Aug. 28 - Inquiry Based Learning in SL

At this week's InfoLit meeting, North Lamar discussed Inquiry Based learning in relation to his teaching in SL (see http://educatorscoop.org/).

In RL, North is Joe Sanchez, a PhD candidate at Universityof Texas Austin. He has a unique teaching style - he uses the principles of Inquiry Based Learning to encourage his students to develop and implement a project that is meaningful to them in sl. Rather than set up exercises to teach things like building, he mainly allows the students to learn whichever skills they feel are necessary to do a good job on their projects.

The class divides itself into project groups, and each group receives some land (I think he said a 1024 parcel) for their project. They are free to do whatever they wish with the land, including terraform it. Some past projects have included holding an "SL Idol" competition (which of course required learning how to build the stage and auditorium, how to stream a live performance, how to publicise and manage an event) building a lasertag facility (required learning about different types of sl ballistics, how to build the course, how to set up a business) and several service learning projects for sl nonprofit groups.

There are common areas on North's island too, including a river (with a supply of innertubes for tubing down it -- he sometimes holds class while everyone is tubing), a carnival (including several rides and a shooting gallery), an auditorium, meeting rooms, a plaza area. He also makes parcels available to other educators at a nominal rent.