Virtually eager to practise together

Learning English

Friday September 19th 2008

When learners in Dubai and South Korea got together to practise their Engish in the online world of Second Life they already had a lot to say to each other. Max de Lotbinière finds out how this innovative exchange project developed students' interest in each other as well as their online skills

Friday September 19th 2008

Students from Dubai and South Korea meet in avatar form on Second Life

Earlier this year a group of students from Dubai and South Korea found themselves hovering over a series of platforms suspended over a tranquil sea. When they saw some friends they wanted to talk to in English they landed and started to pick up on conversations and ask questions. These encounters were not taking place in a dream but were part of an innovative language exchange project in the virtual, online world of Second Life.

Second Life is a 3D computer-generated world that spreads over tens of thousands of virtual square kilometres. This territory is being explored, built on and lived in by up to 15 million users. What began in 2003 as an experiment in online social networking in which users create a virtual alter ego – or 3D avatar – has given life to a society and economy that has made virtual millionaires out of some. It has also attracted the interest of real-world big business.

Second Life users can speak and listen to each other via their computer-controlled avatars. The potential for language learning was spotted very early on. What started with informal meetings between users to offer practice in each other’s languages has developed into established language courses, taught by avatar instructors, while virtual versions of real-world educational institutions have opened their doors to students.

Last April the Dubai Women’s College (DWC), a leading Gulf state higher education institution, opened a version of its campus on Second Life. Among the first users were second-year students led by their English language teacher, Nicole Shammas. The language exchange that resulted has convinced Shammas and her colleagues that introducing students to a virtual world can be rewarding.

Shammas is from New Zealand and has been providing language support to DWC’s students, who are taught in English, for a decade. She admits that she was a novice in e-learning when the opportunity to use the Second Life campus came up. Her aim was to develop the communication skills of her students who were mostly from conservative family backgrounds and needed English language skills to operate in a global business environment.

Shammas had contacts in South Korea and she was introduced to Chris Surridge, a Canadian, who was doing similar English-language support teaching at the prestigious Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (Kaist) in Seoul. Surridge had been using computer-assisted language learning resources for more than a decade and his students were already highly digitally literate. But like the DWA class, they needed to develop their English.

The pair started to pool their ideas and came up with a curriculum that would develop not just English and IT skills but "soft skills" such as teamwork and leadership.

They agreed that the culmination of the project would be interaction on Second Life, but for that meeting to be successful they had to develop the two groups’ interest in each other. Their solution was to develop contact over seven weeks, starting with the exchange of recordings of students posing and answering questions about each other. Next they made short videos about their respective campuses and lives. They then sent each other "culture capsules" that contained everyday items and arranged to open them together while they were linked via a video conference. Only then did they meet up in a private area of the DWC Second Life campus.

"It was essential at every point that we had strong motivation for each stage of the programme," says Surridge. "Before students recorded their questions for the first stage, for example, they brainstormed."

When the students met via the video link to open their capsules, they had practised introductions and questions. Shammas’s students had sent a traditional Gulf headdress and explained to the Kaist students how to tie it. "Chris and I pushed the conversation along, but trying on the dishdasha via video link got everyone involved and the conversation was really student-led," says Shammas.

Meanwhile, Shammas had been preparing her group for Second Life by identifying students who already knew how to create an avatar and move around, and asking them to act as trainers. They then explored and discussed the social behaviour in Second Life’s multicultural environment and the language they would need to deal with it. In groups they sought out locations where they were safe from harassment and put their avatars through their paces by learning new skills such as skiing.

"It was interesting for me to see how the ‘first life’ values and beliefs of these 19-to-20-year-old Muslim women transferred – or didn’t – into their Second Life," says Shammas.

"All my students wear the veil, yet all chose not to in Second Life. My students don’t talk to men they don’t know, and this was something that carried over on to Second Life. When they were approached by a stranger they politely declined to talk. With the Korean students they were a lot more open but many preferred interacting in groups rather than one-on-one."

The final stage was a week-long meeting between the two groups in Second Life. Shammas and Surridge had decided to keep the communication text-based but encouraged the students to be as conversational as possible. The teachers observed the meetings and recorded transcripts, which they intended to analyse in the classroom later.

"By the time we met in Second Life our students were highly motivated to meet and very curious about each other," says Shammas.

Achieving that motivation while using a range of technology was a mark of the project’s success, adds Surridge. "When I see my students eagerly logging in to check their audio forum messages or frantically typing to keep up with a chat session, I know that we are doing something genuine and meaningful," he says.

Next month the two teachers are going to repeat the exercise with new groups of students, this time using voice communication when they meet in Second Life.

• To learn more about the International Virtual Exchange project contact Nicole Shammas: nicole.shammas@hct.ac.ae.

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