Subject Matter Content Creation for Second Life Delivery - Teaching through Multi-User Virtual Environments - page 417

Figure 2. My teaching space on New Mexico State University's Aggie Island is a rallying point for stu-
dents. Here I have a white board for slides, blankets for seating, clicker technology for reviews, and the
laboratory exercises placed strategically on a platform for the students to retrieve

faculty can truly enjoy together. This strengthens
the bond among the students and between student
and teacher (Figure 3).
As one might guess, Lester (2006) recommends
talking to other teachers, but he also recommends
talking to your students. The students are often
likely to be more in tune with gaming technology
and gaming in general and will have both a student
perspective and a gamer perspective. One of the
comments one of my students, a gamer, made to
me relates specifically to the lack of a predefined
goal provided by Second Life. She suggested, as
does Lester, that specific, measurable goals should
be provided so the student can focus on the learn-
ing objective. While this is necessarily true of any
course delivery method, it might be more par-
ticularly important to teaching in Second Life.

Some of Lester's (2006) conclusions also in-
clude unlearning teaching methods that may work
in the real world but might fail in the virtual world.
This seems to beg the question of how to make that
transition, a fundamental purpose of this chapter.
Finally, Lester strongly suggests that communi-
cating one's experiences teaching in Second Life
is quite illuminating. He recommends using both
student blogs, and also presenting experiences in
formal publication outlets to describe what works
and what does not. Not only is this a method of
enhancing one's own Second Life teaching, it also
encourages others to use this emerging technology
for their own classes.
From my own observations, I quite agree with
Lester's suggestions. I would add the importance
of six classes of skills that the educator must first