Some of the Psych faculty at James Madison have used Second Life (SL) for both online and face-to-face courses. At the most recent Best Practices conference, Suzie Baker and Monica Reis-Bergan presented on it. Suzie also did a presentation on SL at APA. I'm certain either of them would be happy to talk with you more about it.
If I were teaching online, and if I already had students using SL, I'd hold some office hours there. If it's not an environment you or your students already spend time in, I don't think the learning curve would be worth it for you. If your campus is using SL a lot, and most of your students are familiar with it, it's probably worth a look. I don't know what kind of tech support your institution has for SL, but if they can help you set up video, I think it would be great to invite students in for a video and live discussion. If you're looking for ideas, here are a number of uses for SL in education: http://sleducation.wikispaces.com/educationaluses I was at one workshop where the presenter talked about a colleague who sent her students into an SL dance club dressed as Kool-Aid guy. After continually bumping into people, they were thrown out. Each talked about their experience as being the 'other'. But a word of caution. The SL program takes a lot of oomph to run, and it's not terribly stable on either of my laptops. I can usually stave off program crashes if I'm careful. My office desktop lacks the video card to run it. In other words, not all students may have the computing power to handle SL. If you do anything, I would suggest not making it a requirement. Sue -- Sue Frantz Highline Community College Psychology Des Moines, WA 206.878.3710 x3404 [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://flightline.highline.edu/sfrantz/ -- APA Division 2: Society for the Teaching of Psychology http://teachpsych.org/ Office of Teaching Resources in Psychology, Associate Director Project Syllabus http://teachpsych.org/otrp/syllabi/syllabi.php From: beth benoit [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, October 07, 2008 10:12 AM To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) Subject: [tips] Second Life? Does anyone use, or have any experience with a program called Second Life? It's a virtual environment with some academic uses. The IT person just emailed me to ask if I might want to use it for my online classes. It's been mentioned in passing on TIPS a couple of times, but no one has given any details about whether it's been useful. I'm not even knowledgeable enough about it yet to understand quite how it works, but I'm looking into it. Here's the address: secondlife.com Beth Benoit Granite State College New Hampshire --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
