Island Hopping in Second Life

Posted on August 19, 2008 by Jennifer Brady

This guest post was written by my colleague, Kitty Galaitsis, Director of Online Education, Division of Corporate, Continuing and Distance Education at the University of Massachusetts Boston campus. Kitty is known in Second Life as ‘Circe Miklos’ (shown in the post image).

Second Life has come a long way in a year at the University of Massachusetts Boston. I first heard about Second Life at a pre-conference session at the 2006 Sloan-C Conference. In the summer of 2007 we had a technology intern who was tasked with searching Second Life for education-rich islands. At the end of that summer the intern and I gave a presentation to all UMB faculty and demonstrated Second Life to a standing-room-only crowd. In the fall of 2007, Mary Hopper (a Second Life expert with her own land) joined UMass Boston as director of the Instructional Design graduate program. This gave us the expertise we needed to really get started. This summer Corporate, Continuing and Distance Education (CCDE) had its own island in active use.

Our island is still in the development stage, but we are offering space to faculty who want to experiment. Music Professor David Patterson had students present Second Life projects in lieu of a paper, a language café and classroom was built by Instructional Design students and a counseling clinic, created by department chair Gonzalo Bacigalupe, can now support the online degree programs. CCDE itself has a welcome area and a meeting place by a lagoon available for anyone to use.

A growing number of educators from around the world are fascinated with Second Life and are experimenting with how to integrate it into course pedagogy. I see more universities joining Second Life each time I search. Some universities, like Princeton, have replicated campus buildings, including an art museum and the library with links for public use. Others are using the islands for classes like law at Harvard or Mandarin Chinese at Michigan State University, for three dimensional representation of math, art and biology, and for role-playing in history or archeology. Linden Lab, the company that created and supports Second Life, maintains an extensive list of ongoing educational projects.

At UMass Boston, future uses of our island might include marketing our online courses in our welcome area, building an embassy for international relations students, and promoting a speaker series. I am hoping our online program directors will use the meeting area for online faculty meetings. Click to take a look at the UMass Boston CCDE island or find us by signing into Second Life and doing a search for “UMB CCDE.” Once you arrive, sit in a white wicker chair near the orange trees and relax. I’ll give you a virtual cup of latte!