Really Engaging Accounting » orientation

900 Avatars! Oh My!

shornik — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 14:06:36 +0000

Well, as my last post indicated I’ve been negligent in posting here, but I hope to rectify that as the semester proceeds. Today’s post is really to serve as a baseline marker on my sanity to look back on as the weeks and months flow by.

As of the last count this morning I have 929 students registered for my financial accounting course at the University of Central Florida. I have had 75 new and returning avatars visit Really Engaging Accounting in Second Life™ just this past week and class starts today! I’ve had 111 students register their names (real, Second Life™ and Twitter) already. I will spend this week giving an orientation for as many students as I can on the use of the tools I’ve built for them. I’ve asked and received permission to use CPA Island 2 as an overflow area in case Really Engaging Accounting is not accessible from avatar overload.

I am currently taking a wait and see approach (crazy huh) to determine how the students use SL and when. It could be that they all use at different times. Though at any one point I expect it to be very busy, hopefully the load will not overburden the sim. If students are unable to log-in because the sim is full, option 1 will be to use CPA island 2. If that’s not enough, option 2, using my private land will kick in, and if that’s not enough I will most likely let students opt out of Second Life (but so far that’s my last resort).

Well feel free to leave comments wishing me luck, or recommendations for good cocktails to get me through the next 4 months.

Humbly, your Head Bean Counter

Accounting students in Second Life

admin — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 16:35:32 +0000

A quick update on student usage of Second Life for my Financial Accounting course at University of Central Florida. If you recall I was a bit disappointed in the usage of Second Life during the Fall 2007 semester. I attributed this mainly to the horrendous orientation experience they had (for the most part) which led to the erroneous belief that SL was just too difficult. To change this variable I have employed the NMC registration and orientation and it has worked like a charm. Another and very significant change was to make SL a mandatory part of the course. It is no longer positioned as this neat tool that you should try to help learn concepts that your professor knows are hard to learn. Rather, you must use it, you must complete HW assignments by using it, and a nice unforeseen opportunity – you can receive extra credit for doing a research project, but only in SL. Second Life is available to our students in all campus labs so hardware issues are no longer an available excuse. Finally, I have SL installed and running in the classroom computer, so each class can now have a SL component.

I know what your thinking, accountants in second life, how much fun can they have? I give you this short video and some pics to allay your fears, we are a partying bunch….

NMC Orientation Island – A Success Story

admin — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 16:21:46 +0000

If you’ve read this blog from my initial postings, you will know that I was less then enthusiastic about the student orientation experience, and believe that at least in part the poor SL orientation island (what with students not being able to get off, the harassment, etc.) was reflected in the resistance my Fall 2007 students had to Second Life. Also as mentioned in those posts, a new type of orientation would be available for my Spring 2008 class – The NMC Orientation Island and what a difference a well thought out, education based orientation makes.

A quick mention of the highlights from an educators standpoint:

Not one student has gotten “stuck” on NMC’s orientation island.
Students that are unsure where to go, can IM me and receive a TP directly to our classroom in Second Life.
Students having problems – with clothes or any other issue can be met at the orientation island (something impossible with SL OI) by myself, a TA, etc.
Within minutes, if so desired, students can be on Teaching 4, for my own orientation of classroom objects.

I could not be more pleased with the results of having the students register via NMC and learn the basics via NMC, but there are a few downsides that should be mentioned in all fairness.

A few accounts were broken (clothes didn’t rez, didn’t receive e-mail authorization), and the registration does not allow someone to get a new avatar with the same e-mail address. These students (and honestly only a handful out of close to 200) had to register and go through Second Life’s own orientation.
Avatars can move off of the orientation island (see above), very quickly, thus more avatars were ending up in the classroom orientation lacking some very basic skills (a trade off I’m very happy to make). After all, I’d rather have students learn the basics in my classroom, exploring the learning objects if possible.

And the quantitative numbers prove (at least to me) the success of using this type of open orientation, for the first two weeks of the semester I have had the following:

Visit counts were maintained by DayaTech Greeter and Visitor counter – highly recommended.

Week 1 Update – Orienting

admin — Tue, 28 Aug 2007 17:56:25 +0000

Our first week is over, and things have gone pretty smoothly in Second Life . In the past day my visitor counter has logged 48 visits from Saturday to Sunday, and 52 from Sunday through Tuesday morning . Undoubtedly the more adventurous students are coming in-world first. While I have received information from almost 1/3 of the 297 students currently registered (i.e. their Second Life names), I have not seen them all.

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.