Action Learning

by Lindy McKeown

My entire island of Terra incognita is an online 3D environment based on Reg Revans style Action Learning. I also worked before Second Life with a colleague in a US university setting up Action Learning in his ActiveWorlds implementation.

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Come visit my Action Learning island at SLURL

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Terra%20incognita/128/128

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It is the basis for my PhD research into the social and technical affordances of 3D worlds for online Action Learning. This project is supported by a Queensland Government (Australian state) Smart State PhD research grant as at least 8 government departments here use Action Learning in a face-to-face mode.

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Just starting this week a 12 week Action Learning program called "Teaching in Second Life" with a group of 32 new recruits.

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Just finished a program that ran form February to the end of May with a celebration on the weekend of the projects of the 12 participants. This was a point-in-time snapshot of the exciting range of workplace or professional life projects developed (and continuing) by participants including:

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• A series of workshops about Second Life leading to online events on topics of interest for a teacher professional association.
• The establishment of a state-wide consortium to purchase SL islands for schools to use.
• A series of SL tours as awareness raising for school district personnel that led to the use of SL as an online meeting space (amongst other things).
• The building of an interactive narrative from a book in SL, MUD and MOO to compare the environments as learning spaces.
• The establishment of national forums (in Australia) about the implementation of Second Life by the Education Network of Australia (EdNA)
• A comparative analysis of Virtual Worlds for K-12 education for a state education department.
• The mapping of the nOOb non-gamer experience in SL with a view to the developmnent of support resources.

Please make contact by IM in SL (Decka Mah) if you would like more information.