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As you’ll see in the video below, you need pretty steady hands so this will work best for the surgeons among us.

The interface is simple enough to use so creating a story is as straight-forward as 1) having a story to tell; 2) finding the correct clip art, 3) moving, sizing, rotating the clip art on a page; 4) adding the text to he clip art callouts and to the page.  After that you have a 3-D pop up book, viewable via the web, embedded in a web page (see below) or as mentioned earlier in the palm of your hands.

So, here is my story below, please let me know what you think of this tool as a way of engaging students with accounting content, what suggestions you have for improvement and if you try, please share the stories you’ve come up with.

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I did not use it because i did not perceive it as being necessary to learn accounting. People in the past have learned accounting just fine without all of these technologies. My view is KISS, keep it simple stupid.

The survey I created was intended to get feedback on all of these technologies, this post will focus only on Second Life. If useful, you might want to go back to my earlier posts that give the rationale for using Second Life to support my financial accounting course. First I was interested in finding out what the students used while they were in Second Life (metrics is sorely lacking in virtual worlds, though I hope to have much richer data in the Spring through the use of SLMetrics (see SLCN.TV video of SLMetrics for more details). The results indicated, well that most students didn’t use Second Life, but of those that did many were using Second Life to view the course lectures, followed by “just hanging out” and then the use of the interactive accounting models. Why weren’t students using Second Life more, and when they were why weren’t they using the 3-D tools I had built? After all I built them because I knew what concepts were difficult to learn, and thought that visualizing them would be beneficial.

There are multiple answers to that question. First, Second Life seemed to hard for the students (a topic discussed all over the blogosphere) and reinforced in the survey results that indicated 56% of the students who used Second Life found it Difficult or Very Difficult to use. The same percent (56%) indicated that had Second Life been “easier to use”, they would have used it more to learn the accounting concepts for the course. Here is a sampling of the comments related to students decision to not use Second Life:

I did not use it that often because it was hard to understand and was too slow on my computer. I could not grasp how to use it well.

and I could never make it off orientation island

I found the concept of secondlife to be morally wrong and ethically degrading. The title second life implies you aren’t satisfied with your first one. I felt very uncomfortable with the content on secondlife and what it represented.

i didn’t use secondlife because it sounded too complicated for me and im more of a classroom person when it comes to learning.

Having to create a person and everything was very time consuming and most college students are very busy.

Honestly, I got so confused trying to simply walk and talk to people that I just ended up getting frustrated.

I am an easily distracted student and have to focus extra hard. I chose not to participate …

I did not use it very much because I felt like I was playing on the computer instead of studying accounting, or another subject.

I did not use SL mainly because I have not been a good student this semester. But, sincerely, it was like too much technology also. I already had the screencasts to worry about and sometimes my computer would freeze using SL. I didn’t really feel very enthusiastic about SL. Not to mention my other classes also consuming my time. But maybe this will help: Next semester, explain further of the advantages of using SL if you really believe it’s of great aid. Honestly, I KNOW that I did not give it a chance, really, but I also did not FEEL what you felt for SL (I know you think highly of it). I think, that if maybe, you expressed the advantages and your feelings of SL, I would probably have dedicated more time to it. I didn’t know what the virtual office was for, for example. I didn’t know how to use it despite the fact that I attended the orientation (I tried clicking on something on the bulleting board and didn’t work, and I kind of just gave up on it). If you say in your class lectures for example, “Guys don’t forget that I am always available in the VR office and that you can…..etc etc by using my virtual office” then I probably would have been like “oh yeah, I gotta check that out again” I apologize if maybe you DID stress that and I don’t recall. Well, hopefully this HELPS (I am not doing this ONLY for Xtra credit)!

The last quote hit me hard, it woke me up from a self-induced depression, why weren’t the students using it as much as I had envisioned? This is the other part of the answer, that doesn’t have to do with learning curves or inadequate hardware. I hadn’t “sold” it, I hadn’t “pushed” it, in fact I hadn’t required it, but merely made it another tool that COULD be used for the class. It should be noted that the grades for the selected student quotes above ranged from C’s to F’s, nothing higher.

OK, well (and perhaps I should have started with this instead of leaving it for last), but what about the students who used Second Life and found it to be valuable? Here are some of their quotes:

I thought that Dr. Hornik being available to answer questions was SO HELPFUL. Having him be able to answer questions immediately instead of through email, or waiting until class was such a relief.

I think the 3-D Accounting Equation was the most valuable. It really REALLY helped me get some concepts down, and it was a good refresher throughout the course. I also really liked being able to discuss the class with others who I normally would never talk to in person.

Being able to talk to other people who had the same questions as I do and be able to hear answers straight from the professor.

The accounting model. Playing with the debits and credits and the expanded accounting model’s debits and credits was invaluable. The ability to reach Dr Hornik and communicate in a personal 3D world and not having to go to campus or un-personal email was fantastic.

The most valuable part of Second Life was the ability to listen to lectures at my own pace. I actually retained more because I viewed them at times when I was alert, instead of having to sit through class after a long tiresome day.

The notecards you placed all over the place were helpful to look at, especially prior to tests. I liked watching the lectures, underwater, for some reason. I think the turtles were pretty cool company.

The lectures and conversing with the professor were definitely more valuable than if done via any other method. Being in SecondLife creates a more tangible feeling that what is being communicated. It’s honestly the next best thing from face to face.

It seems from these quotes that the models I created for students, the notecards, and textures placed around were certainly helpful. But what comes out loud and clear, at least to me, and this shouldn’t have been surprising but was, is that Second Life is above all else a social environment. Having a place for students to meet and discuss accounting, as well as to discuss questions with me is the most valuable aspect of a place like Second Life. Thankfully, it’s the most easiest to create as well.

