The University of the West of Scotland, The Open University, University of Ulster and Imperial College London have been awarded a Learning & Teaching Innovation Grant from JISC.

The year long project on Supporting Education in Virtual Worlds with Virtual Learning Environments will conduct pilots at each participating institution and will explore how web-based learning environments (esp. Moodle) can effectively support and enhance learning in virtual worlds.

This project aims to investigate how web-based virtual learning environments can provide effective support for learning and teaching in virtual worlds whether by:

• Using virtual learning environments for personalised learning in shared virtual worlds
• Effective web-based support / scaffolding for virtual world learners
• Using VLE integration to improve accessibility for virtual world learning activities
• Web-integration for virtual world learning management support
• Improving reuse through web-integration

The project will develop suitable materials and resources to enable successful third-party adoption and extension of the project’s findings

Apologies for not blogging this sooner!

Modlos is a plug-in for Moodle that allows administrators to manage an OpenSim grid from Moodle. Developed by Fumi Iseki and Sakura Saki, this looks like a fantastic tool for anyone running OpenSim and SLOODLE. I haven’t had time to play with this myself, but you can find more information on the SLOODLE OpenSim forums and at the Modlos home.

If you try this out, please let us know how you get on at the SLOODLE OpenSim forums!

From Campus Technology:

A small junior college in West Virginia has launched a pilot program that combines the open source learning management system Moodle with the immersive virtual world Second Life. The combination has allowed distance learners to create an avatar in Second Life and attend classes through the virtual world. It’s proved highly popular, and, though in the early stages yet, the indication is that it’s helping to build a connection between Huntington Junior College and its non-traditional student base.

“What we’re obviously looking at is retention,” Assistant Director Cathy Snoddy said. “How do we make that online student, who is separated by time and space, still connected to Huntington Junior College?”

The integration between Second Life and Moodle is called Sloodle and is itself open source. At Huntington, Sloodle is hosted by Moodlerooms, which provides hosting, management, and support for Moodle users. The tight integration between Moodle and Second Life allows students to attend classes, blog, give presentations, and chat with fellow students, all within Second Life, while their entries are posted back to Moodlerooms. It’s still early in the experiment, but Snoddy said she’s convinced that the Sloodle offering has helped keep students at Huntington–and at very little cost.

Read the full article at Campus Technology:
http://campustechnology.com/articles/2010/06/09/immersive-distance-learning-to-boost-retention.aspx

As memories of SLOODLE Moot start to fade, time to put the conference report together before it is too late!

Gia has been quietly getting on with the job of putting together the session chat logs and video archives – which you can find on the SLOODLE Moot 2010 pages. (You can login as a guest, if you don’t have a SLOODLE.org account).

For me there were some nice surprises during the event – I am regularly amazed at the creativity and diversity of the SLOODLE user community. I greatly enjoyed Lisa Tebaldi’s bi-lingual English/Italian presentation where she showed the work that ANITEL (Italian e-learning organisation) had been undertaking in Second Life. Lisa also organised a live-video stream, and a recording is available here, on UStream.

Mike McKay and Chris Surridge both did excellent jobs opening the Moot – Chris telling us about his Devil Island Mystery (soon to be entering a new season on OpenSim), and Mike giving a very practical and interactive demonstration of how he uses SLOODLE Awards and other tools to support the Cypris Chat community and promote engagement with learning.

Instead of a ‘keynote’ I presented a short video question – Where Next for SLOODLE? Updates to media capabilities in Second Life question some of the features that SLOODLE provides – how can we best exploit and adapt to use these to benefit learners? And how can we change SLOODLE to make it more accessible to educators. I think the discussion that followed was fruitful. After a trend of moving away from a ‘SLOODLE classroom’, to a set of discrete tools, it seems that a move back to an easy to use and set-up classroom that features the most useful set of core tools and features might be the way to go… Fire Centaur’s work in this area (and the support he is able to offer) received particular mention.

Other talks covered an interesting mix of topics – getting started in research; conducting user-evaluations; SLOODLE for teacher professional development; SLOODLE at The Open University (an amazing case study for anyone wondering about the challenges getting a new ‘plug-in’ installed onto a major institutional learning environment) and SLOODLE on the cloud – where Tom Willians outlined how to get OpenSim and SLOODLE running on the cloud, and some of the challenges and workarounds involved. More details on all of these at the Moot pages.

(In the 8 days following the Moot I submitted one journal paper, one grant proposal and presented at MoodleMoot UK – so hope you can forgive the late posting of this update!)

Updated Update: Schedule updated and corrected! Available here (pdf). More details on sessions here.

SLOODLE Moot 2010 is approaching!

