Higher Education in Virtual Worlds: Teaching and Learning in Second Life

by Charles Wankel (Editor), Jan Kingsley

The use of virtual world platforms is still in its infancy and many educators are wondering how best to use such platforms as a complement to their teaching and facilitation strategies. Targeted at educators and researchers wishing to use virtual environments in their teaching practice "Higher Education in Second Life" provides practical advice specifically for educators in higher education. This book focuses on the use of Second Life - a free, readily-accessible virtual world which is increasingly being used for both formal and informal learning. "Second Life" provides a platform where people can meet and collaborate, teach and learn, play roles and live through experiences. For the experienced this publication provides case studies and ideas for implementing effective learning experiences, for the novice it offers suggestions for overcoming potential barriers and joining the community of 'new frontier educators'. It has a broad appeal to educators from a wide range of disciplines, from the academic community, to training and development managers, and companies with corporate universities looking to reduce their costs through the use of technology and distance learning.

256 pages, Hardcover

First published November 23, 2009

Reviews

[Anup Das · Rating 4 out of 5]

Book introducing use of Second Life software suite in virtual education
Second Life is a software suite, launched in 2003, to create an online virtual world. Second Life is increasingly being used worldwide to develop an online three-dimensional (3D) interactive virtual environment for interacting with virtual humans (viz., colleagues, classmates, teachers, librarians, etc.) in a virtual university, virtual laboratory or virtual library setup, in addition to its usage in virtual gaming. In book titled “Higher Education in Virtual Worlds: Teaching and Learning in Second Life”, edited by Charles Wankel and Jan Kingsley, different authors narrate their experience and experimentation with Second Life for effective delivery of business education, lifelong learning, higher education, distance education and vocational education. Some open universities also have started developing virtual learning spaces for delivery of education to their enrolled students. This book contains twelve chapters and authors describe some of their institutional initiatives.