There is definite potential for IL instruction in a virtual environment but I remain skeptical as to how successful teaching of any kind will be in the present format.
For me having to navigate around to find activities or assignments is too time consuming. My impression is that a virtual course is just like blackboard except you walk your avatar around instead of just clicking on a link and reading the info.
For adult IL education I think Second Life is too juvenile. But, it may be useful for younger students. I am especially interested to see if educational institutions begin to build their own virtual worlds and if it proves to be affordable or successful in the long run.
If individually developed and maintained virtual worlds can be feasibly carried out for schools it would be cool if the faculty and librarians could develop curriculum collaboratively. Perhaps, the virtual classroom would involve a virtual librarian (sort of like an embedded librarian in a normal online class) who can provide tailored IL tools which are relevant to that particular class.
No comments:
Post a Comment