Module 1 - Section 3 - Activity 7

Activity 7 - Multiple hands, Multiple voices: a co-writing experiment about Orientation islands in Second Life: analysis, evaluation and guiding principles for successful design of orientation islands

Background and aims

The aim of this activity is to produce an occasional paper from the results of Activity 7 'Coming into land'. In this activity, 20 participants from Group 3 explored four orientation islands in order to reflect about the learning experience of new users on these islands and to identify a set of guiding principles for their successful design.

This work has been analysed by Margarita Pérez and presented at Online Educa Berlin 2008. It attracted much audience interest and especially that of Jean Miller (aka Jean Linden), who works as the German Marketing Manager (consumers, educators, enterprises) for Linden Labs.

The reasons for her interest in this work were:

• Linden Labs is looking for better ways to improve new users experience.
• LL has quantitative data about new user experiences, but little qualitative data that can help them better understand user behaviour during their first steps in Second Life
• LL has started a collaboration with ISTE for the design of the New Educators Pathway. But they are aware of the present limitations of the orientation island, and would like to improve or to create another kind of introductory experience for educators.

Very little has been written about guidelines for orientation island design, and thus our work has a potential for positive impact within the Second Life educational community.

Considering this interest, and as a continuation of our work together, we propose to co-write an occasional paper with recommendations for successful design of orientation islands. Naturally this process can be extended to the elaboration of at least two or three research papers. But we need to start with an easier co-writing exercise, and then move progressively towards more complex forms of writing that exist in longer publication cycles such as peer reviewed research papers. So this first attempt is also an exercise for us, to see how good we are at organising and managing the collective production of knowledge.

Objective:
To cooperate in the MUVEnation wiki and co-write an occasional paper with the title 'Orientation islands in Second Life: analysis, evaluation and guiding principles for successful design of orientation islands'

Process

• Reread the Module 1 Section 1 Activity 7 discussion in the group 3 forum
• Read the 20 posts about the comparison of orientation islands
• Read and complete the guidelines for the co-authoring process in the wiki
• Read the outline of the occasional paper and comment on it, if necessary. The sections of the outline will be further described and completed in the coming days. However it is already open for comments and discussion.
• Select one or two sections that correspond to your personal interests
• Carry out the extra research needed for building your section of the paper.
• Discuss this with your peers in the forum and with the group coordinators.
• Once the paper is finished, blog about your experience of co-writing.
• Advertise it widely in your blog and within your networks.

This work will be publish here soon.

Evelyn