How does one track student use in a virtual world? There are certainly scripted objects in Second Life that allow for the tracking of traffic and usage data. How might these objects be adapted to roll-up and report out on student use?

Aldrich revers to such effort as "tracked relationships" (Aldrich, 2005) as he describes the complexity and depth with which Virtual University is tracked. While metrics of that level are neither necessary nor standard in most learning management systems, there are values worthy of tracking in-world, including:

• Log in date/time
• Log off date/time
• Duration in specific locations
• Path of travel aka "information trails" (Loh, 2006)
• Performance on assessment activities
• Completion of specific tasks
• Chat/Blog/Forum posting participation

In the Sloodle scenario, these values would be tracked and communicated by the controlling objects in the Sloodle Box.

The value of having such data not only falls into the area of student performance assessment. Such statistics can be invaluable in assessing performance of the virtual classroom, overall learning environment, and use of learning objects.