I've had the pleasure of participating in a wide variety of projects utilizing SL for education, sometimes going to extreme, impractical lengths to pull it off.
I first used it to design a space called Biome (special shout out to Carolyn Lowe!), a rather sci-fi meets modern art build whose white exterior would reflect the color of the sky as the day progressed. It served as the online meeting space for graduate students who were scattered across the midwest as they were teaching science to high school students (I think).
I later designed an interactive model of the human larynx (and eventually inner ear) under the guidance of Jim Zeigler. The models negated the need to have students risk taking the real life replicas home and breaking them or never returning them, or the course being too large with not enough resources to be shared among all of the students in an efficient manner. Virtual objects are easily replicated and customized, and we eventually implemented an interactive quiz system, as well as a model that showed how all of the cartilage and muscle components of the throat interact as you breath, swallow, adjust the tone of your voice, etc.
The project also used some fancy textures to mimic a photorealistic clinic with bots whose responses to questions were tied to a podcast server. This allowed students to interview virtual patients and hear different speech disfluencies, with which they diagnosed the client and developed a strategy for helping them overcome their disfluency. We also received permission to use Dr. Joseph Sheehan's concept of an Iceberg of Stuttering to transform a metaphorical concept into a literal learning space, with various platforms and cues that allowed you to know a lot about a subject just by its visual structure, without needing any prior knowledge of the subject that that visual was conveying.
I've also designed a lab safety simulation template with Brant Knutzen of Hong Kong University. The scenarios allow students to take a quiz that familiarizes themselves with the surrounding environment and key objects, activates a problem, and then forces (and grades) the participant's ability to work through the safety issue they are suddenly dealing with.
Now, I primarily design highly interactive, fully customized virtual labs for biology and chemistry to bring real-time science labs to students spread out across rural Alaska.
I've also used SL to teach computer programming concepts to people totally green to the discipline.
Aside from some rather onboxious limitations, I find that allowing students to interact in a virtual world where every object is "hot" so to speak allows for an unprecidented level of interaction and collaboration. We take full advantage of virtual reality, and occasionally even change some of our lab processes in reality after designing a better workflow for our virtual labs.
I've had the pleasure of participating in a wide variety of projects utilizing SL for education, sometimes going to extreme, impractical lengths to pull it off. I first used it to design a space called Biome (special shout out to Carolyn Lowe!), a rather sci-fi meets modern art build whose white exterior would reflect the color of the sky as the day progressed. It served as the online meeting space for graduate students who were scattered across the midwest as they were teaching science to high school students (I think). I later designed an interactive model of the human larynx (and eventually inner ear) under the guidance of Jim Zeigler. The models negated the need to have students risk taking the real life replicas home and breaking them or never returning them, or the course being too large with not enough resources to be shared among all of the students in an efficient manner. Virtual objects are easily replicated and customized, and we eventually implemented an interactive quiz system, as well as a model that showed how all of the cartilage and muscle components of the throat interact as you breath, swallow, adjust the tone of your voice, etc. The project also used some fancy textures to mimic a photorealistic clinic with bots whose responses to questions were tied to a podcast server. This allowed students to interview virtual patients and hear different speech disfluencies, with which they diagnosed the client and developed a strategy for helping them overcome their disfluency. We also received permission to use Dr. Joseph Sheehan's concept of an Iceberg of Stuttering to transform a metaphorical concept into a literal learning space, with various platforms and cues that allowed you to know a lot about a subject just by its visual structure, without needing any prior knowledge of the subject that that visual was conveying. I've also designed a lab safety simulation template with Brant Knutzen of Hong Kong University. The scenarios allow students to take a quiz that familiarizes themselves with the surrounding environment and key objects, activates a problem, and then forces (and grades) the participant's ability to work through the safety issue they are suddenly dealing with. Now, I primarily design highly interactive, fully customized virtual labs for biology and chemistry to bring real-time science labs to students spread out across rural Alaska. I've also used SL to teach computer programming concepts to people totally green to the discipline. Aside from some rather onboxious limitations, I find that allowing students to interact in a virtual world where every object is "hot" so to speak allows for an unprecidented level of interaction and collaboration. We take full advantage of virtual reality, and occasionally even change some of our lab processes in reality after designing a better workflow for our virtual labs.
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