Interview with Student D

Aspects of Second Life that impede communication and learning

Student D had conflicting opinions to Second Life as a medium for learning. On the one hand, it had interesting aspects for her, on the other “it sucks” and was time-consuming. The time consuming aspects were due to the main mode adopted for discussion in the sessions, which was text chat. Text chat is seen of being of value by Student D, but only if employed as an adjunct to other media.

When we're typing things in, when we're responding by typing, it’s extremely time consuming. A lot of thoughts aren't completed and a lot of responses aren't completed to other people’s thoughts.

169 If you say something it might be 8 or 9 lines down of us typing responding to it and then another thought might have come up that somebody else wants to touch on. It happens face-to-face but you’re able to follow it more face-to-face because that's how we interact.

We always interrupt each other, that's what we do as people, if they're not good at that they can put their thoughts down [in a discussion board] without anybody interrupting them and actually complete a very good thought.

I think if you did a class though Skype, similar to this, where the dialogue is present- time dialogue I’d like that, but I just don't like the posting of things. I like the posting of things in addition to [other activities].

If the virtual had real-life voice time I would like it more

Communication through discussion boards also has the advantage over Second Life because the contributions are disembodied. Student D proposes that the embodied nature of an immersive virtual world reproduces some of the social anxiety people feel in face-to-face discussions.

they might not say a lot in a conversation, because they’re shy or because they think they’ll sound stupid, whereas I think those same people are shy on Second Life and afraid they’ll sound stupid on Second Life too because they have a physical identity. I think there's an anonymity that goes with Blackboard that people embrace.

Face-to-face synchronous discussions have advantages over synchronous ones because of the ease of incorporating paralinguistic and non-verbal features to communication face-to-face.

it’s easier to read people. I tend to be very point blank about how I respond to things and in writing people read more into how we write things because it's grey and doesn’t have emotion, it doesn’t have humour. I will often say things in humour, but if I write them that way it can appear offensive.

As an environment for younger students it has other disadvantages:

As an educator, I don't find it the safest place to be. ... I’m standing in just the original site I went into and a guy comes in with an erection that big (indicates through gesture a large erect penis) next to me and I find those sites that ... I wouldn't find safe for kids to use. It's offensive to some people. I don’t really care but it's offensive to some people.

The difficulties in using the platform were also an impediment for most people:

we were expected to jump in and know how to use it. There wasn’t a lot of time for people to be patient and play with it and I think that this class is ... the average age is in the late thirties or early forties so I think it's people that aren't particularly well-

170 versed in computers all the time either and I think the frustration level, because there's not a lot of time to play with it, gets on people's nerves and I think that's where people get angry and frustrated too with that ... If we had been able to sit down in our class one night with [the lecturer] and really do a little bit more of pre-learning on it I think it would have been a bit easier.

If I hadn't had to do this for class the frustration level would have been too high too quickly and I wouldn’t have played around with it. I’d have left it by the wayside and said "fuck that"

Elements of Second Life that support learning

Student D identified two elements of Second Life that were of value – one of these was the way in which it created a sense of presence for the participants (“I think it’s great”). The other was the ability to take on other identities, particularly in order to explore issues about diversity and being different within a community.

I think that’s part of the fun of being in Second Life. I think really doing some role playing; still innately being who you are but being able to be creative with it.

I think it would be fun. I think people don’t understand how people really do treat people differently. If you are different, if you are black in a white community, if you're British living in the States, if you're an American living in the UK, there are differences that, unless you're that person, people don't necessarily realise.

Sense of presence

Student D had a sense of presence within the environment, experiencing proxemics within the virtual space.

I tried to get a place where I was comfortable to be, so I’d have good visibility of you when you were lecturing; also not being in front of anybody. I wanted to be beside people so you can interact. Had I known other people better in the class, I probably would have sat closer to someone who I knew their avatar's name.

The experience of presence and embodiment was, for this student, immediate.

I felt that right away. I just looked at it as that's kind of an extension of me and if I’m going to do it, I’m going to embrace it...I’m a risk-taker and I think part of trying it is not to fight it. I knew what it was supposed to be and that that was supposed to be a part of me there, so if going to learn from it and get anything out of being in the lecture and that situation that I really put my self into it.

171 I kind of fell into somebody I like right away. When I was playing around one day and somebody helped me and wanted me to change who my avatar was "oh you need new clothes" or new hair, or new this or that [but] I really kind of liked what I tweaked the original avatar to be.

Student B reported that learning to move around had taken her longer to acquire, of the order of 10 hours. However, the student would probably have then gone on to experiment with different identities if this process had not taken up all of the time she had available to learn the platform.

I didn’t *try roleplay+ because I struggled the first 10 hours that I put into it learning how to manoeuvre and manipulate and go up and down stairs and sit down and stand up. Those are really the things I was more interested in trying.

Developing an inworld identity also helped Student D create a sense of presence in the world. Me: Did forming an identity help with you feeling the place was one you were comfortable with?

Student B: Absolutely, absolutely.

However, the student did not think that this sense of presence contributed to her ability to learn in the environment, rather that it influenced the way in which she related to the activity; without the sense of presence then she would have still taken on board the content, but done so in a detached manner.

if I had detached from it I think I could have learned from it just as well but I wouldn't have focused so much on my avatar. I would have focused more on ... what I was writing