Subject Matter Content Creation for Second Life Delivery

Worldwide, educators are experimenting with the myriad possibilities that Second Life and other multi-user virtual environments (MUVEs) provide for teaching and learning for online courses. Some find the ability to collaborate enhanced, others see the social presence improved, more acknowledge the ease of employing role play intriguing, and a few have employed highly complex simulations as means of delivering complex material. The ability of educators to develop, test, and effectively deliver meaningful educational content within virtual worlds is often limited by the rather steep learning curve such environments present. This chapter provides first a set of basic guidelines for preparing instructors for an incremental approach to content delivery and predisposes learners for successful implementation and performance. Second, using examples from the discipline of geography, specifically my subspecialty of geographic information systems (GIS), it describes the use of some basic tools contained within Second Life for creation of active course content through small learning objects. Finally, it demonstrates real-world examples of such in-world learning objects from a laboratory-based course to illustrate how traditional course content can be transformed to hands-on exercises in the virtual environment.