Science ID

Challenge: Keeping track of and managing students in SL.

Outspoken students can approach instructors on multiple fronts while quite students may get lost in the static and unmotivated students might check out sort inventory, angel about, IM, or do any number of things in RL. Teachers in RL classrooms have developed techniques for interacting with their students and SL teacher need to to the same.

Trying to keeping track of distracted students and focused students can overwhelm a an instructors bandwidth and compromise their class. Likewise the class views itself as an unorganized collection of avatars. Personally, I don’t know most of the class members from each other and have a difficult time connecting their names, faces and their responses. So, the class is split into two realms – the class of the avatars interacting and the thread of communication. We need tools to tie them together and give the teacher a sense of the class.

Using color coded flags is a step in the right direction, but I’m interested in managing attendance and feedback with a whiteboard tool or HUD. We need a class hud attachment or a screen that displays suites of non-verbal feedback. We could also look at adopting some conventions for larger body language. The MIT “hot and cold” feedback asked students to move from one side of a grid or another to provide feedback. Similar, and less complex setups might be done with color coded circles in a sandbox.