep (in SL, not outside it) and "caged" at his
sex-club.

Linden Lab handled the situation masterfully when the student filed an
abuse report.

The most general trauma--and not a long-lasting one--was from the
stupidity of new avatars who were naked or abusive at Orientation
Island in SL. I resolved never to use that again for a class.

David also asked, " Do you in anyway provide forewarning/debriefing to
your students, and if so
how and in how much detail?"

I now spend an hour with each student at New Media Consortium's
welcome point for new avatars, as soon as my students' avatars
"spawn."  Then their first tasks involve visiting and reporting on
carefully vetted academic sites. They review these pages from our
class wiki:

http://iggyssyllabus.pbworks.com/Warning+Signs

and

http://iggyssyllabus.pbworks.com/Reporting+Abuse

By midterm, after some coaching and customizing, the students venture
out to Linden sponsored events such as the ongoing Burning Life
festival (some are there this weekend). Some go on their own to
dance-clubs in Mature or PG sims--none of the work they do requires
adult verification.

Others have the option--but are not required--to visit the UC Davis
Virtual Hallucinations simulation:

http://www.ucdmc.ucdavis.edu/ais/virtualhallucinations/

Those who went there were fascinated and disturbed, but not unduly
worried by it later.
------------------------------------------------------------
Joe Essid, University of Richmond Rhetoric & Communication Studies

Iggy Strangeland: Reaction Grid
Iggyo: Metaplace
Iggyo Heritage: Heritage Key
Ignatius Onomatopoeia: Second Life

blog: http://iggyo.blogspot.com
Web: http://virtualworldsedu.info/
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[Patricia F Anderson]

I wish EVERY new educator to consider using SL would read this post.
The "case report" I use as my worst example of a failure to use SL
correctly came from a school that did exactly the opposite of this.
 - The students were assigned to go into SL on their own before coming to campus
 - Students were offered no structured support or guidance.
 - There was no formal orientation experience.
 - No tools, events or structure were used to create a school social
bonding experience.
 - This SL experience happened as their primary formative experience
for the new curriculum before and during the first 2 weeks of entering
the program.

I tell folks it is analogous to taking an entering untrained
anthropology/sociology/social work student, dropping them in an inner
city ghetto unsupervised for a period of time, and then grabbing them
back out and saying, "How'd you like it? Wasn't it great?"

The end result was that the students almost uniformly HATED SL and saw
no educational relevance. The best reaction was, "Hmm, this might be
mildly interesting, if I had infinite time, which I don't." The
teachers seemed to consider it an interesting way to assess whether a
hot new technology was a waste of time. The entire mess persuaded most
of the campus leaders that SL was laughable at best. CAVEAT: I was not
involved in the course, I do not know who the teachers were (I hope
they aren't on this list), and my information is coming only from a
half dozen or so students I knew or have since met who were in the
course.

All of our successful SL experience have been structured more along
the lines of what Iggy describes below. Iggy, I know this will be
archived in the SLED list, but is it also available as a blog post
somewhere?

On the flip side, though, this *IS* an interesting way to assess a new
educational technology (despite it having been a failure for the
purpose of an educational experience or an effective use of SL). I was
talking with an edtech faculty on campus a couple weeks ago. He said
his gold standard for an serious game is Crayon Physics, specifically
because he can point people at it blind, with absolutely no training,
and they immediately start actually learning. I don't think virtual
worlds will ever get to that point, just because they are *worlds*,
but we could still do things to get the SL experience for new
educators and students a whole lot closer to this ideal than it is
now.

 - Perplexity "Lexi" Peccable.

On Fri, Oct 23, 2009 at 6:58 PM, Iggy O <[hidden email]> wrote:

> David asked:
>
> "have you had any negative experiences with students within second life?"
>
> Only once, and it was my fault as an educator new to SL. I dove into
> the world without planning and took a class with me. A student was
> stalked by a creep (in SL, not outside it) and "caged" at his
> sex-club.
>
> Linden Lab handled the situation masterfully when the student filed an
> abuse report.
>
> The most general trauma--and not a long-lasting one--was from the
> stupidity of new avatars who were naked or abusive at Orientation
> Island in SL. I resolved never to use that again for a class.
>
> David also asked, " Do you in anyway provide forewarning/debriefing to
> your students, and if so
> how and in how much detail?"
>
> I now spend an hour with each student at New Media Consortium's
> welcome point for new avatars, as soon as my students' avatars
> "spawn."  Then their first tasks involve visiting and reporting on
> carefully vetted academic sites. They review these pages from our
> class wiki:
>
> http://iggyssyllabus.pbworks.com/Warning+Signs
>
> and
>
> http://iggyssyllabus.pbworks.com/Reporting+Abuse
>
> By midterm, after some coaching and customizing, the students venture
> out to Linden sponsored events such as the ongoing Burning Life
> festival (some are there this weekend). Some go on their own to
> dance-clubs in Mature or PG sims--none of the work they do requires
> adult verification.
>
> Others have the option--but are not required--to visit the UC Davis
> Virtual Hallucinations simulation:
>
> http://www.ucdmc.ucdavis.edu/ais/virtualhallucinations/
>
> Those who went there were fascinated and disturbed, but not unduly
> worried by it later.
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> Joe Essid, University of Richmond Rhetoric & Communication Studies
>
> Iggy Strangeland: Reaction Grid
> Iggyo: Metaplace
> Iggyo Heritage: Heritage Key
> Ignatius Onomatopoeia: Second Life
>
> blog: http://iggyo.blogspot.com
> Web: http://virtualworldsedu.info/
> _______________________________________________
> Educators mailing list
> To unsubscribe
> https://lists.secondlife.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/educators
>

--
Patricia Anderson / SL: Perplexity Peccable
[hidden email] OR [hidden email]
Emerging Technologies Librarian, Health Sciences Libraries
University of Michigan
1135 East Catherine
Ann Arbor, MI 48109
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