The project

SWIFT brings together expertise from four experienced university teachers, three of whom are National Teaching Fellows, working within the fields of biomedical sciences, pedagogic research and future learning technologies to develop exciting, new solutions.

This project is developing immersive learning activities for undergraduate students using Second Life, an Internet-based simulated environment. Such activities would not replace but rather enhance the effectiveness of real-life laboratory work.

Second Life enables students to explore, experiment and evaluate situations in risk-free interactive ways within the virtual laboratory. The project focuses on biomedical sciences but outcomes will have a much wider application. The impact of the use of laboratory activities in Second Life will be researched, contributing to our overall knowledge of technology-enhanced learning in this exciting, emerging area.

The presentation below was given by Dr Paul Rudman at the 2012 online conference "Follow The Sun". It describes SWIFT, the reasoning behind its design and the artefacts created.

The pedagogical reasoning

Building on the work of an earlier Beyond Distance project MOOSE – which identified the pedagogical scaffolding needed to enable students to work together using Second Life – SWIFT addresses three pedagogical challenges in biomedical sciences.

1. limited time, resources and space to run extensive programmes of real-life laboratory sessions.
2. limited opportunities in the laboratory for students  to develop higher-level skills in designing and trialling experiments. 
3. limited opportunities in the laboratory for students to develop team working and communication skills.

In the virtual world of Second Life, where avatars are computer users’ representations of themselves, these pedagogical challenges can be directly confronted. The avatars can move around, carry out activities, and interact with each other at the will of the user, participating in group situations. Virtual land can be ‘bought and owned’, ‘built upon and developed’, and a suitable learning environment can be created; hence the learning experience is considered ‘immersive’. Second Life enables students, as avatars, to explore, experiment and evaluate situations in a risk-free interactive way in virtual laboratories and with virtual artefacts.

Second Life is an established technology at the University, and SWIFT is building on induction and training programmes are already available.

Development of Second Life artefacts

Three virtual experiences have been developed to support Second Life learning activities. Each lab will replicate a real-life laboratory and contain equipment  and technologies appropriate to the learning objectives for that part of SWIFT.

1a) Health and Safety Induction

The first virtual lab acts as a backdrop for tutor-led induction sessions where new undergraduates are introduced to a genetics laboratory, the health and safety issues to be understood, and the main pieces of equipment they will use in the real labs during their course.

If you have Second Life installed, you can visit the SWIFT virtual labs

1b) Case studies

The second virtual lab supports students learning through case studies, where they conduct a number of representative experiments in the virtual lab in order to gain an understanding of how the lab equipment is used to achieve set goals.

2) Problem-based Learning Scenarios (PBL)

Some more complex scenarios are currently accomplished with paper and web sites due to their complexity and the time it would take to run all experiments in a physical lab. By utilising the immersive and interactive functionality of SL, students will gain the experience of working through Problem-based Learning Scenarios for real. Later in 2011, this third virtual lab will support students working in groups to select and carry out simulated experiments. 

Designing the learning process

Up to 900 students will be involved during the life of the project. These will include students from the first and second years of three cohorts from several degree streams.

Second Life activities (or SL-tivities, based upon the highly successful e-tivities model) have been conceptualised through creative workshops involving teaching staff and the learning technology and pedagogical research expertise at Leicester’s Beyond Distance Research Alliance.