Managing Collaborative Student Team Building Projects in Virtual Worlds

This presentation will examine the management of a collaborative, four-week project within the virtual world Second Life. Seven instructional technology graduate students at Purdue University Calumet in Hammond, Indiana, were asked to design a multifunctional virtual learning space for their program. As a team, students set goals, created an action plan, and learned how to manipulate objects within Second Life to create the space they had envisioned. A great deal was learned about virtual collaboration, as well as technical issues related to building projects in Second Life, and this presentation will share the best practices and caveats that emerged from this endeavor.