Designing oral participation in Second Life – acomparative study of two languageproficiency courses

The following paper presents two stages of an action research project involving two oralproficiency courses held in the virtual world Second Life. Course 1 was conducted during theAutumn of 2007. Based on the experiences of this course, we redesigned many aspects of it inorder to improve student activity in terms of oral participation and gave the course again inSpring 2008. By analysing the recordings of four 90-minute sessions, two from each course, wewere able to measure student participation based on floor space, turn lengths and turn-takingpatterns, and in the study we discuss how different changes in design may have contributed tomore favourable outcomes. Results seem to indicate that meaning focussed task design, whichinvolves authenticity and collaborative elements, has a direct impact on learner participationand engagement. Furthermore, our results seem to suggest that technical and social initiationsinto a complex environment such as SL are important factors that have to be worked into thecourse design