Professional Development in a Virtual World

Abstract

The virtual world Second Life (SL) can be part of professional development deployment and mentoring using online learning. This chapter provides a portrait of professional development and teaching in SL. While SL requires a more extensive learning curve than might be expected, the virtual campus becomes a functioning instructional site for all disciplines, supplementing personal and text-based asynchronous learning in various other platforms with synchronous voice and text, enhancing the interactions in virtual professional development settings. In addition to regular face-to-face professional development meetings, the virtual campus allows faculty and staff to meet for professional development, mentoring, discussion groups, committees, and virtual academic conferences. Key ideas for operating educational sites in SL include training prospective faculty, staff, and instructors, mentoring, dealing with appropriate presentations of self as avatar, tracking activities and behaviors in SL, choosing modes of communication, and moving from lecture to discussion to immersive learning in media rich constructed spaces.