Introduction

Greetings!

I’ve recently become part of the The Avatar Project team and I thought I should introduce myself.  My name is Debbie McCormick but you will notice that my ’screen’ name is ‘Seeker Esparza’; Seeker is my avatar in Second Life.

I’m a PhD student at Monash University. My research background and interests are the interrelations of personality, identity and avatar customisation in virtual worlds.  Although I’ve got a broad interest all virtual worlds I mainly ‘play’ in one called Second Life. 

One of the main reasons I focus most of my research on or in Second Life is the support I get from being a member of the Second Life Educators (SLED) group.  The group consists of more than 4,500 members, most of who are actively involved in education and/or research activities in or about Second Life.  The mail discussion group is prolific, averaging around 900 posts per month .  The number of educational institutions or their representatives that are conducting classes or research in the environment also continues to grow from a handful of pioneers in 2004 to more than 200 universities and colleges from around the world in 2008.  Notable educational institutions with a presence ‘inworld’ include Harvard, Columbia and Princeton Universities in the USA; Lancaster and Leeds Metropolitan Universities in England; the University of Edinburgh and the University of Paisley in Scotland; the Nelson Marlborough Institute of Technology (NMIT) New Zealand; Monash University, the Universities of Southern Queensland and Sydney, GippsTAFE and  Swinburne University of Technology in Australia.

In May 2007 the inaugural Second Life Best Practices in Education: Teaching, Learning and Research conference attracted 1,300 attendees from all over the globe and thirty academic presentations were conducted by participants from countries including Australia, the United Kingdom, Canada and the United States.  The conference was conducted entirely ‘inworld’ (in Second Life).

A solid base of research literature is being established and compiled (Annotated Bibliography of Second LifeOnline Educational Resources).  Notable publications include a comprehensive report by Dr. Megan Conklin (2007) entitled 101 Uses for Second Life in the College Classroom that tables her experiences of planning and conducting lessons in Second Life and provides tips for planning and conducting educational activities and; a report on an Australian project called Virtual Worlds – Real Learning!(McPherson and Jolly, 2006) that was conducted in 2006 by GippsTAFE in Gippsland, Victoria.  The excellent report from GippsTAFE provides a detailed perspective of both local and universal issues with specific reference to conducting an educational activity in Second Life.  

My work on The Avatar Project will be to provide advice and assistance on research design and data collection, and to coordinate the collaborative production of project reports and papers.  I will be writing something each week on this blog about what I’m doing so please feel free to add comments to any of my posts.

References

Annotated Bibliography of Second Life Educational Online Resources, PEPPER, M. ed., Purdue University, Website. http://web.ics.purdue.edu/~mpepper/slbib

Conklin, M. S., 2007. 101 Uses for Second Life in the College Classroom, Elon University, Elon, North Carolina. http://facstaff.elon.edu/mconklin/pubs/glshandout.pdf 

McPherson, G. & Jolly, M., 2006. Virtual Worlds - Real Learning!, GippsTAFE, Victoria, http://www.flexiblelearning.net.au/flx/go/home/projects/2006/newpractices2006/pid/368