University of the West of Scotland:Tale of Two Classes

This case study outlines how SLOODLE tools were used to supportteaching and learning with Second Life® in two classes at the Universityof the West of Scotland. One class was an honours year option in whichSecond Life was a core part of a course where students developedsignificant group projects using or extending Second Life. In contrast,Second Life was only briefly used in the second, online only, class. Butdespite with very little experience of the platform students were able touse Second Life for class presentations, thanks to SLOODLE.This case-study assumes some familiarity with common Second Lifeterms.

Second Life® and SL™ are trademarks of Linden Research, Inc.

SLOODLE is funded and supported by Eduserv

SLOODLE is supported by the San Josė State University School of Library

and Information ScienceSLOODLE is supported by the University of the West of ScotlandSLOODLE is an Open-Source project, released under GNU Public License.More details at http://www.SLOODLE.orgIn the following case study you will see the following symbols used:

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This is a note, and may indicate an alternative use of SLOODLE orother aside.

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Good practice tip

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a tip which might make running a class withSecond Life and SLOODLE go more smoothly.

The Two Courses

Collaborative Virtual Environments (CVE) is an honours year optionalmodule in which students learn about and use a range of collaborativetechnologies. Group projects develop applications and new tools for usingthe technologies, or extend the technologies themselves. Second Life hasbeen a core element of this class for the past three years.In contrast, Introduction to Virtual Worlds (IVW) is a second year distancelearning class of

fered to students through the university‟s Lifelong

Learning program. This class has been taken by a mix of full time andpart time students, and students explore a range of different virtual worldplatforms, looking at their use in a range of application areas

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fromentertainment to education and corporate applications. Second Life wasonly introduced towards the endof this class.

Moodle

SLOODLE integrates Second Lifewith the popular, open-source,VLE/LMS 'Moodle'. Moodleprovides a flexible web-basedplatform where tutors cancustomise course pages by addingor removing a wide range of activities and content 'blocks'. Formore on Moodle, see http://www.moodle.org/

Setting Up

Preparations for the classes started with setting up the Moodle courses.The Moodle site was given a distinct and enhanced look by using the

ThemZa „Global Network‟ theme from the Moodle themes database.

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Adding a custom theme is the easiest and perhaps most effective

way of enhancing the look and feel of Moodle. A large database of free themes can be found at

http://bit.ly/Dxwvo

Collaborative Virtual Environments

The CVE course was campus based

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but delivered at two campuses sometwo hours travelling time apart (Paisley and Dumfries). Lectures wereshared using video-conferencing, while labs used Second Life allowingstudents on both campuses to interact with each other throughout thetimetabled hours. The Moodle course page was central to co-ordinatingstudent activity, and preparation of this involved:

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Adding a „Teleport Now‟ button to take students to class area in

Second Life. This used a SLurl and an image of the virtual islandtaken from Second Life.

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