Istanbul University was founded in 1453, over 550 years later it’s still going strong with over 200,000 students and as we can see in episode 44 of The Drax Files : World Makers, the University also has a presence in the digital virtual world of Second Life. I will embed the video at the end of this post.
This episode demonstrates how virtual worlds can be used in education and in this episode we see how Professors at Istanbul University are using Second Life for subjects such as English Grammar, Maths, climate change and more with storytelling, machinima and gamification very much involved in the teaching process.
There are some other very interesting angles to virtual world usage though, with Professor Tuncer Can recounting how one student, whom he had never heard from before, contributing inside the Second Life environment because, in part, he didn’t feel the immediacy of other people looking at him in a physical classroom environment.
Professor Irfan Simsek however, points out that although in Second Life the classroom environment is digitial, he feels it’s important for the virtual classroom to look and therefore feel like a physical classroom.
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