[curr] Oops!
This is why an iterative design process always makes sense. Now that we are a month into our summer process of developing the draft of our SL Curriculum, it became clear that we had lost some of what motivated the original project.
There are uniquely effective ways to develop education in a virtual world. We have learned this in Second Life. And we wanted to reflect this through the curriculum, to create a games-based constructivist style pedagogy. But something happened along the way. We focused so much on the details of the step by step skill acquisition that we lost track. Rather than offer learners "missions" which would motivate them to learn the required skills, these "missions" turned into no more than your regular skills assessment.
Now we are working to shift the focus once again, to leverage the engagement and motivation to learn found within games. We are working on a narrative to contain the learning, and re-incorporate game-play elements.
At the same time, now that we are adding story and characters, that raises the question: why should we keep the curriculum all text based, when Second Life is such a visually-rich environment...
