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S t a t i s t i c s f r o m S t u d e n t s ’ F e e d b a c k

Hospitality & Tourism Management Students’ Experience of Learning inthe Virtual World of Second Life

This draft paper is an attempt to capture details of our first experience of using Second Lifefor teaching and learning in a hospitality and tourism School in Hong Kong. It analyzes datacollected from students and teachers who used Second Life for learning and teaching in fourdiverse courses and discusses some of the opportunities, challenges and problems of usingthis virtual environment.KEY WORDS: tourism education, virtual worlds, Second Life, simulationsPaul PenfoldSchool of Hotel & Tourism ManagementThe Hong Kong Polytechnic UniversityTel (852) 2766-4092Email:hmpp@polyu.edu.hk Gigi Au YeungSchool of Hotel & Tourism ManagementThe Hong Kong Polytechnic UniversityTel (852) 2766-6309 Email:hmgigi@polyu.edu.hk

Students from School of Hotel & Tourism Management on virtual hotel field trip

Acknowledgments

The PolyU Second Life project discussed in this paper was funded by the School of Hotel & TourismManagement and the e-Learning Development & Support Section of The Hong Kong PolytechnicUniversity. Thanks to Henry Ma and Clifford Choy of School of Design who gave us practicalsupport in providing office space and technical help. Special thanks to Alex Ng, Bill Liu, JackieKwong, and Jacky Siu for their excellent technical & design work, to Creamy Kong for her projectadministration, and to Gigi Au for project support and data analysis. Thanks also to SHTM teachersEric Chan, Greg Eilmann, Chloe Lau and Qu Xiao for their innovation, willingness to take risks andto be our ‘early adopters’ in this virtual world of Second Life.Further notes on our experience with Second Life can be found at: http://penkyamp.blogspot.com/

Evaluation on Student Feedback in using Second Life

2008

P a r t A :

S t a t i s t i c f r o m S t u d e n t s ’ F e e d b a c k

Hospitality & Tourism Management Students’ Experience of Learning in theVirtual World of Second Life

Part A: Finding from students’ feedback

The School of Hotel & Tourism Management at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University used SecondLife for pilot activities in four courses in the Spring Semester 2008. 152 questionnaires were receivedfrom students which have helped us understand some of the challenges and difficulties of using thisvirtual world, some of the advantages, as well as some of the things we need to do to improve thelearning experience of the students. This paper is the initial findings and a draft report only.The clear conclusion from the data is that students enjoyed the experience, gained a new learningexperience and would like to use Second Life again. All the teachers involved in the pilot also agreedthey would definitely use Second Life again in their courses. However, the reaction to the differentstyle of virtual learning activities varied, with certain activities receiving a high rating in most areas,and other activities being rated lower for reasons that will be elaborated upon further in this paper.Room Design Role playingVirtual Tour Virtual meetingOverall Statistic

Evaluation on Student Feedback in using Second Life

2008

P a r t A :

S t a t i s t i c f r o m S t u d e n t s ’ F e e d b a c k

To design an effective learning activity, the benefits for student is a measurement tool for evaluation.From the figures below, we can see that the room design activity proved to be relatively effective andhelpful for students, while in general, students are neutral towards their benefit gained. This may bedue to the insufficient time for participation and the design of the activity; this implies that there isroom for improvement on the learning activity design.Room Design Role playingVirtual Tour Virtual meetingOverall Statistic