Liberal Education Today

Notes on a presentation on building a virtual world to teach Spanish, given at the ELI 2008 annual conference. Presentation materials blogged to the Web.

Pedagogical goals: improving collaboration skills, expanding student-instructor interaction, visualizing off-campus content-related spaces, emotional connection with the environment, and role-playing language and culture situations. Additionally the instructor wishes to teach pragmatics, practical social interactions in a second language.

The application selected was Open Croquet.

Faculty interaction: the word "game" was seen as detrimental, while "simulation" and "virtual world" win better attention.
The professor leading this project's development studied student use of the world, focusing on 60 undergraduates who worked on it for six weeks in fall 2007. The professor analyzed student learning through interviews, pre- and post-experience assessments. Interactions (chat, voice, movement) were recorded.
Initial results: students did not vary their avatar's appearance. Major difference in perception: world as content area versus world as (social) practice space. Students improved knowledge of certain "content chunks". Student motivation was high, perception positive.

Spatial organization: host family, university setting, market/plaza.

Discussion questions began with Second Life comparisons. Croquet is peer-to-peer, not server-based, enabling faster connections and less lag. Access to the world was sufficiently restricted by campus sign-on.

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