Action Research Tool - ReLive 08

Leonie Ramondt

Anglia Ruskin University

In this session we were considering the evaluation of sessions taught or carried out in Second Life. Firstly we created and account to log into the http://journal.technologyandsocialaction.org/ site that gives access to an on-line reflective journal.

Once we had done that we worked in groups to plan, rehearse and evaluate work based on two different scenarios. The first scenario was dealing with recruitment and retention and was:

A student survey has indicated that several wheelchair using students have found that a number of facilities have been designed poorly for their use (e.g. toilets are located on the far corner of the top floor behind a series of heavy doors). They have suggested that it might help staff to experience things from their perspective. Design and test a scenario that might help key staff experience what this is like.

The group that I was in did not attempt this one but the group that did it decided that to put the teacher avatar into a bubble would help them to experience difficulties of corners, heavy doors, all sorts of inaccessibility in fact. They were preparing to do this in Second life as we split up at the end of the session.

The second session was dealing with Student Wellbeing and was:

You are exploring whether Second Life is a useful tool for student peer mentoring. In your group, design and test out some simple role plays for peer mentors, in matters such as campus orientation, what to expect from a seminar and the basics of group work.

Two groups worked on this one – one group doing the group work exercise. They formulated an exercise – building a den, where all students had to work collaboratively so had to share permissions to edit each other’s work and allow all parties to take part.

Our group did the campus orientation – after much trial, error and discussion we decided that a treasure hunt activity that taught both orientation and skills would be the best way to approach it.

The last group was working on using Survey monkey to plan their evaluation.

The groups that used the evaluation template in the journal all agreed that they needed their own questions, pertinent to the exercise to make it more useful. It was however a useful journal to use asd an ongoing record.

For evaluation purposes it was felt that if one needed quantitative data then the survey tool may be better, if one wanted qualitative data then a much more precise set of questions was needed.

The group work facility on the journal did not work and all who used it felt that that was an essential requisite for the tool to be useful in the group.

The journal is available on-line at http://journal.technologyandsocialaction.org/