Second Life in the university
Soon, we’ll be talking about virtual reality. One popular virtual environment is Second Life. David Dewit (Athens News) writes about it, “Virtual-reality software creates parallel campus, enhances education“, and how it’s being used in an upper-division rhetoric and composition course at Ohio University taught by Paul Shovlin:
But [Shovlin's] interest is really in the effects of the environment itself. He said he wanted his students to think critically about the appearance and impressions they were giving off, demonstrating to them that if his avatar looked like Darth Vader, they wouldn’t take him seriously.
“Rhetoric is the art of persuasion,” he said. “A certain appearance in virtual reality can affect ethos and credibility.”
Shovlin said that at the end of his course he wanted students to become critical agents, to take care of themselves in the virtual environment of Second Life and translate that to other environments.
“That’s what I think literacy is,” he said, “adapting and being successful in different environments in terms of our communication.”
“Writing in Cyberspace” has similar interests. As we blog, build websites, and write online, we need to consider how online environments impact our writing as compared to print environments, to think critically about those differences, and transfer and “translate” our writing into new environments.
