Education-Oriented Research Activities Conducted in Second Life - Teaching through Multi-User Virtual Environments - page 326

Chapter 18
Education-Oriented
Research Activities
Conducted in Second Life

Jiuguang Feng
Towson University, USA

Liyan Song
Towson University, USA

ABSTRACT

Second Life (SL) is a multiuser virtual environment (MUVE) that can be used to enhance students' learn-
ing. It is a virtual environment constructed by SL residents, where students can engage in collaborative
learning with other SL residents. In the field of education, SL has been used as a professional tool, a
synchronous online system, a virtual environment mimicking real life, a platform for role-playing, a
communication tool between teachers and students. This chapter focuses on education-oriented research
activities conducted in SL. The authors explain and analyze SL usage in higher education, foreign lan-
guage instruction as well as investigated its contribution to various learning paradigms, and suggested
future research directions.

INTRODUCTION ing topics: SL in teaching for higher education;

SL for foreign language learning; and research on
social factors in SL in education. The topics (as
shown in Table 1) can help illustrate some major
uses and impact of SL in education.
Higher education is moving toward student-
centered learning environments and this move-
ment has provoked a series of reforms, service
learning, learning communities, collaborative
learning, and technology enhanced classroom
(Daynes, Esplin, & Kristensen, 2004). Second
Life (SL), a multi-user virtual environment
(MUVE), where university students and instruc-

Various perspectives (e.g., SL as a new economy
or an educational tool) have had significant influ-
ence on Second Life and residents in Second Life.
As educators, our primary concern is about the
impact on student learning, and our main interest
is to explore what is happening with Second Life
in education today and impacts on the future. Dif-
ferent perspectives are interwoven in most of the
cases. This chapter attempts to address the follow-

DOI: 10.4018/978-1-61692-822-3.ch018