Bronwyn Stuckey

I was a participant in a session in SL which was demonstrating literature learning in virtual worlds. The presenters had prepared a large sign with a passage from a literary work which described a person. They had also prepared 4 cubes floating in the air and on each of the vertical sides of the cube was an image. We were asked to read the passage and while music played our avatars moved about the cubes looking to choose one image from each cube to represent our vision of the person described in the text passage. When the music stopped some of us were asked to talk about the images we chose and why. This opened up a brilliant discussion of the literary work and the images it conjured up differently for each of us.

The presenters went on to describe a subsequent task that they allocated to students where in teams they we asked to decorate in SL the rooms in a house for a family characters of a particular novel. The students had to embody each character in their respective rooms. By this time my mind was buzzing with how well this lively, rich and immersive media could stimulate learning.

What did the moderators do during the session? Aside from the brilliant task design, their avatars walked animatedly amongst participants and talked with them. They were constantly moving and interacting with people so that we could always tell who and where the moderators were in the space (an important point in SL because you can't always tell who you should be paying attention to - especially when VOIP is used in large groups;-) ). The style was confident, fluid and they clearly envisioned the flow and timing of the tasks and the learning goals. Our avatars were caused to move, speak, interact, listen and reflect in a very lively and satisfying experience that I could not imagine having been carried off so effectively in any other environment.

What activities have you joined in or led in SL that really took advantage of the affordances of the virtual world? What activities actually involved people in the 3D world and and maybe provided an "aha" moment as to what might be achieved in virtual world learning environments?

Can we brainstorm for a while on some of the effective practices we have seen and after we have accumulated a list consider what moderation skills (and I am not sure I like that word) facilitation skills these activities required to be successful?

PS: I posed this topic as I personally felt I needed a practical way into this topic ;-)

Could not agree more Shailey! What you have described is the rich social context that is possible in virtual worlds and more we need to schedule time and activity to capitalize on it. The socialization is part of all stages of moderation not perhaps just a step in the process that we can move away from after a time.

Hiya Gilly,

How is sunny England ;-) Australia is lovely and warm come back soon!

I don't know if I can go straight to your chart. I think I need to articulate some of my experiences and feelings about moderation in SL first. So I hope this is not rambling and far from the target of your discussion.

I cold hone in on step 2 and the socialization process and this goes to the issues of social presence that has been mentioned here already. To me this socialization process in second life, as it is in other online environments, has to be modeled by the moderator. But well beyond other environments my experience in SL is that moderators need to be super lively, engaging, attentive and highly responsive - and all in real time. They have to learn to effectively use and model one-to-one backchannel communication, while facilitating the whole group, to ensure they can support everyone. They have to be thinking on their feet about why an avatar is stuck on the other side of a wall and what might be happening when a participant says "I can't seem to sit" and to reach out to participants not wait for them to ask for help.

As to task design for this step (and others)...
I have been involved in a number of instructor lead activities in SL ( I put myself out there to see how other people do this). The tasks have to use the affordances of SL otherwise it may as well be a chat session. There is NOTHING worse than sitting your avatar on a seat in an auditorium to listen (whether chat or audio) to a lecture style performance by a static avatar at a podium. That could be a podcast or lecture notes! Why did people need to manage the synchronous technical drama and bandwidth hog that SL is to join in that? We have to be much more creative about the tasks (e-tivities) and really use the visually rich 3D environment that we are bringing people into. I have started a discussion topic to describe e-tivities that do use the affordances of the 3D world and where we can talk about what moderation for these looks like and requires?

Thanks to all concerned for the warm welcomes and providing the interesting few weeks we have ahead of us. I have been absent from Scope for a while - finalizing my doctorate (yeah) and feel liberated now to join things again!

I hope to join the live session today. Like Nick I would ask for varied session times as I am normally in Australia but luckily today I am at Indiana University in Bloomington. Having access to the recording is great but broadcast and interactive modes are never the same ;-(

~ Bron