When I heard the team said that research found out that online learning encouraged more active learning and engagement, I was skeptical toward that statement. For me, it was a bit of over-generalized and idealistic. Despite of this, I benefited a lot from last week's tech talk about synchronous teaching.
I was fascinated by the creative idea of using Second Life as a teaching tool. For a long time, I viewed Second Life as a pure virtual video game. It was against the reality and allured people to lead an imagined life which could be a waste of time. Yet after listening to the team tech talk, I changed my attitude toward this kind of social video game. This is actually a game that can help a instructor construct a visual classroom online. With avatars and instant interaction between instructor and classmates, Second life becomes a very funny teaching and learning platform. It is especially suitable for visual person who mainly learns through viewing and pictures (I am that type of person and that's why I like Second Life more than those two-way audio web-based synchronous teaching tools).
Therefore, in the future, I would consider to integrate Second Life in my online courses. But I still have several concerns here. First of all, how to prevent distraction? To use this video game to teach, all my students have to create an individual account for it. Then is it possible that I actively lead my students into temptation that can discourage their learning by consuming lots of their time? Second, how about those students who are auditory and have difficulties to learn in virtual world? Is it possible that this kind of virtual teaching environment can adversely affect their learning process...?
I don't know if a virtual environment can truly have adverse affects on the learning process, but I do agree that there are some downfalls to this type of teaching. When incorporating the virtual environment into the classroom you just have to keep it in mind that students approach learning differently and that changes may have to be made to help them all out.
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