TEACHING LARGE STUDENT COHORTS IN SECOND LIFE - Scalability Issues and Student Satisfaction in a Virtual World

Marc Conrad, David Pike, Paul Sant, Catherine Nwafor

2009

Abstract

There are high expectations on Second Life, a multi-user interactive virtual environment, to play a prominent role in higher education in the future. Across universities worldwide many projects aim to engage students in a variety of activities related to Second Life. However typically the number of students participating in those projects is small and the use of Second Life is an optional addition to the syllabus. We present two activities, conducted in 2007 and 2008 where Second Life has been used as an integral, non voluntarily part of an assignment in project management. Feedback from the 200 participants has been collected in the form of a questionnaire and interviews. Our results show that students have found the experience mostly positive, or, at least, didn’t object to it. However technical and administrative problems have been identified that still question the suitability of Second Life for a smooth provision of these activities on a large scale.

Paper Citation

in Harvard Style

Conrad M., Pike D., Sant P. and Nwafor C. (2009). TEACHING LARGE STUDENT COHORTS IN SECOND LIFE - Scalability Issues and Student Satisfaction in a Virtual World . In Proceedings of the First International Conference on Computer Supported Education - Volume 1: CSEDU, ISBN 978-989-8111-82-1, pages 10-17. DOI: 10.5220/0001846800100017

in Bibtex Style

@conference{csedu09,
author={Marc Conrad and David Pike and Paul Sant and Catherine Nwafor},
title={TEACHING LARGE STUDENT COHORTS IN SECOND LIFE - Scalability Issues and Student Satisfaction in a Virtual World},
booktitle={Proceedings of the First International Conference on Computer Supported Education - Volume 1: CSEDU,},
year={2009},
pages={10-17},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0001846800100017},
isbn={978-989-8111-82-1},
}

in EndNote Style

TY - CONF
JO - Proceedings of the First International Conference on Computer Supported Education - Volume 1: CSEDU,
TI - TEACHING LARGE STUDENT COHORTS IN SECOND LIFE - Scalability Issues and Student Satisfaction in a Virtual World
SN - 978-989-8111-82-1
AU - Conrad M.
AU - Pike D.
AU - Sant P.
AU - Nwafor C.
PY - 2009
SP - 10
EP - 17
DO - 10.5220/0001846800100017