University of Leicester

Duckling Project

This is a case study of incorporating Second Life (SL) into a MA distance learning programme in Applied Linguistics and TESOL at the School of Education, the University of Leicester, UK. The purpose of this innovation was to enable staff and students to consider the applicability of SL to their own language teaching situations. The activities that students undertook in SL involved training in-world and observing language teaching classes offered by Languagelab.com (http://www.languagelab.com/en). Students also shared and reflected on their experiences on a Blackboard discussion board, moderated by an Education tutor. Six Education students took part in this pilot. We found that SL enabled the students to apply theory in a practical setting and encouraged them to consider issues in applying SL to their own teaching contexts. The small group of distance learning students also enjoyed the opportunities to interact in SL with their tutors and peers.