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• Teaching

 

When I teach in this environment, I go to the common room where I can ask students’ advice about my sweet peas, tell them about the play I saw last night, or just let rip about the ghastly day I had. This encourages them to respond in kind, and pretty soon everyone feels as if they know each other as friends. This is an important dimension of their learning, since it builds trust and encourages peer support. As things worked out it was undoubtedly the case that Second Life enhanced the social interaction between participants. It was very helpful to be able to chat about clothes (‘Wow Maria, that dress!’, ‘You’ve left your helmet behind!’), about the environment (‘Is there any tea in that pot?’, ‘Where is the ‘Plant Room?’ ‘Would anyone like a martini?’), and about our activities (most notably the hour we spent riding sharks, but also exploring, and enjoying the campfire!). Most avatars were people (all suspiciously young and attractive), but we also had a spaceman and, rather endearingly, a small blue dragon. Our shared incompetence at managing our avatars was a popular talking point. In the two pilots I ran this sense of camaraderie spilt into the discussion forums and enhanced the philosophical discussions that took place there. People were not so self-conscious, they were more likely to take a risk in saying what they thought, and they were more likely to exercise the principle of charity in their responses to others’ postings. 

 

Second Life proved an excellent environment in which to discuss key philosophical topics. In our first session we looked at the issue of identity and the extent to which our avatars could be identified with us. I was very impressed with this discussion. The very fact that in Second Life you see your avatar from behind makes it very difficult to think that your avatar is you. This got the discussion off to a satisfying start philosophically. But it soon became clear that managing a discussion was difficult: either everyone was ‘talking’ at once’ or they were all typing. The students broke into two groups and I spent time with each. Then we came back together to continue our discussion. Together we evolved ways of managing some of these communication challenges. We all found the jumble of text chat confusing and difficult to follow, and students began to make suggestions about how to improve matters by putting basic groundrules into place: always use people’s Second Life names, and use these (even in an abbreviated form) at the beginning of every chat message so that the flow of discussion becomes more easily identifiable; control contributions and manage time effectively by asking everyone to compose a response to a question at the same time but only post it when invited by the tutor; develop and use visual codes such as the ellipsis (…) to indicate more is to come… . In the second pilot we tried to overcome the difficulties by using the Moodle VLE to set up our discussion (this time on the nature of knowledge). I started by outlining the problem in a brief to which students made ‘kneejerk’ replies. Then they responded to each others’ replies, and I went through annotating the discussion. Then everyone was asked to come to Second Life armed with a thought-out response, ready-typed-out so they could paste it into world when asked. This made the discussion much easier to manage. The positive experience of exploring the issue of identity was less the case in the second pilot, however. The nature of knowledge was a demanding subject, and although we had put more support mechanisms in place that allowed for appropriate reflection, it was apparent that even with this additional back-up further consideration about the learning design was necessary. 

 

We became increasingly aware of our dependence in real life on nonverbal communication and body language. I noticed at one point in a discussion that a student had not moved or contributed for a little while and sent him a chat message asking if he was OK. He replied that he was, but that he was thinking. Nothing about his avatar’s pose allowed me to see that, and we realised that finding ways of communicating mood would greatly enhance our overall experience. David provided us with a number of avatar animations, so we could indicate ‘I’m thinking’ by a Rodin-like pose, or ‘I disagree’ with a vigorous headshake and so on. This went some way towards overcoming the problem of non-verbal cues, but more often than not students were too focused on the discussion to initiate an appropriate animation that would convey their mood. David also created the ‘Aaargh!’ with which I greet outrageously unphilosophical remarks (or outrageously bad philosophy), and ensured that instead of my having to type it out, I only had to press F4 and the ‘Aaargh’ would appear accompanied by a cloud of blue butterflies. Very satisfying! Identifying and addressing these challenges was part of the learning curve for us as educators, and we realised that while at times it was possible to put measures into place, at other times the platform itself needed greater sophistication. Group management tools are not terribly effective, it was easy to lose people and difficult to bring them back. 

 

The project was particularly enjoyed by a small inner circle of students who quickly became Second Life devotees. Three agreed to meet each week outside the formal teaching sessions to facilitate a discussion group called ‘Second Philosophy’ which they advertised across Second Life. This group meets each week in a space which is customised to suit the context of each individual topic. This is an initiative which has moved the learning experience into a new domain. Here the traditional distinction between tutor and student was lessened to the point of virtual eradication and David and I began to sense the development of an emergent community, something which Second Life seems to engender with far greater facility than generally occurs in real life. 

 

Second Life clearly has enormous potential for teaching and learning and I should love to use it as a tool in our online courses. I continue to think that it will be most used as a social tool, but I can see that as we work out how to deal with the challenges we’ll be able to get some really useful philosophical work done. 

 

And it will be fun!