learning - Academic Conferences Limited

Rose Heaney and Megan Anne Arroll
‘The week before I said, “This is what I’m doing,” and I gave them, I pointed them in the,
in the direction of those guides that I was talking about that were available on UEL Plus.
And then I said, “If I see you I see you, if not, don’t worry’ (Tom)
Although it was integrated with a specific module teaching programme, Tom offered his SL tutorial as
an additional resource for the students, i.e. it was not compulsory. The issue of whether the virtual
sessions should be mandatory was viewed differently by the participants; Cathy, who previously had
organised a training session for staff found that only a third of the department attended that training
session because ‘it’s all optional and people didn’t want to volunteer’. Jane stated that ‘if someone
said we had to do it, then I’d have to do it’ but did not see the justification in using SL more
extensively at present. This reluctance was viewed by Cathy as a possible impact on the student
experience:
‘I think they wouldn’t engage with it if they think that, some staff won’t engage with it’
(Cathy)
The importance of a positive first experience, the frequency of use and the need to integrate the
virtual tutorials were also highlighted by the academics:
‘It [first experience] has to be something that they really get a lot out of and think ‘yes,
that was worth it. I just think if people are using it a lot, then they will become familiar with
it and it will feel less daunting…It [SL] needs to be embedded like UEL Plus, if it was an
option, they probably wouldn’t bother to go to it.’ (Jane)
Therefore, from the participant narratives, it is apparent that there is a need for investment and
organisation to reap the benefits of SL as a teaching tool. This can be achieved by holding training
sessions for staff and students so that everyone can feel confident in the environment and able to
appreciate the advantages of the environment for teaching and learning. This may require a paradigm
shift in the mindset of mainstream higher education users but is by no means unreasonable to
achieve; as Cathy points out ‘we’re in same position with SL as I used to be with the VLE’.
5.3 Clear rationale
Participants were divided on SL’s suitability as an effective environment for tutorials and group
teaching generally although all agreed that it could be beneficial for role play exercises, problembased
scenarios, student presentations and conferences:
‘Things like counselling courses where it may give them a way of trying out counselling
sessions in a completely safe, anonymous environment and [it is] useful for practice-type
sessions, simulations, but not for lectures/seminars’ (Greta)
UEL’s School of Health and Bioscience uses the environment for simulations and the interviewees
could see SL as very beneficial for practice sessions with virtual patients and, as above, hypothesised
that counselling trainees could interact through avatars before they were allocated to real world
placements. This type of ‘practice’ was also believed to be of value for student presentations:
‘I think that is a nice idea because I think the anonymity, again, is great and really, it
gives them a very safe environment’ (Greta)
Regarding traditional ‘chalk-and-talk’ lectures where large audiences may contain anti-social
elements, Cathy shared her experience of audience behaviour while attending large talks in SL:
‘I have watched a large set of lectures and things in SL before I got involved in this, I
didn’t see any sort of bad behaviour or anybody rioting or anything’ (Cathy)
Cathy also stated that for staff, a virtual environment would assist in some of the more difficult subject
matter:
‘Statistics is really difficult to teach in big lectures and that’s what I used to do and that’s
what people are used to doing and they talk to 250 people on the t-test and it was very,
very difficult then.’ (Cathy)
Small group discussions and seminars were also seen as possibilities within SL by Cathy:
‘In our conference centre, we’ve actually got a breakout room so that’s certainly possible
to do that, after a lecture, you could ask so many people to go into this, so many, and
you go off and feedback, that’s entirely possible.’ (Cathy)
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