University Business - March 2008 - (Page 61) Boisie State University students—each with a unique avatar—take part in a virtual class. VIRTUAL COLLABORATION One of Second Life’s strengths is in collaboration, which was a nice surprise for Lisa Dawley. As chair of the Department of Educational Technology at Boise State University (Idaho), Dawley created interaction in the virtual world. Although EDTech Island was built to support the course, it soon became clear that it had the potential to become a resource for other teachers as well. Dawley wondered whether people would interact more if they had a place to live in Second Life. A high-rise condominium was built on one part of the island to find out. The con‘Second Life provides the capability for people to dos were originally intended for students but at communicate very effectively, in a very rich form.’ semester’s end were deserted, so Dawley opened them up to the public. — Chang Liu, Ohio University Without Boundaries “What was really cool about that was we started getting a mish-mash of people from different universities and different community colleges actually living in the condos,” she says. “And different collaboEDTech Island in 2006 as a place where she could teach a graduate rations started coming out of that. That was totally unanticipated. course in educational games and simulations. “As the course grew we began to address the students’ needs,” Teachers met up with other teachers and started working on projshe says. “For example, they would need a place to test their ideas, ects. I wound up working with some people from the University of so we made a quarter of the island into a ‘sandbox,’ where they Helsinki—it was just a really unplanned collaboration because we could build what they wanted. Then we set up informational cen- opened it up to the public.” Anthony Fontana, co-administrator of Bowling Green State ters throughout the island.” University’s Virtual Campus in Second Life, says teachers and Partway through the class, Dawley became intrigued with social universitybusiness.com March 2008 | 61 http://universitybusiness.com
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