There has been some discussion this past week on the Jiscmail VLE list about Second Life and concerns about the appropriateness of some material or events there for young students. It's not so much that adult material is there, rather that the boundaries between what is percieved as straightforward, overt learning materials and other material may be blurred. Add to that the exploratory nature of learning that we might be encouraging and we perhaps need to consider how we manage our use of SL with students.
The current model of online learning is to use closed spaces such as VLEs or even in Web2.0 stuff to restrict write permissions to the class. In face to face we have a class or lecture room which is generally a closed forum (although sometimes we might like some extras to turn up and make it look busy!) SL suddenly offers space that isn't closed. There's nothing wrong with that in itself, however, if we are introducing students to it and requiring them to be there then what responsibility do we have to them? What will we do if those with addictive personalities claim that they have failed their courses because they were spending 16 hours a day in SL and that one of their tutors was the 'pusher' who started them off?
We must remember that SL is not designed as a learning space but we can utilise it and it's features to enable learning. We take students into chemistry labs or on fieldtrips where there are objective hazards. We work to minimise the probability of any hazard occurring to us and our students and so reduce the risk. We probably need to apply the same principles in SL. Arguments that risks are only 'virtual' in SL I think are misplaced. The learning we seek takes place in real life and so therefore will any emotional upset.
It would be wrong to take the above as an argument for staying out of SL and other immersive worlds - far from it! We don't stay out of labs and we don't stay out of the field (although the last few years have seen a great assault on teachers taking kids out into the field in the UK). We just need awareness of what we are doing and what we are asking others to do. If we stay out of the lab, out of the field and out of SL we restrict and constrict our opportunities to explore, to discover and to learn.
nigel robertson
