The Teacher as Designer: Preparations for Teaching in a Second Life Distance Education Course

Teaching in Second Life (SL) is much like teaching in K-12 schools in that the teacher has to plan in a similar fashion. However, when teaching in SL most students have never used this technology, therefore, the teacher must create the learning environment much like a designer creates an artifact, through planning, execution, and evaluation. Based on a literature survey and data collected from a teacher preparation distance education course taught entirely in Second Life, we identified the following steps of a design process: allow for social interaction, scaffold the students' learning of the new technology, plan for the structure of the course, the procedures in the classroom, and the transitions. We support our findings with empirical examples, and compare our findings with related work, focusing on social presence in 3D virtual learning environments.