Mediating Media Studies - Stimulating critical awareness in a virtual environment

Second Life has become increasingly popular with educators and educational institutions, because of the educational possibilities it seems to offer. While there has been a lot of hype and academic publications about educational design or the theoretical framing of teaching in virtual environments, there have been few publications focussing on actual teaching and learning experiences of lecturers and students in Higher Education institutions. This article uses practical examples from an introductory course on Media studies taught at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University to demonstrate that even simple tasks in Second Life can be used to great effect if properly contextualised into the course being taught. High levels of technical skills, or extraordinary educational designs are less important to employing Second Life successfully in a Higher Education environment, than a proper evaluation of student learning outcomes, and teaching goals.