1. 12 in focus
For consideration
Social work courtroom skills
for a second life
About the authors
Lana Morris came to Newport in September 2005 to lead
the school’s Social Work degree programme and became
Associate Dean learning & teaching (jobshare) in 2007.
She previously worked at Anglia Polytechnic University and
as a social work practitioner, as a residential social worker
and later as a care manager in the statutory sector. She also
has experience of working in the voluntary sector.
Paul Andrews worked as an E-learning manager which combined his love of technology
and desire to teach people before moving to Newport in 2008, where he is a founding
member of the TELLS team. He also manages a website (http://sites.google.com/site/
technologyenhancedlearning/) that showcases the world’s best free online learning
resources.
Introduction
At the School of Health and Social Sciences
at the University of Wales, Newport, we
have been developing a virtual courtroom to
enable social work students to gain valuable
experience of court work. We developed the
idea following discussion about the significant
costs associated with hiring local courtrooms
and relevant professionals compared to the
cost effectiveness of using a virtual world
which could enable students to experience
presenting evidence within a courtroom
environment.
Second Life
Second Life (SL) (http://secondlife.com/) is
a 3D online virtual world developed by
Linden Lab. To access Second Life, users
create a free account and then download
a free client program called “The Viewer”.
The viewer allows people to interact with
one other through 3D Avatars, which are
graphical representations of themselves that
can communicate via text or voice chat.
Users of Second Life can explore the 3D
world (known as the “grid”), meet other
people, socialise, participate in individual and
group activities, and create and trade virtual
goods and services with one another.(See
Rymaszewski, et al 2007).
“We developed
the idea following
discussion about
the significant costs
associated with hiring
local courtrooms…”
Lana Morris and Paul Andrews, University of Wales, Newport
lana.morris@newport.ac.uk; paul.andrews@newport.ac.uk

2. in focus 13
Built into the viewer is a 3D modelling tool
which allows users to create virtual items and
structures, thus allowing complex models
and simulations to be constructed that would
otherwise be impossible or too expensive to
create in the real world. These environments
have developed to an extent that there are
a range of sophisticated spaces created by
and for practitioners to be able to practise
skills within a ‘safe’ virtual environment or in
parallel to practising their skills with people in
the real (physical) world.
Second Life on the Social Work
programme
As part of the delivery of one of the modules
on the BA (Hons) Social Work programme,
we developed a courtroom in Second Life
with the aim of supporting students to
develop skills required for court appearances.
This will include students producing a court
report and decision making framework
based on case scenarios. Evidence will be
presented within the virtual Court and it
is hoped this will be further supported by
inviting law students or graduate law students
undertaking pupilages to be able to cross
examine students’ evidence to enable the
student experience to be more authentic.
Discussions have already taken place with
local magistrates in order to ensure that the
virtual experience can closely mirror real
life court experiences. The courtroom will
go ‘live’ in September 2011 and we hope to
be able to provide an update on how we
progress in early 2012.
Things to consider
Developing a virtual environment such as this
can take some careful planning, even though
you are not limited by real world physics or
logistics you still need to take into account
the kind of activity that you want students to
participate in and what the desired outcomes
of those activities should be. Once you have
a clear plan of the aims and objectives of the
activities you can then build your space to
suit them. One of the things we learned early
on was that there was a lot of information
about courtroom layouts from the USA but
until relatively recently it was more difficult
to get the layout for Courts in the UK. We
also have to consider the parallel process of
enabling students to be in second life, and
provide learning and teaching to support
them in delivering a report within second
life, through the use of a virtual interactive
whiteboard so that they can upload their
reports and talk to them within second life.
We would be interested to hear from
anyone who may be developing or who
has developed anything similar in order
for us to share ideas and experiences. We
would also invite practitioners (including
any retired practitioners who have good
knowledge of courtroom processes) from
allied professions who have experience of
courtroom social work to get in touch with
us if they are interested in contributing to
our developments. n
References
Rymaszewski, M., Au, W.J, Wallace, M.,
Winters, C., Ondrejka, C., Batstone-
Cunningham, B., and second life residents
around the world (2007) Second Life: The
official guide, Indianapolis: Wiley & Sons
inc.