Storytelling And Building Collaborative Team Relationships In Second Life (R)

While much has been written on storytelling in groups, it is quite surprising that almost none of this work has been done in the context of 3-D virtual world settings of any sort. This paper presents findings from a co-operative inquiry study investigating the use of storytelling in the facilitation of online group work conducted in the 3-D virtual world of Second Life. The power of combining the popular group process of storytelling with a metaphorical virtual environment led to emotional connections surfacing between participants and a felt sense of place. Second Life assisted participants by providing a substitute form of non-verbal communication (body language) both as a part of the embedded AI avatar actions and those actions,that occurred when users interacted with each other in the environment. Also present was an experience of others on a highly emotional level of engagement. Both useful findings for those looking to online tools for group work that requires strong connections and opportunities for interactive group spaces.