Panel participants of project members: Bryan Carter, Ph.D., Asst. Professor, University of Central Missouri, USA; Judith Molka-Danielsen, Ph.D., Assoc. Professor, Molde University College, Norway; David Richardson, Assoc. Professor, Kalmar University College, Sweden; Alastair Creelman, Coordinator Distance Education, Kalmar University College, Sweden; Bjørn Jæger, Ph.D., Assoc. Professor, Molde University College, Norway

Virtual worlds such as Second Life offer revolutionary and innovative modes for learning. These learning spaces are called Virtual Learning Environments (VLE). (Gredler, 2001) (Jenkins, 2005) This panel presentation is an analysis of new perspectives and opportunities in online learning, focusing on the teacher and student roles in VLE. In particular, we propose the role of the educator or teacher in VLE is greatly expanded. The teacher, rather than being perceived as an authoritative figure, with strong leadership responsibilities as to the focus and direction of learning, may be seen as a coach or even as a student in the new VLE landscape. Our panel will explore the multiple agencies of teachers and students in VLE. Primarily, we explore the meaning of education in virtual learning environments from both, a student and teacher perspective as well as the collaborative potential that these environments hold. In addition, we will discuss in-world design and construction factors that are likely to influence the role of educators. Our panel consists of approximately 6 members, 4-5 faculty (reference above) and 2 students.

Through a joint research project sponsored by The Norwegian University program (Norgesuniversitetet, NUV, 2007), the member institutions of Molde University College in Norway, Kalmar University College in Sweden and Central Missouri State University in USA, have purchased two islands in Second Life in May 2007. On these islands the project members are to develop educational environments, and to explore a number of research questions. The panel presentation will use examples from a pilot course, Social English for Doctoral Students, which will be running at the same time as the League of Worlds (LoW) conference. If the date of the presentation is compatible with the course, panel members and members of the audience will be offered the opportunity to observe part of the interaction between faculty members and doctoral students on the course as part of the presentation.

In addition to discussing the details of the Social English Course, members of the panel will discuss the development of the collaboration between three universities and how the project developed, our communication and details regarding how the plan was made for the island purchase to include the grant from the Norwegian government and other collaborative activities between classes, faculty and students.

Panel members will also discuss the development of an historical reconstruction; Virtual Montmartre and how the recreation of an historical period aids in teaching literature, composition, history and theater. There are plans to have students and faculty meet with the conference attendees in world to discuss their experiences from both a student and faculty perspective. There will also be tours and demonstrations of what we are doing pedagogically to foster life-long learning and meeting the needs of the net-generation learner.

Motivation
More academic institutions are engaging in online education. Virtual worlds such as Linden Labs “Second Life” can be seen as an opportunistic platform for future online leaning. Over 160 institutions of higher education as members of the New Media Consortium (NMC) forum have already created courses or held meetings in the virtual world of ”Second Life” developed by Linden Labs. Many of these have done so for the motivation of effective use of time, or to reach students with mobile lifestyles. From the teaching perspective, traditionally resources of personnel competency and knowledge bases have been localized. Being able to access distributed teaching resources through virtual worlds such as Second Life could offers benefits similar to other online solutions, but in addition SL offers a richly immersive environment. That is SL allows open access (unlike many learning management systems) and is supportive of rich social interactions. We wish to explore this advantage in the educator and learner environment through our project.

Learning is considered a social and active process (Vygotsky, 1978) (Brown, Collins & Duguid, 1989). The social constructivist conception is that learning occurs as self-governed, problem-based and collaborative processes. Well-designed social learning environments foster increased opportunities for collaborative activities. Research supports that games and simulations capitalizes on the motivational factors necessary to engage the learner. Embedding learning activities in open online environments will offer students socially acceptable and personally gratifying opportunities to learn. (Thompson & Rodriguez, 2004)

Role of Educators in Second Life
We have proposed that the role of the educator in Second Life is strikingly different from the traditional classroom. Our panel will discuss three factors that are likely to affect the multiple roles of the educator as agent within our case environment. These are:
• Identity (visual and textual identifying information) of the agent
• Behavior of the agent (activities)
• Tools available to the agent (for communication)

We hypothesize that our study will reveal that the teacher is likely to become less dominant in the learning space. We reason that other agents, including the students themselves, will have the opportunity to direct their own learning experience. The teacher will remain a connector of the many agents (students) should not act as a bottleneck to communications between agents. We look forward to discussing our impressions and findings of the role of educators in Second Life.

References
Brown, J.S., Collins, A., Duguid, P. (1989). Situated Cognition and the Culture of Learning. Educational Researcher, volume 18, number 1, 32-42. Accessed at: http://www2.parc.com/ops/members/brown/papers/situatedlearning.html
Gredler, M.E. (2001). Games and simulations and their relationships to learning. In Jonassen (ed.), Handbook of Research for Educational Communications and Technology, Vol. 2 (pp.571-581). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. 37-42.
Jenkins, H. (2005). Getting into the game. Educational Leadership, 62(7) 48-51.
Norgesuniversitetet, NUV (2007). Organization information accessed at: http://norgesuniversitetet.no
Robertson, J. and Oberlander, J., (2002) “Ghostwriter: Educational Drama and Presence in a Virtual Environment,” Journal of Computer Mediated Communication, vol. 8.
Thompson, A. & Rodriguez (2004). Computer Gaming for Teacher Educators. Journal of Computing in Teacher Education, 20(3), 94, 96.
Vygotsky, L.S. (1978). Mind in Society. Harvard University Press.