I’ve been teaching in Higher Education for fifteen years, running workshops, holding presentations and conducting webinars on a variety of subject disciplines. I’ve recently tutored on mini-MOOCs (OOCs?), open online courses for people interested in teaching online.

Newman University

These first set of videos were ones I made for an HEA workshop run by Rich Sanders from Newman University and Julian McDougall of Wolverhampton University about teaching in Second Life. The workshop took place at Wolverhampton’s Walsall campus, about a 10 minutes walk from my home, but that week I was in Prague (at the Experiential Learning in Virtual Worlds conference), so needed to do it inworld. As I wasn’t sure of a connection I prepared the following videos on my teaching, as a back-up. As the connection was fine, they weren’t used, but they’re a useful summary of my work there. My work at Newman University was as a visiting lecturer on several courses run by Rich Sanders in which I did a two hour session introducing media students to the idea of identity in general and digital identity specifically. This would then trigger a series of discussions and assignments in class. The visits were entirely in-world.

The first video introduces me, my avatar and the concept of identity in virtual worlds.

Part 2 explains the role of identity development in effective learning

Part 3 runs through the theory part of the session run at Newman University on identity in virtual worlds

Part 4 shows the students creating “identity cubes”. These were objects that helped them develop and articulate ideas about their own identity through a process Etienne Wenger calls “reification”. They’re based on Carina Girvan’s concept of story cubes.

This video explains to the students how to make identity cubes.

This final video explains some of the theory behind why some students develop effective inworld identities and engage, and why others don’t. This one stands on its own and isn’t necessarily only relevant to the Newman University case.