Having Class in Second Life?

After the session with Richard Bartle, I do not believe that Second Life and similar virtual worlds are very effective as classroom tools. On one hand, our class was able to converse with Richard here in Seattle while he was in the UK. Many of the students did not even show up to class and instead logged in from home. On the other hand, it was a lot less intimate and immersive compared to when we actually had lecturers in the classroom.

The entire flow of the conversation was largely dominated by one or two individuals. Most of the characters were snoozing, flying about, or doing random movements behind the seats. I guess that since the lecturer wasn’t in front of us, it was harder to pay attention. And even when I was trying to participate, it was hard to keep track of the conversation. When a person asked a question, there were at least five lines of dialogue before the question was answered. I think that if we had audio and visual, the experience would be a lot more engaging. The class had the video conference with Ryan Dancy and it was great. We asked him a ton of questions and utilized class time efficiently.

I am now curious about online classes. I just experience my first online lecture and it was not on the same level as real ones. Can online universities provide the quality of education? Is it fair when online classes are weighed the same way as normal classes in terms of GPA?