With an eye open for inspiration for our new Faculty island, I’ve been visiting a few more universities in SL these past few days. Some are pretty much empty (e.g. Newcastle), some visually impressive but without any very clear sense of purpose yet (e.g. Sussex), and some are quite outstanding; and among the latter I count–although clearly as yet unfinished–the London School of Journalism.
The London School of Journalism has a well-designed island experience, with one of the most attractive and user-sensitive orientation zones I’ve seen in any university in SL. Clearly written and well-illustrated guidance (but, hey, they’re journalists, right?) adorns the walls of an elegant building and garden, covering all the essential orientational information and exercises, this supplemented by a good array of free skins and clothing.
The island consists largely of well-design teaching rooms (a miscellany of architectures maybe detracts a little from the overall impressiveness of the place), an open-air amphitheatre, an admin building, a large outdoors exhibition area (the ‘Writers Display Opportunity’), two or three outside café areas, and a bar and dance floor. Of the classrooms the most paedagogically interesting was The Learning Experience installation, a creative writing teaching facility that, given an extract from a short story projected on the front wall (see right of image below), students individually write and submit a short critique.
Post-script: in a ‘live’ class this afternoon, led by Kitviel Silberberg, the class had the opportunity to critique each others’ writing exercises. A well led class, voice from Kitviel, text feedback from the class.
Enter the orientation zone of the London School of Journalism at:
» http://slurl.com/secondlife/LSJ%20Student%20Union/230/29/33
