Browsing by Subject "Second Life"

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Being polite in your second life : a discourse analysis of students’ interchanges in an online collaborative learning environment
(2010-12) Chiang, Yueh-Hui; Resta, Paul; Schallert, Diane L.; Maloch, Beth; Liu, Min; Hughes, Joan
With the improvement of computer technology and the prevalence of the Internet, learning activities taking place in cyberspace by means of computer-mediated communication have become more common and accessible than even a decade ago. Being interested in how politeness phenomena as universal principles in human interaction played a role in the process of online collaborative learning in a graduate-level course, I conducted a naturalistic inquiry to explore students’ interaction through the lens of Brown and Levinson’s politeness theory (1987). I analyzed the exchanges of 18 students divided into four teams with a consideration for such contextual factors as concerns about netiquette, time, modes of online communication, discourse functions, and sense of community. Influenced by the tradition of interpretivist/constructivist research paradigm, I adopted diverse data collection methods and discourse analytical techniques. Data are reported as a case study of a purposefully selected focal team of five students with supporting evidence interweaving multiple data sources (online discussion, self-reflective blog entries, self-report portfolios, peer/self assessments, field notes, videotapes of voice chat sessions, audiotapes of interviews, and online survey responses). Given the context of students being required to work collaboratively as a team throughout the semester, the findings of this study suggested that the focal team used a variety of politeness strategies to establish cohesion among members and to moderate the force imposed by presupposing too much underlying solidarity. Five contextual factors also emerged as influencing the focal team’s use of politeness strategies: norms/convention, online communication medium, topics and content of discussion, social distance, and personal differences. Instructional technology is subject to innovation and is meant to facilitate learning. Incorporating new technology (e.g., Second Life) into instructional settings can create new opportunities for learning on which learners’ use of politeness strategies depends. Thus, this study about politeness in an online collaborative learning context not only contributes to enriching views of politeness theory, but also in being able to help prepare learners to collaborate effectively in new immersive learning environments with comfort in the ways of fostering awareness of face-saving concerns to avoid or redress face threat situations that may damage team collaboration and lead to a negative learning experience.
ESL students’ interaction in Second Life : task-based synchronous computer-mediated communication
(2010-05) Jee, Min Jung 1977-; Schallert, Diane L.
The purpose of the present study was to explore ESL students’ interactions in task-based synchronous computer-mediated communication (SCMC) in Second Life, a virtual environment by which users can interact through representational figures. I investigated Low-Intermediate and High-Intermediate ESL students’ interaction patterns before, during, and after three kinds of tasks, a Jigsaw task, a Decision-making task, and a Discussion task. The findings were that the Low and High-Intermediate ESL students engaged in several forms of interaction during the pre- and post-task periods in Second Life, such as checking their voice chat function, checking members, moving their avatars, and closings. These activities pointed to the nature of Second Life voice chat interaction as preconditions for further conversation, and for closing their conversation. Official task period activities revealed factors for task success, such as a leader, a structured way of approaching a task, no technical problem, and establishing a sense of telepresence (Schroeder, 2002) before the task. Concerning negotiation of meaning, the High-Intermediate students made more negotiation during the Decision-making tasks than the Jigsaw tasks, caused mainly by lexical meanings. The wrong answer team and the incomplete team engaged in more negotiations than the correct answer team and the complete team. However, the Low-Intermediate students in the complete team made more negotiations of meaning than the incomplete team. Both levels of students had fewer negotiations during the Discussion task than in the Jigsaw and Decision-making tasks, and they used comprehension checks, confirmation checks, and clarification requests as strategies for negotiation, overwhelmingly focused on meaning rather than form. The students played with their avatars more often during the Discussion task session than during the Jigsaw or Decision-making tasks, and their use of avatars seemed simply to be for fun, although another way explaining what students were doing is to recognize that they were also exploring the affordances of Second Life. Generally, the Low-Intermediate students had a positive attitude toward their learning experience in Second Life, whereas the High-Intermediate students expressed a more neutral view of their experience in Second Life.
Global brands’ social media presence and control
(2011-05) Ok, Chang Bong; Sung, Yongjun; Choi, Sejung M.
This paper seeks to investigate leading global brands‘ social media presence. The analysis of the Interbrand’s 100 Best Global Brands (2010) social media pages was conducted in the current study. Based on Kaplan & Haenlein‘s classification of social media, seven social media application cases were examined. The findings suggest that there are differences in global brands‘ social media presence by brand categories and social media applications. The findings also suggest that there are different levels of global brands‘ social media control. Managerial implications and guidelines for social media marketing are also provided.
The student's experience of multimodal assignments : play, learning, and visual thinking
(2012-12) Nahas, Lauren Mitchell; Faigley, Lester, 1947-; Roberts-Miller, Patricia; Syverson, Margaret; Hodgson, Justin; Pena, Jorge
Much of current pedagogical discussion of the use of multimodal assignments in the writing classroom argues that one benefit of such assignments is that they foster student engagement, innovation, and creativity while simultaneously teaching writing and argumentation concepts. Although such discussions rarely use the term “play,” play theorists consider engagement, innovation, creativity, and learning to be central characteristics and outcomes of play. Thus, what many scholars view as a major outcome of multimodal assignments might most accurately be described as playful learning. In order to investigate the validity of claims that playful learning is a product of multimodal assignments, this dissertation reports on the results of a comparative case study of four different classrooms that used multimodal assignments. The objective of the study was to better understand the students’ experience of these assignments because the students’ perspective is only represented anecdotally in the literature. The study’s research questions asked: Do students find these assignments to be playful, creative, or engaging experiences? Do they view these assignments as related to and supportive of the more traditional goals of the course? And what role does the visual nature of these technologies have in the student’s experience of using them or in their pedagogical effectiveness? Each case was composed of a different writing course, a different assignment, and a different multimodal computer technology. The results of the study show that students generally did find these assignments both enjoyable and useful in terms of the learning goals of the course. Many students even went so far as to describe them as fun, indicating that for some students these were playful experiences in the traditional sense. However, comparison of the results of each case illustrates that the simple injection of a multimodal assignment into the classroom will not necessarily create a playful learning experience for students. The students’ experience is a complex phenomenon that is impacted by the structure of the assignment, whether or not they are provided a space for exploration and experimentation, their attitude towards the technology, and the characteristics of the technology.