You’re a post-secondary English prof, and your students are bored stiff with the same old 500-750 word essay assignments. Not to mention, you are bored stiff teaching composition to freshmen. You toss around new ideas: group collaborations? Re-workings of classics of literature? Field trips? What does one do?
Well, an enterprising professor at Macon State College in Georgia has decided to add some zing to his first-year composition class by having students write for SL.
According to Dr. Gerard Lucas, “Second Life allows us to look at issues like identity, identity building, gender, sexuality and race. It brings all these ideas to the forefront in a way that students can engag…”
First-year students can be a fickle, distracted bunch. So, Lucas was impressed with the 3D nature of SL, saying that the program’s interactivity appeals to his students.
Interestingly, Dr. Lucas uses his own Web site as a teaching tool for his classes, where one can read about his intentions using SL in his class. He’s even setup a student wiki, and has a companion Web site where he writes as Jerry Lucas, exploring, critiquing and reporting on science fiction.
The report, written in the Macon State College paper student paper, neglects to hear comment from administrators at the school, which would be pretty interesting. On an academic level, how does learning composition in a 3D environment track within a more traditional liberal education? I mean, we’re not talking about studying Nietszche or Marshall McLuhan here, but teaching in an entirely new medium. I wonder what the dean thinks of it all…
March 29, 2008 at 2:19 pm
[...] Dusan Writer notes a teacher using Second Life to teach class: According to Dr. Gerard Lucas, “Second Life allows us to look at issues like identity, identity building, gender, sexuality and race. It brings all these ideas to the forefront in a way that students can engag…” [...]