Greenbank – A Model for Situated Learning in Second Life.
Abstract: Interprofessional education is seen as a key element of health and social care education. The benefits of using virtual communities to support this education are well established. In this paper we present a novel approach in which a virtual community is created in Second Life and presented to the learner as a machinima soap opera, created by filming in-world. We describe the process we used to create the machinima, before presenting a preliminary student evaluation of the machinima resource. The concept of a virtual community to support health & social care education is not a new one, but the originality of the Greenbank project is to situate the virtual community in Second Life and eventually enhance the learner experience through the use of additional multimedia. We conclude that situating a virtual community in-world and using Second Life to create machinima to portray that community is an engaging way of learning and is an effective strategy for working around issues of accommodating large student numbers in Second Life.