Everyone''s a Kool-Aid Man Today

Second Life (SL), a massively multi-user virtual environment (MMUVE), is called the metaverse, a parallel universe, and a world not unlike our own. This makes SL an ideal environment for first-year composition students to pursue a second life. This is a world that can offer students analogies and metaphors for real-world issues [and] can provide a way for students to discuss issues in a safe environment, where there are no real-world consequences (Williams, Hendricks, and Winkler 11). In SL, students can experience issues that we often ask them to write about, such as identity or otherness, but of which they have little knowledge. I investigate whether or not experiences in SL can change writing. Students become engaged with their writing and begin to make connections between their own lives and the topics pursued. The connections are made because of the students abilities to investigate life in SL in a way that is not possible in RL. The students responses, both positive and negative, to SL are evident in their writings.

Auteur

Dianna Baldwin is currently the Associate Writing Center Director at Michigan State University where she teaches such courses as writing center theory and freshmen composition. She is a member of the Rhetoric and Writing graduate faculty. She continues to research the pedagogy of using virtual worlds to teach composition.