This weekend SLOODLE Moot – a free, online conference will be taking place in Second Life. A range of presentations, discussions and demonstrations will take place over the weekend including:

• Devil Island Mystery. Learn how freshman students in S. Korea were stranded on a virtual island – and had to develop their English skills to survive – and solve the Devil Island Mystery!
• Hacking SLOODLE tools. SLOODLE is open-source – in this sessions learn why you might want to change SLOODLE to suit your own ends – and how you can do so.
• SLOODLE at the Open University. With around 250,000 online students, and individual courses with student numbers in the thousands, the OU faces some significant challenges in using virtual worlds to support its courses. Learn how the OU has been using SLOODLE to meet this challenge.
• Cypris Chat demonstration. After a very successful set of demonstrations earlier this year, Mike McKay gives another demo of SLOODLE and the Awards system.
• Saturday night social. Lights, music, dancing!

Timetable yet to be finalised, but get all the details at the SLOODLE Moot pages.

( hashtag: #smoot )

The SLOODLE Set OAR file for OpenSim is now available in the downloads folder here:
http://www.sloodle.org/downloads/sloodle-set-1.0.oar

If you are interested in SLOODLE on OpenSim, join us in the OpenSim discussion forum.

Mike McKay has posted some videos from his demonstration class last month – more details in the comments of the previous post!

A message from Gia Rossini…

Hello all,

Wwe would like to invite the global SLOODLE community to submit proposals for contributions to SLOODLE MOOT 2010.

The event is scheduled to take place on the 10th April 2010.

We need to hear from you if you are using SLOODLE as a teacher, Learning Technologist or Moodle Admin. We also need to hear from you if you are tinkering with SLOODLE code. We would love to know what you are doing with SLOODLE in Open Sim based worlds.

This community show and tell event is your opportunity to promote your good work to an international audience.

You definitely need to be part of SLOODLE Moot if you would like to know about how to teach with SLOODLE, how to install it, administer it and/or even develop the tools further.

More details about the event and how to submit your session proposal can be found here.

The last SLOODLE Moot was a lot of fun – let’s make this one even bigger!

New SLOODLE demonstration course,
Originally uploaded by Daniel Livingstone.

Coming to SLOODLE island in Second Life… a new SLOODLE demonstration course. I’m very excited about this, as a solid example of how SLOODLE can be used is the clearest explanation of what it is and what it can do.

The new course is being developed by Professor Merryman of Cypris Chat. Cypris Chat is a not-for-profit English speaking community in Second Life. This course will include a demo of the SLOODLE awards system, devloped by Fire Centaur (Paul Priebsch).

About Cypris Chat:

Mission
We strive to provide an educational yet fun and interesting environment for English learning and teaching. Our members have the chance to be part of a living community surrounded by others who are learning, teaching or simply interested in speaking English with people from around the world. We believe learning should be a way of life instead of a struggle to achieve.

Cypris 4 Principles

Share
After joining our family, members should find ways to share what they have learned or done in Second Life. Tell us where you have been, what you have seen. Show us your safe toys, clothes, avatars and gadgets. Sharing promotes communication.

Respect
Second Life is very different from real life, but it is real for many of us. We all come from different cultures, different backgrounds and with different reasons for spending time in SL. We might not understand each other but we both have the same goal, to learn or teach.

Respond
Share your opinions about Cypris. Let us know what you think. Help us make this community a better place for you. Your feedback is what makes Cypris so great. Your opinion matters the most. Help each other with learner/teacher feedback. Communicate mistakes and successes.

Be Active
Speak. Talk. Ask questions. Say something. We are not passive learners, we are active! In order to improve, we must practice. To practice we must participate. To participate we must SPEAK! Less text chat and more voice chat. We are here to help our members improve their ability to communicate in English.

The final report of the two-year Eduserv funded project ‘Online Learning in Virtual Worlds with SLOODLE’ is now available. The report is available in PDF and Open Office formats, and was published by the University of the West of Scotland.

Online Learning In Virtual Environments with SLOODLE, Daniel Livingstone (ed.), Computing and Information Systems Technical Reports,No 50 (Dec 2009). ISSN 1461-6122

The report is available from our publications page.

The report includes…

• Outline of key SLOODLE features
• SLOODLE extensions
• SLOODLE’s international growth
• A SLOODLE bibliography
• A range of SLOODLE user stories

(Note: While the Eduserv funding period has ended, SLOODLE is continuing – with continued web-hosting support from San Jose State University School of Library and Information Science, Second Life island support from the University of the West of Scotland School of Computing, and continued development, porting, translation and community support from the SLOODLE community itself. We are also seeking additional funding to help support and drive future developments – more news when we have something to announce!)