Second Life®: A 3D Virtual Immersive

Environment for Teacher Preparation Courses in

a Distance Education Program Melissa D. Hartley Barbara L. Ludlow

West Virginia University Michael C. Duff Discover Video Productions

Abstract Many colleges and universities rely upon online programs to support distance delivery of personnel preparation programs in special
education and related services. These distance education programs enable individuals who live or work in rural communities to access training

programs to earn teaching certification and assist rural schools in providing much-needed professional development opportunities for preservice and

inservice person- nel. Instructors have begun to use real-time online formats, such as voice chat, teleconferencing, and virtual reality applications, to

increase learner participation in online courses and promote a sense of community across individuals at multiple sites. This article describes promising

practices for creating and implementing learning activities in Second Life®, a virtual world, in a teacher education program that serves prospective and

practicing teachers in many rural communities. The authors present a rationale for using this virtual reality application, explain how it has been

implemented in a distance education program, and outline future directions for using it with other emerging technologies.

Keywords: virtual reality, virtual environments, Second Life®, online learning, distance
education

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Distance education programs to prepare professional per-

service areas offer some programs that can be accessed partly
sonnel in special education and related services have a long
or entirely online, while state and local education agencies
history in these disciplines. Rural Special Education
commonly use some online formats to provide professional
Quarterly has featured many articles over the past 30+ years,
development to teachers, especially in rural communities. As
document- ing how faculty in institutions of higher education
new technolo- gies have become available, rural special
and profes- sional development coordinators in school systems
education leaders always have been quick to explore their
have used a variety of technologies in preservice and inservice
potential uses in per- sonnel preparation and service delivery.
programs to prepare prospective and practicing personnel.
Today, virtual reality applications represent an emerging
Today, virtu- ally all colleges and universities that have rural
technology with promise for distance delivery systems.
Virtual Reality Applications in Teacher world sometimes presents (Falconer, 2013). They may be

more motivating since they incorporate the preference for and

Preparation Virtual reality is a computer simulation of
skill in using technology of today’s digitally savvy learn- ers
the real world in which users engage in actions and/or interact
(Ellis, Anderson, & Kibbe, 2014). Finally, MUVEs have
with others in life-like environments (e.g., virtual games like
potential for use in teacher education, especially in online
World of Warcraft or virtual worlds such as Active Worlds).
programs, as virtual lecture halls, independent learning labs,
In multi- user virtual environments (MUVEs), users create and
educational simulations, and meeting places for collaborative
ma-
nipulate personal avatars, move through three-dimensional activities (Hew & Cheung, 2010). They may be especially ef-

(3D) space and manipulate objects in simulated settings, and fective for distance education since they heighten the sense of

communicate and engage with other users in real time immediacy and social presence that students experience in an

(Steinkueller, 2008). MUVEs provide authentic contexts for online environment (Annetta, Folta, & Klesak, 2010; Dawley

situated learning (Whitton & Hollins, 2008) and op- & Dede, 2014). Second Life® (SL) is a virtual world that is

portunities for active learning through movement, action on ideal for educational use because it is free to users and easily

objects, and interaction with others (Pantelidis, 2009). They installed on a personal computer, has many public spaces, and

also allow learners to experience environments and engage in can be accessed on multiple platforms. SL contains the most

activities without the practical and ethical issues that the real criti- cal components for successful virtual learning: an
immersive

Author Note: Please address all correspondence to Melissa D. Hartley

( Melissa.Hartley@mail.wvu.edu).

Rural Special Education Quarterly + Volume 34, No. 3—pages 21-25 + © 2015 American Council on Rural Special
Education Reprints and Permission: Copyright Clearance Center at 978-750-8400 or www.copyright.com

Rural Special Education Quarterly 2015 Volume 34, Number 3 21

environment for situated learning, an avatar that allows
simulations (Weiner et al., 2010), for role playing exercises
active learning, and text and speech interactions with other
(Goa, Noe, & Kohler, 2008), and for collaborative learning
learn- ers to enable socially constructed learning (Cooke-
activities (Sutcliffe & Alrayes, 2012). The professional
Plagwitz, 2009). A variety of studies have shown that SL has
literature docu- ments that SL is the most commonly used
been used successfully in higher education for problem-based
virtual immersive environment in higher education (Liu, Kalk,
learning (Beaumont et al., 2014), for design of educational
Kinney, & Orr, 2012). Many colleges and universities already
have used SL for hybrid and online courses, at the viewer, create an avatar, and navigate within this virtual

undergraduate and graduate levels, and across a variety of world. Although only 3 students participated in the SL session,

disciplines as well as in profes- sional preparation programs init was evident that distance students could access SL

counseling, nursing, and edu- cation (Wang & Burton, 2013). independently using the written instructions with minimal

