User:Martin Le Voi

I am Martin Le Voi, Lecturer in Psychology, Open University UK.

I am a "champion" of elearning for the Social Science Faculty, and my current large concern is to get e-tuition working properly across our range of courses, because we are still making silly and naive mistakes for which there is no excuse nowadays.

Following Marc Eisenstadt's Virtual Summer School experiment in 1994 (which I helped with), I designed and championed the 15-point Virtual Summer School course DZX222 Exploring Psychology: On-line Project which gets students working collaboratively on-line doing empirical research. The environment is 90% based on First Class CMC.

I am very interested in how that all develops!

Martin

PS I go sailing in SL. I think this is an interesting demostration of SL capabilities, because to enable sailing has required considerable implementation of a physics model, geographical design and, of course, design of the sailboats. The winds I believe have a substantial chaotic structure. The environment is sufficiently well implemented to allow racing, and there are lessons in-world in how to sail various boats. Most of the lessons apply directly to real life (responding to the wind, tacking, rules of racing etc.), and of course it is an example of "Learning by Doing": this ought to be a main benefit of SL education. I believe many sailors sail there off-season (e.g. when the Great Lakes freeze over!).

If you fancy trying sailing out, contact me (in-world or email)!