Supervising Higher Degree Research (HDR) Candidates at a Distance: What Do Emerging Virtual World Technologies Have to Offer?

Media, Muves, Second Life And Distance Hdr Supervisions

One of the challenges with distance supervision across geographical or time zone differences is finding a compatible technology between supervisor and student for communication purposes (Orr, 2010) encompassing the various aspects of the HDR supervision process. There are many media that can potentially be used to for distance HDR supervisions with each supporting different kinds of teaching and learning experiences. Laurillard (2002) classifies the media for teaching and learning into five principal groups. These five groups are the narrative, interactive, communicative, adaptive and productive forms of media. In terms of the DE HDR candidate, examples of the types of methods and technologies that are representative of each form of media include: written documents and/or accompanying comments for the narrative media; web resources are examples of interactive media; communicative media include telephone, email, audio, formal video conferencing and Skype; virtual laboratories and simulations are examples of adaptive media; and productive media involve expressive opportunities ranging from the writing of essays through to the creation of a model. These principal media forms (Laurillard, 2002, p. 90) are summarised in Table 1 (below).