Clearly, SL has potential for use as a platform that can be usedcoaching from the instructor. Faculty concluded that SL could

in teacher preparation pro- grams in special education, be used as the educational platform for online graduate

especially for distance education. Second

Life® as a courses in future semesters. Since then, use of SL has been
Distance Education Platform for Teacher
expanded to involve other faculty members and various
Preparation The West Virginia University (WVU)
courses over a 4-year pe- riod. Based on these experiences, the
Department of Special Education has been making extensive
remainder of this article describes the current use in online
use of SL in sev- en different distance education programs that
graduate courses, learning activities, lessons learned (problems
provide initial teaching certification and/or a graduate degree
and solutions), and future directions for using this virtual
or doctoral degree in special education for individuals
environment. Current Use of Second Life® in
throughout West Virginia and in many other areas of the
Online Graduate Courses To date, SL has been used
country, as well as in several international locations. Prior to as the primary educational
platform in over 40 course
using SL in distance education courses at WVU, faculty
sections across eight different courses taught by five different
piloted its use in Spring 2011 with 54 students in two
instructors and attended by over 600 students, serving
undergraduate campus-based courses where the instructor
approximately 125 students each
could provide hands-on assis- tance to students in the semester during the academic year and 50 students during

College’s computer lab. All students learned to use the the summer session. Instructor and students access SL for

technology in a reasonable amount of time and became fluent synchronous and asynchronous online learning experiences.

in using it for learning activities designed by the instructor. Here is some information about how faculty members use SL

Encouraged by the success of this initial pilot, faculty for teaching and learning in this online program. Virtual

members began to explore use of SL for online courses in a learning spaces. The WVU College of Educa- tion and

second pilot study also conducted in Spring 2011. Students Human Services leases a private island space in SL for $1000

attending graduate online courses were invited to participate in per year (plus a $300 maintenance fee). The island

the pilot study for extra credit by attending a session in SL, administrator (a special education faculty member with no

following written instructions for how to download the SL programming experience) has designed and constructed a
 virtual campus that resembles the physical campus, adapting agenda and housekeeping; (b) each student completes the

objects created by others and available for little or no cost or activator (an activity requir- ing students to connect class

using the SL scripting language to construct or modify origi- topics with prior knowledge), submitting a notecard with the

nal objects. The virtual campus includes a variety of learning response; (c) the class reviews the activator responses; (d) the

spaces for large and small group activities, as well as individ- instructor provides 10-15 min of interactive mini-lecture (see

ual workspaces, with some spaces designed to accommodate Figure 1); (e) students complete an individual activity

the activities associated with specific courses. Initial submitting a notecard with the response; (f) the instructor

exposure to SL. The instructor and students meet in the provides another 10-15 min of interactive lecture; and (g) the

University’s online conferencing system, Blackboard students complete a group activity submitting one notecard

Collaborate, for the first session of the semester. During the with the group response. The notecards serve the purpose of a

initial session, everyone introduces him/herself, the instruc- permanent record of content understanding, participation, and

tor reviews the course syllabus and assignments, and students attendance at the time of the activity. When students are

are given time to begin creating their avatar and download- ingcompleting individual activities, they submit a notecard to the

the program. After this initial session, students are given instructor as a perma- nent product demonstrating mastery.

approximately 2 weeks to become familiar with using SL. When students work in groups, only one student prepares and

Students complete assignments created in advance by the in- submits the notecard for the group. When it is time for group

structor to scaffold their ability to use skills needed to access work, students re- trieve the assignment from a box in the

course content during class sessions. Prior to the first class main classroom, read the directions, and, if there are not any

session in the virtual learning environment, students submit questions, they walk or fly their avatars to the assigned group

the first two SL assignments. Class organization. After the building to begin working with their own group members.
Learning Activities in the Second Life® Virtual
initial session in Black- board Collaborate, students typically
Environment Instructors have implemented many
meet live in real time for eight or more additional sessions
different types of learning activities in SL. Examples of some
throughout the semester. A typical class session is conducted
of the most
by the following schedule: (a) Class begins with reviewing the

22 Volume 34, Number 3 2015 Rural Special Education Quarterly

Figure 1.
Class reviewing presentation slides and participating in interactive lecture.
popular activities are included in this section, and video clips of real students engaged in activities are available

at http:// drhartleywvu-slvideos.blogspot.com. Co-Teaching. Students choose a model of co-teaching (Parallel,

