Virtual Worlds: Learning and Teaching in a Digital Age

Today’s lab was all about giving and receiving peer feedback for an aspect of the students’ assignments. Some chose to have their tutorial reviewed (for the marking scheme, check out the lecturer’s blog), others to have their building in Second Life reviewed.

I must say, observing, partly facilitating and partly helping to review (some very interesting videos there, a comic strip, PPT presentations, etc) was really rather interesting. After the first kerfuffle of trying to find their review buddies, most settled down, and I was intrigued to see how some, who had been fairly uncommunicative in earlier labs (even during groupwork) were engaged with their fellows and constructively criticising. That is the crux of feedback, isn’t it? To find a way to convey criticism/suggestions/etc in a constructive way.

Perhaps it was easier to do this F2F and in a lab, with tutors and lecturers around. I would like to see it happening in Second Life one day, but the logistics might be even more challenging. Also, with the restrictions that pure text might bring, the constructive element might become more difficult to achieve, but voice-over might be the answer. Still, so much to do and so much to find out.