Second Life Working Group @ Derby Uni

Earlier in the week I met with our Second Life working group at University of Derby. Our aim is to look at how we can utilise the platform to improve the learning experience of our students, both distance learners and campus-based. The group formed after myself and John Sear (Games Development) presented to around 50 University of Derby staff who had expressed an interest in finding out more about SL. We now have more of a direction and some clear objectives about how we will be moving forward with the platform as a virtual learning environment.

With the final build completed of the teaching and research facility (SL-Labs) the empthasis has now shifted to looking in more detail at the available eduactional tools to further enhance the teaching project. We already have excellent support from the people at Education UK and over the next few weeks will be expanding our inventory of tools to enable students to Blog from inside SL and to email out from SL and to message into SL. These technologies are furtherimproving the functionality of SL as an educational tool and it is becoming universally acknowledged as THE state of the art teaching tool. Derby looks forward to playing its part in pushing forward these innovations within education and especially within Psychology in the UK. Exciting times indeed for teaching and research in virtual environments.

July 2007 snapshot of UK HE and FE developments in SL

Recently an excellent 'snapshot' of UK education in Second Life was publish by John Kirriemuir (Silversprite Helsinki) and the Eduserve Foundation. It provides an up to date (July 2007) authoritative survey of UK educational activity in Second Life and is well worth reading if you are in any way involved with education in Second Life. The report summarises an investigation into the use and uptake of Second Life by UK Higher and Further Education.

The research, carried out in the period up until July 2007, had four main goals:

1) to determine the "state of play" of SL developments within the Higher and Further Education sector.
2) to discover how these developments are supported, in terms of time, funding and other resources.
3) to explore the functionality of these developments, i.e. which types of media or interactive service they incorporate.
4) to establish how "busy", or well-used, the developments have been and discover any impacts resulting from their implementation and use.

You can find a link to the downloadable article below. University of Derby and EducationUK Island get several mentions and shows that we are one of the leading pioneers in teaching and research within Second Life the UK at present. Many thanks to John for putting this together.

A July 2007 "snapshot" of UK Higher and Further Education Developments in Second Life [PDF]

Busy...Busy...Busy

We have recently extended the SL-Labs University of Derby teaching and research facility on EducationUK Island and are continuing to improve these in preparation for teaching in September. The build has come a long way and we are now joined by volunteer members of Derby Uni staff who are assisting with the build and the teaching preparation. Key members of the team include Biglurch Habercom who is also resident on EducationUK Island and is an experienced builder and scripter.

Derby University has also set up a working party to look into future educational expansion into Second Life. This group will steer ideas at a University level and contribute to the innovative work we are doing in the field of Psychology and Games Development. As these ideas develop we will see the University presence develop further in line with the needs of our students.