Team, Station, or Alternative), create 1-hr lessons and deliver 10 min of a lesson for the whole class. They create

their own materials for the lessons and use boxes prepared in advance by the instructor for distributing the

materials to oth- ers during class. Role-plays. Students also create role-plays in groups of four and facilitate the

role-play for their classmates. Each group creates their materials and practices how to facilitate a role-play. Each

group chooses a member to introduce the group members and the topic, a member to disseminate ma- terials, a

member to review the directions and answer ques- tions, and a member to debrief the class following the role- play

practice. While participating in the role-plays, students are instructed to use the content from the course to find a

solution to the problem. During the role-plays, the member chosen as a facilitator for each group manages the

group’s time and communicates with the other group facilitators to determine progress and the time to return to the

main class- room for the debriefing. Figure 2. Professional development. Students also collaboratively design a

6-hr professional development session that reflects Interacting with student bots in K-12 classroom. the

course content, with all materials required to deliver the full session in real life. Then, they prepare to deliver a 15-

min segment to the class in break-out rooms; several students pres- ent their segments at the same time while the

rest select a seg- ment to attend on a topic that reflects personal interests and professional goals. Lessons
Learned in Second Life®: Problems and Solutions Although SL offers many unique learning
opportunities for teacher preparation, implementing any new technology is never done without encountering some

challenges. Here
Rural Special Education Quarterly 2015 Volume 34, Number 3 23

are some problems commonly encountered when using SL for courses and the solutions faculty have

implemented to ad- dress them. Resistance to new technology. While today’s students have grown up using many

different technologies in daily life as well as in school, most have little prior experience with virtual worlds so they

may be apprehensive about learning how to use SL. In addition, older non-traditional students and those from

more rural areas often have less technol- ogy experience overall and may be somewhat fearful of what seems to be

a complex set of skills. Finally, many students become frustrated when learning new technology skills, espe- cially

when there are technical difficulties. Instructors need to provide adequate explanation and demonstration of skills

in or out of class or by referring students to the many helpful online resources available online through the SL
 Community at https://community.secondlife.com or the video tutorials posted on YouTube at

https://www.youtube.com/user/Sec- ondlife. They also should be patient but firm in both encour- aging and

requiring students to master the basic skills needed for learning activities in this online world. Loss of class time

to teach technology skills. Initially, faculty used class time to assist students in learning how to use SL; however,

this practice limited the time available to students for learning course content and engaging in learning activi- ties.

To address this concern, the instructor with the most SL experience and skill created a handbook that contains

explicit instructions with screen shots with all necessary information and resources needed by students for using

SL. The handbook allows students to learn SL skills independently and with less investment of their time, even for

the more complicated tasks, such as building boxes to disseminate materials. The hand- book is available at

http://drhartleywvu-slvideos.blogspot. com/2014/07/getting-started-in-sl-handbooks.html. Logistical issues.

Instructors also face logistical issues in using SL as the educational platform for a distance education course,

including (a) transitions between activities, (b) dissemi- nation of materials, (c) social norms and rules, and (d)

student accountability and participation. These logistical issues, how- ever, can be avoided with some advance

planning and prepara- tion for class sessions. Transitions. One issue instructors face is managing transi- tions

between activities. In a face-to-face class, students can see

the facial expressions and physical movements of the profes-
are finished (for example, when students are finished with the
sor so they know what is happening or about to happen to
activator, they must walk over to the display board to show
guide their response (for example, students can see when the
they are ready to discuss it). Dissemination of materials.
instructor is disseminating materials). While teaching within a
Another issue for instructors involves the dissemination of
desktop conferencing program, instructors can build transi-
materials. In face-to-face classes, instructors pass out materials
tions into the presentation via slides (for example, students
directly to students, while, in online courses, they post them as
know what to do when a slide is presented with a poll question
digital documents that stu- dents can access. To disseminate
requiring individual responses or directions to move to a
materials in SL, instructors can create materials, organize them
break- out room for a group activity). While the professor is
into folders by class session and/or topic or activity within his
verbally instructing students, the students also can see the
or her personal SL inven- tory, and upload them in advance to
transition on the slide. In SL, instructors may find it helpful to
display boards or boxes to minimize confusion and maximize
post informa- tion or directions as a slide on a display board
instructional time during class. While the initial development
and ask students to physically relocate to indicate when they
and placement of mate- rials may take some time, instructors
will find that this task becomes easier and more efficient with other rules that are specific to their unique class formats and

practice. Instructors may find that the use of display boards is activities. Student accountability and participation. Finally,

preferable to show- ing a slide presentation within SL since the instructor faces issues in holding students accountable for

there is less learner engagement when the avatars are passivelylearning the technology and participating in classes in SL. In

