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Rationale
Second Life is an example of a Web 2.0 application that is unknown to most educational providers, but excites and engages learners of the future. Many education institutions are struggling to achieve transformations that enhance or transform the student learning experience in successful, efficient and effective ways. Education will be in discontinuous change for the foreseeable future and needs to ensure that the changes made are beneficial for student learning.
There are few authentic voices from the learners interpreted through feasible approaches (Futurelab 2006). Our institutions, with their concern for quality and their natural conservatism, change slowly, painfully, sometimes not at all. Hence, we need to look beyond the obvious and get ahead in order to prepare for a future governed more directly by learner expectations and outlooks.
There are voids in our understanding of the way learners may wish to engage with new technologies such as Second Life for more formal purposeful learning and this gap leaves room for stereotypical views, or those based on past experience rather than fresh insights. Examples include those that the 'net generation' already knows how to learn through digital media or that experienced teaching staff cannot embrace teaching with technologies. These are both now beginning to be seen as naïve generalisations. However, if we ask learners at university now to predict their preferred futures, through real-world surveys and focus groups they find it difficult to do so. We've tried! However, we wish to test whether in the freer participative domain of Second Life, with learners who have chosen to be in that environment, whether engagement will provide real pointers and start to create ways to bridge the gaps.
