Dr. Scott J. Warren was invited as a guest lecturer for a Metta Alsobrook’s seminar of 83 engineering students at UT Dallas on March 11th, 2010. I held an introduction to Second Life and how UT Dallas got their three new islands in August 2009, and what we are currently doing with these islands: Undergraduate students have been teamed with campus clients to develop content for the clients on the islands and at the same time learn the emerging technology and create competitive portfolio for themselves for the future. I developed the program called Students Second Life Success and am running it during spring semester.
The Emerging Ethical Issues in Virtual Worlds presentation was held real-time also in Second Life in the 4-corner auditorium joining the simulations Comet Island, Temoc Island, Excellence Island, and School of Management Island. Dr. Warren was speaking through his avatar and some of the students were logged in. I counted a total of 25 avatars participating in-world.
Dr. Warren, Assistant Professor in the department of Learning Technologies at The University of North Texas with a Ph.D. in Instructional Systems Technology from Indiana University-Bloomington, well experience with virtual worlds and gaming, brought up interesting and thought-provoking questions through-out his presentation about game addiction, questioning if we should, and conserations if we do decide to develop education using games and simulations. This is Dr. Warren’s recent research area. In his doctoral work he built the Anytown virtual space in the Virtual Reality game Quest Atlantis and studied student literacy learning in this space. The UTD students, mostly Freshmen and sophomores, were very engaged in discourse as they gathered in groups to discuss and then reflect on their group discussions for class and the in-world audience. Many had experienced game addiction or had friends with game addiction.
Images from the 4-corner auditorium in second Life during the presentation are posted here.
