Ultimate Distance Learning?

This past Sunday (Jan 7/07), the New York Times offered an article focused on the value of Second Life to enhance or improve distance learning: Ultimate Distance Learning. As an educational technologist with an emphasis in distance learning and new technologies, I would tend to agree, and many of the activities to which the article refers – collaborative projects, social opportunities for learners, interactive discussions – are in fact valuable enhancements to distance learning, particularly given the manner in which those activities are facilitated in Second Life.

However, the leading image caught my attention before I was even able to read the article, and it made an impression.

If distance learning facilitated via Second Life begins to look too much like this on a regular, consistent basis, we should stop! Unfortunately, there’s more than a few examples of learning space in SL looking exactly like this one.

The attractive benefits of internet-based distance learning are completely lost in such an environment. Quality internet learning is fundamentally different from most face-to-face environments; internet-based distance learning has typically been asynchronous, multimedia enhanced, and learner centered/directed. Recreating the classroom environment in SL removes ALL of those features, and we end up back in a synchronous classroom with limited multimedia presented in an instructor-led format. We shouldn’t use SL to simply replicate the classroom environment; we need to find innovative ways to do things differently. Otherwise, SL actually could become the unfortunate embodiment of “learning online being no different than learning face to face.” That’s not what we should be trying to do with this medium.

Second Life offers rather unique opportunities for learners: to engage virtual, authentic activities, to collaboratively develop meaningful products and spaces, and to engage one another in socially and intellectually meaningful discussion beyond the constraints of a traditional classroom or even a traditional internet based course discussion board. There’s no reason SL learners should be sitting and listening/reading an instructor; I did attend one meaningful class on basic prims that was set, basically, in a pasture. Each SL’er found plenty of space and began rezzing prims; of course, the instructor was talking/chatting/typing as we went, but each individual could determine their own pace, and each remained active throughout the session. That’s the kind of active learning we need to be engaging.

If distance educators are to use SL to enhance instruction, we should be using SL to do things we can’t do in the classroom: attend or produce live music concerts, engage in political discussions with political leaders, participate in open SL poetry writing classes with other SL’ers, take (or create) a SL generated tour of the solar system, attend an open seminar/discussion focused on contemporary issues (Myspace as a resource?), become an art critic after visiting a SL art exhibit, peruse a library or museum exhibit, or participate in online conferences just to name a few. If we’re busy recreating classrooms and uploading powerpoints or videos into them, we’re just doing what we’ve always done, and SL is anything BUT an ordinary tool with which to teach.