3rd and final SL Session

Have now completed our SL trial - 3 sessions. Personally felt underprepared for this session. Meg and I talked through the outcomes and session outline but I had not time to script it up and had family issues to deal with as the lecture progressed (My wife is on conference, had to pick up 3 kids from school, be home in time for the lecture, keep the kids entertained/fed etc. tricky to say the least)

Quick breakdown of the session

• Intro for the session
• Watch Machinima to tell the story of the Scenario which we would get the students - had technical issues which Missy can tell us about, but basically the students watched the machinima in youtube. Probably should make a few comments on the machinima.
• After watching the scenario we 'went' to the various locations to pick up where the machinima left off to role play the scenario's further.
• We debriefed the experience of using SL as a learning environment.

Session Intro

By this session the students are far more familiar with the SL environment which makes the session simpler to run. Interactions worked well, students combined voice and chat well. essentially by the 3rd session it appears that students can be up to speed - even the tech challenged were able to fulfill the essential requirements. This makes it far easier for the lecturers.

Handy having Missy on the side to knock up notecards on the fly and give them to students.

Agree with Lucille on having a list of students to check off. A number of times I lost track of whether all the students were present or had responded to a question.

Machinima

Great start on Machinima - the crew really did a good job. Some reflections to improve the product

• I am not certain the story makes enough sense without a decent intro/notecard on the scenario. 
• The connection between the scenes may have too much of a disconnect. I wonder if we gave the youthworker, dole worker and the girl names then people would be able to track the characters/story line better.
• There is lots of silence between dialogue which feels awkward - either background music will help fill that silence OR the silence could be edit out
• Instead of having the scenes separate running the whole scenario together then roleplaying would work

Additional ideas on using the machinima

• A late idea was to have the 'bodies' of the machinima avatars available for the student avatars to put on as they roleplayed. This is definately something you can only do in SL.

Roleplaying

Worked well imho. Process was

• 2 avatars took the roles and roleplayed.
• We paused the roleplaying for other student avatars to provide feedback.
• 2 other avatars took up the roles and played the scenario out to the end
• We debriefed the conclusion.

This was simple to facilitate and worthwhile process.

SL Debrief

Very positive feedback from the participants. I'll leave this to Missy or Lucille to write out. Hopefully someone took notes!

From my memory

• everyone was positive with the SL experience
• everyone indicated SL helped a topic which would normally be 'boring' to be engaging
• there was enthusiasm in thinking through more options for the use of SL (like preaching/mentoring...)

Conclusions

• Very positive. We have ended just as we were getting nearly good at it!!!
• I am certain Lucille, Missy and myself have learnt much in using SL.
• A merged technology approach using moodle and SL makes the most sense. Moodle for assignment work, SL for lectures/engagement.