Professional Development Reflections
"Integrating Second Life into an EFL Program"
GA State University, Atlanta, GA
April 2010
I participated in a research study exploring possible uses of Second Life as a medium for teaching distance learning EFL classes. The format was simple: every week, we logged into SL, looked for a Chinese student to talk to, and started talking about the assigned topic for that week. Unfortunately, it didn't go very well.
We were plagued with constant technical problems— in the first session the audio was full of echoes and static, and the in the second session, it was possible to hear not only my conversation partner, but seemingly everyone else in the computer lab in China! Furthermore, part of the project involve commenting on the Chinese students’ blog entries, but the blogs were set up on a Google site, which was blocked in China.
Completely aside from the technical issues, however, was the fact that the researchers didn’t really seem aware of what Second Life was, and what it could do. The sessions were not set up to take advantage of SL as a virtual environment where anything was possible. There were no tasks or quests, no aspects of the environment with which to interact (all aspects of other educational experiments with SL); rather we were required to read a short (obviously inauthentic) essay on the assigned topic, and then stand around and talk about it.
Right off the bat, it was hard to identify the people we were supposed to be talking to, because they all had user names comprised of what I’m assuming were their professors’ names and a number. In addition, sometimes other random SL users would wander into the area and want to know what’s going on, and it could take a few minutes to realize they weren’t part of the research project.
The assigned topics had little or nothing to do with the virtual environment—usually an empty field or a building with a meeting room. For example, one week’s session took place near a zoo—except the microphones didn’t work inside the zoo. Apparently we were supposed to walk around ourselves, then exit the zoo to find a conversation partner, which sort of defeated the purpose of giving us an environment to spark conversation. Secondly, the conversation topic didn’t have to do with the zoo at all—we were supposed to talk about pet ownership, not zoo animals. Finally, and most confusingly, the researchers had not set up the zoo environment for their own purposes; rather, they were borrowing an environment from another group which must have been in Europe, because all the signs in the zoo were in German! This didn’t really matter, since none of the text was relevant to our project, but it was disorienting, and made me wonder at first if I was in the right place.
Another problem with this project was that, although we had been given specific instructions not to depart from the assigned topics, they were very limiting. We were given a set of questions to ask the Chinese students, but those were pretty quickly exhausted, leaving us with no choice but to talk about our families and the weather if we wanted to keep conversing for the assigned time slot.
To be sure, SL has its flaws as a CMC medium. Since we couldn’t see our partners’ real faces, it was hard to develop any sense of social presence; furthermore, we lost the opportunity to read lips or body language. However, I think the biggest mistake this project made was in assuming that SL was primarily a CMC medium. The CMC is merely a byproduct of the virtual reality; once this is understood, it becomes easier to conceive of educational projects that could really shine with this tool. For example, students could collaborate in a quest or a scavenger hunt, or learn to manipulate the landscape and create their own environments
It was really a shame that the researchers had not given more thought to how best to leverage Second Life’s unique opportunities. I’m sure their results will show very little improvement in their students’ work, and I would hate to see them conclude that there aren’t any benefits to using SL for this purpose.
I participated in a research study exploring possible uses of Second Life as a medium for teaching distance learning EFL classes. The format was simple: every week, we logged into SL, looked for a Chinese student to talk to, and started talking about the assigned topic for that week. Unfortunately, it didn't go very well.
We were plagued with constant technical problems— in the first session the audio was full of echoes and static, and the in the second session, it was possible to hear not only my conversation partner, but seemingly everyone else in the computer lab in China! Furthermore, part of the project involve commenting on the Chinese students’ blog entries, but the blogs were set up on a Google site, which was blocked in China.
Completely aside from the technical issues, however, was the fact that the researchers didn’t really seem aware of what Second Life was, and what it could do. The sessions were not set up to take advantage of SL as a virtual environment where anything was possible. There were no tasks or quests, no aspects of the environment with which to interact (all aspects of other educational experiments with SL); rather we were required to read a short (obviously inauthentic) essay on the assigned topic, and then stand around and talk about it.
Right off the bat, it was hard to identify the people we were supposed to be talking to, because they all had user names comprised of what I’m assuming were their professors’ names and a number. In addition, sometimes other random SL users would wander into the area and want to know what’s going on, and it could take a few minutes to realize they weren’t part of the research project.
The assigned topics had little or nothing to do with the virtual environment—usually an empty field or a building with a meeting room. For example, one week’s session took place near a zoo—except the microphones didn’t work inside the zoo. Apparently we were supposed to walk around ourselves, then exit the zoo to find a conversation partner, which sort of defeated the purpose of giving us an environment to spark conversation. Secondly, the conversation topic didn’t have to do with the zoo at all—we were supposed to talk about pet ownership, not zoo animals. Finally, and most confusingly, the researchers had not set up the zoo environment for their own purposes; rather, they were borrowing an environment from another group which must have been in Europe, because all the signs in the zoo were in German! This didn’t really matter, since none of the text was relevant to our project, but it was disorienting, and made me wonder at first if I was in the right place.
Another problem with this project was that, although we had been given specific instructions not to depart from the assigned topics, they were very limiting. We were given a set of questions to ask the Chinese students, but those were pretty quickly exhausted, leaving us with no choice but to talk about our families and the weather if we wanted to keep conversing for the assigned time slot.
To be sure, SL has its flaws as a CMC medium. Since we couldn’t see our partners’ real faces, it was hard to develop any sense of social presence; furthermore, we lost the opportunity to read lips or body language. However, I think the biggest mistake this project made was in assuming that SL was primarily a CMC medium. The CMC is merely a byproduct of the virtual reality; once this is understood, it becomes easier to conceive of educational projects that could really shine with this tool. For example, students could collaborate in a quest or a scavenger hunt, or learn to manipulate the landscape and create their own environments
It was really a shame that the researchers had not given more thought to how best to leverage Second Life’s unique opportunities. I’m sure their results will show very little improvement in their students’ work, and I would hate to see them conclude that there aren’t any benefits to using SL for this purpose.