hobbs Constantine

LOL - indeed. Well the pretest took 20 minutes, the intervention 20 minutes, and the post test 20 minutes. So I was asking for 1 hour's worth of work from random strangers. That seemed to the most I could ask for from such kind folks. I had planned, at one point, up to 4 hours worth of work. I'm so pleased that I got my minimal number of participants.

Greetings, Thanks in large part to participants from this forum from November 2012 - January 2013, my research has finished, I achieved my doctorate, and I made the results publicly available on the Internet here: http://gradworks.umi.com/3592588.pdf In summary, I was researching whether 20 minutes of Second Life immersion had any effect on inquiry skills (asking questions, making hypothesis, collecting data, drawing conclusions). The results said no statistically, but the results hint that virtual worlds do have an effect. Admittedly, 20 minutes is a small amount of time for my intervention. **Only uploaded images may be used in postings**://secondlife.i.lithium.com/i/smilies/16x16_smiley-happy.gif" border="0" alt=":smileyhappy:" title="Smiley Happy" /> As promised on my earlier thread not in this specific forum, I took great pains to protect my participants privacy and you'll see that all of the results are generalized. I'll be giving an in-world presentation to science educators on Thursday November 21, 2013 at 5 p.m. SLT (8 p.m. EST) at Genome Island. http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Genome/135/53/25 I would delighted for any of my participants or those interested to attend. Thank you again, hobbs Constantine, Heather Dodds, PhD

Greetings, My research has finished, I achieved my doctorate, and I made the results publicly available on the Internet here: http://gradworks.umi.com/3592588.pdf In summary, I was researching whether 20 minutes of Second Life immersion had any effect on inquiry skills (asking questions, making hypothesis, collecting data, drawing conclusions). The results said no statistically, but the results hint that virtual worlds do have an effect. Admittedly, 20 minutes is a small amount of time for my intervention. As promised, I took great pains to protect my participants privacy and you'll see that all of the results are generalized. I'll be giving an in-world presentation to science educators on Thursday November 21, 2013 at 5 p.m. SLT (8 p.m. EST) at Genome Island. http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Genome/135/53/25 I would delighted for any of my participants or those interested to attend. Thank you again, hobbs Constantine, Heather Dodds, PhD

Greetings all. It has been my honor to work with you. I have all of the participants I need at this time so I have taken the links offline. Thank you for your support. For those that have contacted me interested in the results, I should have them unofficially in about a month (gotta figure out SPSS :-) ) and I've kept your avatar name and will contact you in-world. For anyone else that might be interested in how this turned out, please feel free to IM me in-world. Thank you again for your interest and good questions! A prosperous 2013 to you. ~Heather/hobbs

Hello! Oh this is actually not an easy group to ask, as the evidence shows. :matte-motes-wink: I'm still low on participants and need more. My research requires virtual world residents because I am studying the effect of a virtual world experience on inquiry skills. I am proposing that virtual worlds, like Second Life, actually enhance a person's questioning ability. For example, we often enter new virtual world experiences and we wonder what this button does or what does touching that do. All of your questions here on this thread are also good examples of inquiry-- you are thinking like scientists. So I'm measuring how much-- between the pretest and posttest-- does a virtual world experience of a small genetics lesson affect one's ability to ask qood questions, design good experiements, etc. It is a very small study, but i hope it helps people use virtual worlds long term in education. I have a control group and an experimental group-- but I hope you will not mind if I do not describe them much here because I need participants to be as authentic as possible. If folks knew which group they were sorted in to, they might have some bias about their responses. I have designed this so that the data I get here can be extrapolated to the larger population of online learners of any kind (hence, I like the wide variety of participants-- it better reflects the real world population). But all participants MUST be a resident of Second Life for this study. It's the population that I am very interested in for educational purposes for virtual worlds long term. I did not design in any aspect of training people to use Second Life or another virtual world. I need participants for whom the "wow" factor of Second Life has well worn off. :-) I'm very appreciative for those that have completed the study. :-) And for those that tire of surveys, I certainly understand not participating too. :-) ~Hobbs/Heather

Thanks to all that have been participating, I appreciate it very much. Thanks also to those that have come back here and posted that it actually is a real study with real pay that I try to do expediently. If you have not completed Parts 2 (genetics work) & 3 (posttest) yet, please do. Instructions on how to do that have been sent to both your avatar (if I could find it) and your email address. I've enjoyed reading your comments and feedback. Participants are still needed at the time of this post.

I am studying the effect of virtual worlds on science inquiry skills. Participants between the ages of 18 and 65 should have had an Second Life avatar for at least 5 weeks before: taking an online pretest (~20 minutes), working through some basic genetics content (~20 minutes), and taking an online posttest (~20 minutes). Upon completion, the avatar's account will be paid $500Linden. If interested, please proceed to the Informed Consent Form here: https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B7HbN-uLIFSqaGVPWDljTW9zYlU Cut and paste the link into your browser's address bar if it does not work directly. Alternatively, try accessing it through the Google browser that rhymes with dome. At the end of the Informed Consent Form there is a link to the pretest/survey to begin your participation. After you complete the pretest/survey, you will be notified both at your email address and avatar account what steps to take to complete remaining ~40 minutes of the study. Thank you.