Vol. 38, No. 18

1-23-2008
By: Jeff McCallister

Living a Second Life

The popular online world inspires new ways to teach and learn

As students in Sharon Collingwood’s section of Women’s Studies 110: Women, Culture and Society approach their classroom for the first time, they’ll likely notice its striking resemblance to University Hall.

That they must approach the class from a pathway that juts out into an ocean, with waves crashing all around, is an obvious clue that it’s not the venerable old building. Trees that are rooted in the first-floor entryway are another.

Never mind the students’ own appearances — potentially as anything from an average-looking human to a fire-breathing dragon, a golden robot or a giant multi-colored butterfly.

Collingwood’s “classroom” exists only in the online 3-D virtual world Second Life (secondlife.com), but reality gets lost quickly. While no students would forget they’re sitting in front of a computer screen using real-time voice communication instead of inside a classroom, it’s easy to become immersed in the environment.

“I’m really enthusiastic about Second Life. It changes the way I teach and the way I relate to my students,” said Collingwood, whose pink-haired, roller-skating Second Life persona, or avatar, is called “Ellie Brewster.”

Collingwood has developed the course through an instructional grant awarded by the Office of Continuing Education.

With that money, she bought an “island” called Minerva, on which she built the University Hall lookalike as well as display space, oceanside and hilltop gathering spots she designed specifically to facilitate discussion groups, a virtual replacement of the women’s studies library, and a “sandbox” (in the form of a beach) to help students learn to build things in Second Life for themselves.

The course is designed for students to explore the realities of women in local, national and international contexts. Collingwood said Second Life is ideal because it allows them to see how issues of race, class, sexual orientation, economic equality, physical ability, violence and the environment are reflected in a virtual society where individuals can not only choose their identity, gender and race, but change them at will.

“We’ll spend a lot of time creating and working on the avatars,” Collingwood said. “It’s actually pretty important for the course; body image, attitudes toward race and sexual orientation, all these things can be addressed through the avatars.”

Robert Griffiths is a consultant in the Office of Technology Enhanced Learning and Research, which helps faculty and staff incorporate new technology into their work. TELR also has purchased space within Second Life and is forming a pilot program to find new ways to put it to use in an educational environment.

“Second Life affords the ability to have more engaged learning than other mediums,” Griffiths said. “Like any new medium, it can take some time to figure out how best to use it.

“It can be tough to come up with new ideas when there just aren’t the same limits as in the real world,” he said. “People might set up a classroom with chairs in nice rows, when they could be finding entirely new ways because they don’t have to worry about gravity.”

Collingwood is among the first instructors at Ohio State to use Second Life to this extent. She taught the class about 50 percent of the time in Second Life during fall quarter and is 100 percent there in the winter.

“I’m a bit nervous because this is still so new and I won’t be there physically to help the students if they have tech problems,” she said. “But I don’t think any of this is just a fad. Second Life is the Model T Ford compared to what we’ll have 10 years from now.”

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