Second Life

Assessment

Evaluating the instructional effectiveness of Second Life.

How do you know if using Second Life …

  • enhanced students’ learning and skill development?
  • engaged and motivated students?
  • accommodated students’ learning preferences?

Perform your own instructional assessment in three steps:

  1. Getting started: Clarify the question(s) you want to ask, and plan the evaluation study.
  2. Gathering data: Collect data.  Methods of possible data collection include surveys, students’ product analyses, interviews, focus groups, observations, and experiments.
  3. Understanding results: Analyze your data and write up the results for your audience.

Example

Assessing Second Life

An instructor who used Second Life in a freshman English course. The questions that were asked included:

  • How is the development of students’ writing skills with the use of Second Life in the course related to the students’ self-efficacy and affect toward virtual environment?
  • Is the Second Life interface easy to use for the students?
  • How do students feel about using Second Life in the course

The data were collected via rubric-based writing evaluation (product analysis), surveys, observations, and interviews. The data from these different data sources were first analyzed separately, and then integrated. The results were written up to understand how to improve the use of Second Life in this particular course and to understand the implications for other courses using Second Life.

An example assessment strategy.

For a step-by-step guide for conducting an evaluation, visit the Instructional Assessment Resources website (link), or contact Tomoko Traphagan (tomoko.traphagan@austin.utexas.edu).