First Office Hour!

Today I held my first Biochemistry office hour in SL. After numerous e-mails in which I had requested free space for this use, I had decided to meet students at the CVL learning lab. This was the announcement that I posted on eCompanion:

Second Life: How to begin

Become a free member in Second Life. You can do this at http://secondlife.com

• Download the Second Life viewer. http://secondlife.com/beta-viewer/

• Once you are logged in, you will find yourself on Orientation Island. Once here, you may get distracted customizing your avatar J However, feel free to attend office hours in whatever outfit you like. It may be beneficial to spend a bit of time on Orientation Island learning how to walk, fly and teleport.

• In order to attend office hours, just click on the following Second Life URL called a slurl. http://slurl.com/secondlife/Info%20Island/111/226/32

• Once you have clicked on the slurl, a box will pop up in your Second Life Viewer and you can click on teleport. I will wait for you here!

My Avatar’s name is Serratia Warcliffe. This is a picture of Serratia in the learning space where we will meet.

• Please note that I am also still a relative “noobie” on SL. The reason that I want to hold office hours here in addition to those on Elluminate is to mimic a sense of physical presence. We can discuss topics and talk about homework problems. However, I am still learning and we will learn together

At first it was pretty disheartening because no-one showed up. But, then after about half hour, someone did come. I was able to chat with him and show him around Amino World and the virtual cell on Genome island. I tried the audio but he was unable to hear. I will play around with this a bit to see if it is my sound or something else?? In just this single meeting I already feel closer to the one student who came. I somehow gained a feeling for his personality and since he is one of 90 in class this summer, his coming to this single office hour will greatly distinguish him!

Session on Performing Qualitative Interviews in SL

On Wednesday evening (June 9th), I attended a session on Interviewing in SL. It was a round table discussion on CAVE island (ARVEL group meeting place http://www.arvelsig.com/). I was a few minutes late as I struggled a bit to find it but I made it right after the introductions. Discussion ranged from whether to use text chat or audio for interviews to the need for some standard protocol to approach IRBs for in world research.

Some thoughts as to why one might choose to perform interviews in SL as opposed to RL:

1) Broader sample - diversity

2) Sense of presence - better than other social media

3) Individuals are free (as is the researcher) to show an imaginative representation of self - I would argue that one's avatar may even represent that person to a greater extent than their actual self?? - hmm this is one to consider

Someone mentioned the author Dennis Beck - writes about avatar presentation

*There was additional conversation regarding public vs. private envs and whether this is different on SL?

There was discussion as to whether the information in one's profile should be accessed / whether special permission is needed on IRB for this?

Seems to be lots of disagreement on IRB - no standardized procedure - ARVEL may work on pulling something together

A good suggestion that came up was to, as a researcher, create a blog or something of that nature describing yourself and your project - this could put participants at ease and allow them to understand your research goals - see you as a professional. I wonder if this could be done within SL?

The presenter for the session was Soleil Lemondrop. Though she was not a phenomenal presenter, I very much appreciated her expertise and was impressed with her willingness to engage attendees.

Still Exploring

A brief exploration in Second Life today took me to a new slurl. It is a Gender resource island and I was able to join Gender Square. My hope is to improve connections with LGBT/Q ... populations within Second Life. I also found a good orientation web site for individuals seeking Virtual Ability in SL: http://virtualability.org/default.aspx

And... wait for it... I finally updated to the new SL browser. It is going to take a while to get used to it. I have to figure out how to stop the music that comes with every environment. While in some cases it's very nice, in many cases I really like the ambient sounds instead.

Finally, I think I've found free space to hold biochemistry office hours this summer. It is an island for Cooperative Extension (Land Grant Universities) - I'll be back soon with more on that...