If we dream it, will they come? The self-efficacy of students new to Second Life Learning
David Moffat, Kathryn Trinder
Glasgow Caledonian University, United Kingdom
Multi-user virtual environments (MUVEs) offer much potential for teaching and learning, but also present challenges. The most popular 3D MUVE today is SecondLife (SL), because it is so rich in features for the manipulation of 3D objects, the design of virtual environments, and its social and communication tools.MUVES such as SL however, are merely tool kits - if they are to be useful for teaching & learning they will have to be developed for our specific purposes. Content and learning activities have to be designed and constructed to support the curriculum. This has implications for development time and the skills required by staff.It unfortunately also imposes a greater challenge on students who have to learn to negotiate a new, complex environment before they can begin to benefit from the learning opportunities. The cost of initial acquaintance could be prohibitive. Either a significant investment in training students how to use MUVEs as a basic IT skill is required; or we could simply wait several years until students already know how to negotiate MUVEs when they arrive at university.We report a study in which an environment was built within SL, intended to simulate and support lecture materials and allow students to manipulate virtual objects within it to experiment. If successful, it was hoped that this activity would support their learning of an otherwise rather dry and abstract subject matter.We attempted to track the learners' sense of confidence in dealing with the whole system by means of questionnaires designed to elicit "self-efficacy," in the sense of the psychologist Albert Bandura. Questionnaires were administered pre, during and post semester to track student progress. After teaching we held a focus group and 2 interviews.Initial exploratory coding and analysis on all 3 sets of data has been carried out. More detailed analysis is ongoing.Initial results give us an insight into how students cope with this environment. In addition, there are observations on the students' behaviour that we had not expected, and which may be of interest to other teachers intending to deploy SL as a learning environment.no references included