sitting and watching a slide show and more learner face-to-face classes, instructors often rely on facial

participation when they physi- cally move the avatars to view expressions
to determine students’ understanding of content, while, in
the individual slides positioned around the room. Social
online classes, instructors can use conferencing tools, such as
norms and rules. Another issue instructors face is helping
response indicators and polls, for this purpose. To determine
students understand the norms and rules for interact- ing with
accountability for learning SL technology, instructors may cre-
other people. In face-to-face courses, there are behav- ioral
ate activities that require students to demonstrate they have
expectations or course policies that govern interactions with
acquired skills for using SL to avoid wasting class time while
the instructor and other students, and most students typically
figuring out what to do or claiming the instructor’s attention to
enter the course socialized to comply with them, such as
resolve problems. To assess participation during SL classes,
paying attention to the speaker or raising a hand to be called
instructors may create activities that require students to docu-
upon. Even in live online class sessions, students can use a
ment they have been engaged in learning activities and have
tool to raise a hand or type text to respond. Interacting with
understood and can apply the information. Instructors can
others in a virtual environment, however, may be new to many
require students to submit notecards during class to take atten-
students, so instructors need to provide explicit instruction in
dance or to assess understanding of content by individuals or
rules of etiquette within SL as they apply to classroom instruc-
groups. Students must include their name(s) within the text or
tion and learning activities. Here are some examples: (a) When
title of the notecard to facilitate instructor retrieval of
a student’s avatar is speaking, the other students should posi-
notecards for use in tracking attendance and grading
tion their avatars facing toward the speaker; (b) students
participation. Future Directions for Using Second
should not send Instant Messages within SL when the
Life® for Teacher Preparation As faculty members
instructor is teaching or while other students are presenting;
at WVU continue to use SL in online teacher education
and, (c) when students are building materials, they need to
programs, they have continued to experiment with new
take the materials into their personal inventory prior to leaving
activities and seek out new formats for learning. Several
the classroom to avoid cluttering the space or having them
examples of current explorations are de- scribed below to
deleted by the instructor. Instructors may also wish to develop
 illustrate the range of possible applications using SL with http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/ Accessibility. During this

other emerging technologies. The program is now considering year, an instructor built 18 robots (known as “bots”) or fixed

ways to enhance the accessibility of SL for students with avatars with pre-programmed responses that represent K-12

disabilities and other special needs. One instructor has students with and without disabilities arranged in a school

experimented with the use of the Dragon Naturally Speaking classroom environment (see Figure 2). Every student bot was

speech-to-text conversion program to enable students who programmed with his/her own person- ality and current levels

have hearing loss or are deaf to see the spoken comments of of academic achievement, while the student bots with

instructor and students as they occur during class. Although disabilities also were given an accompany- ing present level

this work is still in its initial phase, she has used the program statement to guide preservice students in making instructional

successfully during class sessions with the whole group and in decisions. She created activities for stu- dents to teach the

virtual office hours when meeting with a single student. lessons to the bots, analyze the errors the bots make, and select

Instructors also have begun to investigate the use of screen appropriate evidence-based practices to use to remediate the

readers in SL to assist students who have vision loss or are errors. Early use of the K-12 student robots in courses

blind in accessing information on display boards and suggests that the instructor and students consider the activity a

notecards. They have learned that some screen readers (e.g., valuable learning experience, and plans are underway for

TextSL) are compat- ible with SL but need to conduct pilot designing a new activity with the bots to provide students with

tests to determine how well they work for instruction. More practice in applying de-escalation skills during difficult

information on SL accessibility is available at classroom interactions. A video showing the

24 Volume 34, Number 3 2015 Rural Special Education Quarterly

K-12 bots is available at http://drhartleywvu-
virtual environment. If the campus tri- al is successful, when
slvideos.blogspot. com/2014/11/k-12-inclusion-classroom-
the less expensive consumer version (pro- jected price $200) is
with-student.html. Recently, using grant funds provided by
released in the next year, they will conduct a pilot to determine
WVU for academ- ic innovations using technology, two
if the glasses can be used in online courses by students at
faculty members have pur- chased several sets of Oculus Rift
remote sites. More information about Oculus Rift is available
stereoscopic display glasses for use with a special SL viewer
at https://www.oculus.com/en-us/rift/. Conclusion SL has
created to be compatible with them. During the coming year,
been used effectively as a platform for online courses in a
they will be experimenting with the glasses to see if they can
graduate distance education program at WVU,
enhance the 3D experience during learning activities in this a major university with an extensive rural service area
within the state and other areas of the Appalachian region.Reference
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