Below are the details of the survey questions used for this blog post:

To re-hash, I am using Second Life to augment the Financial Accounting class, as I have to many students to use it as the sole teaching platform. I imagine it will take a few weeks for everyone to feel confident enough with the technology to try it out (it should be mentioned that in addition to Second Life the class is using or will be using Twitter – to receive extra credit assignments and Cmap Tools for creating concept/mind maps. In other words they are a bit overwhelmed with all the signing up for accounts and downloading various software for the course. Of course I have heard that a few are having hardware problems with Second Life, but not as many as I feared.

The first impression I have is without a doubt there needs to be a better way to orient the students to the educational functioning of Second Life. They need to know how to sit, how to turn on a video or audio stream, including installing QuickTime if they don’t have it (why Second Life installs do not come with QuickTime is beyond me), how to chat with objects, how to teleport and find your land after they get off of Orientation Island, etc. Since my students are doing this at various times as opposed to all being in a lab, I’ve been individually sending them TP’s or emailing them the SLURL. It would be far better to have the orientation right on your own land which is possible now and something I might try for Spring.

There seems to be help in this regard already in place: As reported by SLNN.com Orientation Station is a new orientation destination, according to SLNN.com

The Orientation Station estate consists of five regions beginning with the Welcome Area where residents can choose translations for their training in over 20 languages. The other regions address specific training needs.

Scholar provides extensive tutorials and resources for educators. …

I also learned that the SciLands has orientation which is available and allows you to meet your students as they come in-world for the first time – this should make the transition a bit easier, as you can help with the orientation.

I began to hold orientations for students once they get off Orientation Island, and will continue throughout the week to help make the transition for the students smoother. Here’s some pics of today’s session:

The second thing I’ve discovered is that once students get to my land the first question is invariably, “what can I do here”? They are looking for interactivity but want to be shown where it is as opposed to exploring and reading bothersome notecards. I have noticed some students returning again and again, I think (hope) this is the engagement I’m looking to establish, and not a few number of them have mentioned that they are excited about the class, imagine students being excited about accounting! Of course it’s fun when you can go to a lecture underwater.

Lastly I have had quite a few discussions with several of the stuents in-world, asking me about homework and such, but also some very good conversations about more complex concepts such as why dividends are not expensed and why Net Income is not the same as cash. These are concepts that they are just working out, and quite frankly fairly advanced thoughts for the first week.

An explanation for this might be something I discussed at an in-world breakout discussion for the Education track for SLCC hosted by NMC (chat log of session), when Sneblen Dagger a student on the panel mentioned the hesitation of some students to ask questions from instructors (for many reasons but particularly because of a sense that the instructor is unapproachable because of their position and expertise). Second Life can remove these barriers, perhaps as a result of everyone’s Avatar looking similar, a democratizing effect occurs and questions are more forthcoming.

I do not believe Second Life is magically developing more in-depth thinking (at least not yet) but is allowing more in-depth questions to be asked. This is pretty powerful if the hypothesis is true.

• This is a required course, thus most students are taking it because they have to (not really motivating).
• This is the 1st course (Financial accounting), thus requiring students to learn:
  1. A new language
  2. A new logic (Assets = Liabilities + Equity), which seems mathematical but isn’t – there aren’t positives and negatives
  3. A need to understand the inputs to a system
  4. A need to understand what to do with these inputs (processing)
  5. A need to understand what the outputs of the system mean

Let’s start with the language aspect, when learning a language say Spanish, you take a context that you already know and learn how to apply things from one context into another. So if you know what the abstraction ‘house’ is you can create a link in your mind between ‘house’ and ‘casa’. But most of my students don’t know what an ‘Accounts Receivable’ is, or for heavens sake what a ‘debit’ or ‘credit’ is. Those obstacles are not going to change anytime soon, its the nature of the course, even if one moves towards a more user oriented approach, students still require an immersion in a new language and a system they’ve never been exposed to.

One last hurdle which can be the most important and difficult to overcome is the engagement of the students. Lets face it, learning Debits and Credits and how to capture important data related to, for example, Bonds that a company issued at a discount to raise capital may not be sexy enough to motivate students to practice. There are two fundamental reasons why: First, students are not immersed enough in the context of accounting in the first course – its enough material to cover without also having them open up a business in a really meaningful way to see what all this accounting stuff is all about, and without a proper context practicing accounting is not very relevant. Taken as a whole it’s surprising to me that students are engaged at all (the non-accounting majors that is).

Enter Second Life. To keep this long post from getting any longer, Second Life is a 3-D online digital world. And because they say a picture is worth a 1000 words, I have created a short video demonstration of one possible implementation of Second Life for teaching accounting. Introducing the 3-D interactive accounting model. This model allows students to visualize the equality of Assets, Liabilities and Equity. They can interact with the model directly via chat or by writing a transaction on a notecard which is read by the accounting model. As each part of a transaction is entered the model provides feedback by saying whether the debit/credit is increasing/decreasing a particular account category. When chatting with the model only one part of the transaction can be entered at a time, thus reinforcing the notion of dual-entry accounting. As transactions are entered into the 3-D model, floating text of the accounting equation is updated so students can see if how the debits/credits are effecting the model both numerically and visually. So without further ado, the model…..

Click here for a slightly larger file, it’s a bit easier to see some of the text as I ‘chat’ with the model.

Update: The model has been selected as an effective practice by Sloan-C