I've, for reasons I'm not entirely sure about, signed up for a virtual course run by a major mid-western university. It's a course on Second Life in Second Life. For Librarians. Not entirely sure what it's going to be like - and the one time I did a virtual thing like this before I hated the lack of f2f interaction - but want to give it a go and the library's forked out the $200.
The first of the two hour sessions was this afternoon and was kind of disappointing and interesting at the same time.
Disappointing because it turned out to be very much like a lecture with us sitting in an open air auditorium listening to the speaker for the day. Disappointing because the first hour really did cover the very basic basics of Second Life, the second hour some of the relevance to libraries - but felt as if it were just getting interesting as it was time to go. Disappointing because we learned that building things for example, was not part of this course but an intermediate one (still, I could sign up for that I guess).
Interesting because it was curious attending class in this kind of environment. Interesting to see how others (maybe 25 class mates?) behaved and reacted. Interesting because I was attending with a former colleague from TheOldPlace and we could IM each other through the class - just like passing real notes but not as obtrusive - which provided a virtual commentary on the virtual class that proved highly amusing and was really the saving grace of the whole two hours. (Everything from rude remarks about the session/session leader or people's avatars, through how we were supposed to be responding or not to the session, to completely non-course related chit-chat).
On the downside I didn't manage to avoid my real life problem of just being that bit too eager to chip in with something or make a smart remark before I can help it. (e.g. feeling like I was the class nerd after we had a break one hour in and I used it to go fetch from our real life shelves a book that had been recommended)
On the upside I did learn a couple of useful things: about mouselook, about silencing objects, and about the recommended book. And, just maybe, by interacting when it didn't seem like many bothered, made the class tutor feel better about the session.
2 comments:
(Everything from rude remarks about the session/session leader or people's avatars....)
not happy about attending the class if that is what you were doing all the time!
Well, in my defence I didn't say that it was ME making the rude remarks. I may have just been reading them.
But I was made to feel a bit uncomfortable by the avatar who came and stood very close to me, then sat nearby waving arm around rather manically. I've since discovered that it was the course organizer! Presumably she was testing things out. (It does raise interesting questions of how acceptable it is to wander round the classroom while the session is on).
But I think it was more a trial of what the environment was like rather than a habit I plan to get into. It was a bit strange all round. And not helped by the session feeling a rather 'slow' - hopefully that will improve as we get into it more and past the basics.
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