Presentation Tool. Using Second Life as a presentation tool – and the key is – while leveraging the unique capabilities of the environment, provides an instructionally useful way for faculty to begin actively using the technology while introducing students to the technology as well.  For example, a faculty member lecturing in a classroom on molecular biology or chemistry could take advantage of the 3D virtual environment to enhance lectures with 3D models of molecules; cognitively for learners, viewing a 3D model of a molecule is an improvement over 2D representations.  In that instance, an affordance of Second Life is leveraged to enhance a lecture, and it does that without requiring student use of the technology.  To be clear, I am not recommending Second Life be used in an on campus class to deliver 2D presentations as the faculty’s avatar stands in front of a presenter tool in Second Life and clicks through slides.

Guided Experience. A next step for faculty and students, after using Second Life as a presentation tool, will be to engage Second Life in a classroom environment following specific steps and activities defined by the faculty.  Given a specific learning goal, faculty can explicitly define steps and procedures to engage; working together in an on campus computer lab, preferably with technical or additional support available, faculty and students work together to complete the activity.  The range of Second Life decisions to be made by learners is extremely limited; they are told where to go and what content to engage and interact with.  This focuses their efforts on the content and the basic mechanical use of Second Life.

Self-Directed Experience. Once learners have become more comfortable working in and with Second Life, faculty can define a more open ended series of activities for students to engage.  The general learning goal is explicit as are the expectations for students, but resources, procedures and activities are expressed to students more generally and not defined explicitly.  That leaves room for learners to self-direct their experience within Second Life.  It begins to open up more possibilities for students to engage the application and to leverage the 3D virtual space.  What’s common here and with the others is that the general resources, procedures and activities must lead students into experiences that leverage Second Life capabilities.

Student Generated Content. The last level of engagement that I described in our conversation was students reaching the point of generating content within Second Life : transitioning from consumers to producers of content.  It’s not an easy step, and instructionally, it must be done with significant care and precision.  The risk is creating a learning activity in a discipline for learners to create content in Second Life that requires learners to focus more on Second Life skills and knowledge than on discipline skills and knowledge.  The benefit is learners applying discipline specific knowledge and skills to actively, authentically and possibly collaboratively create artifacts within Second Life which can be made available to other faculty and students.

I attended the Virtual Worlds in Education Roundtable (VWER) Annual “First Meeting of the Year” for 2011 this past Thursday.  I believe this is the third year the VWER’s new year has begun with a panel discussion.  The stated focus of the discussion was on the Probable, Possible and Preferable Futures of education in virtual worlds.  Of course, the majority of the discussion focused on the first two.  The discussion was moderated by (using Second Life monikers) AJ Brooks and included Buddy Sprocket, Fleep Tuque, Anthony Fontana, Wainbrave Bernal, and Kenny Hubble.  So what’d the panel have to say? (with my thoughts mixed in throughout.)

Probable Future of Education in Virtual Worlds (or Second Life) for the next year?

Hypergrid and OpenSim will be coming into their own: Joykadia, Reaction & VWER Grids along with hypergrid-linked worlds and Pathfinder’s Hypergridding club (Buddy).   Anthony took it a step further though; he believes Open Sim will continue to attract talented developers and (other than browser functionality and developed content) will rival SL experience by the end of the year.  Of course my thought was, aside from client/browser/viewer functionality and developed content, what else is there in the virtual world?

With a caveat that predictions are increasingly difficult as the technology makes the realm of possibility substantially larger, Wainbrave predicted that more institutions will acquire greater sophistication and context of how we use VWs to achieve a broad range of learning outcomes.  He also noted that Public Virtual Worlds are at the bottom of the trough of disillusionment on the Gartner Hype Cycle, according to the August 2010 report.

Fleep believes Virtual Worlds will continue to be a very niche technology.  That will continue at least until the platforms start to break down barriers between web and virtual worlds; currently everyday communication tools and uses of the web are too external to Second Life.  With that said, virtual worlds are not going away, and they may increase somewhat as OpenSim will have a larger role in the coming year with a number of benefits (local hosts, secure hosting, local backups).

Digression: Second Life on the decline?

A significant portion of the early discussion focused on the role of Linden Lab’s Second Life within the market. Buddy Sprocket reminded the group of his comment from last year that Linden Lab need to establish themselves as the hub for hypergridding; problem is, they haven’t done that.  As hypergridding increasingly connects OpenSim sims and other virtual platforms, Second Life may be marginalized – especially if you combine that with the impact of Linden’s price hike for education.  Plus, someone noted that a very interesting and perhaps critical issue with Second Life is that even some of their best people are no longer with the company and in some cases, are evangelists for other platforms.  Pathfinder Lester (formerly Pathfinder Linden) started the Hypergridding club and is now an evangelist for OpenSim, hypergrid-linked worlds.

Kenny Hubble commented that he believes “there is *not* a future for education in Second Life.”  His explanation focused on the idea that “doing education in a virtual world” is an obsolete notion; we can; we can meet anywhere via any number of technologies.  It’s not going to be one world; it’s going to be multiple spaces.  The manner in which we relate to it will change.  The notion of the “virtual campus” will fade, and it will be just another space in which we meet.  I disagree.  First, Kenny’s argument was more theoretical and semantic than practical; he even commented that he believes the educational community will persist in Second Life.  The platform disappearing into the background and the way in which we relate to it changing will not happen in the near future.  For that to happen, the novelty effect and general user awareness of the technology as they used it would have to wear off; it would have to become “just another way to communicate.”  I don’t think that will happen for a number of years.

Fleep took the middle ground regarding the future of Second Life.  She argues there are definite benefits to staying in Second Life: see my previous post re: the Metanomics session, and Anthony agreed that the content in Second Life is worth maintaining a presence.  To maintain a position of relevance, however, Linden Lab *must* participate in developing standards and protocols and engage the larger virtual world community (i.e.  hypergridding).  With all of that said, she does *not* want to discourage folks from trying OpenSim.

Digression: Search in Virtual Worlds?

An interesting side conversation focused on the critical need for effective search capabilities within virtual worlds.  AJ noted the lack of an effective search engine to locate hypergrid enabled sims; though Pathfinder suggested hyperica.com, and I’m not sure who noted Gridhop.net.   As I first glanced at that site, it struck me as an indexing sort of site, and not a true, Google-type search; it seems like Yahoo internet search circa 1997. Pathfinder agreed and commented that we “need a Google-esque system. something that automatically indexes things across grids.”

An additional, search related issue is the desperate need to be able to better search within virtual worlds for content.  Wainbrave, who has done significant work in this area, noted the absolute lack of metadata on objects in Second Life which renders it unsearchable, from a Google-esque perspective.  The only content that can be searched in Second Life is the data that users have submitted to the indexing system.

Possible and Preferable Future of Education in Virtual Worlds (or Second Life) for the next year?

By the time the panel had addressed the original question and the digressions, we had blasted through the first hour.  I appreciated Anthony Fontana finding a way to interject his prepared notes regarding the Possible Future and Preferable Future of Virtual Worlds/Second Life for the coming year.

Anthony believes three things are distinctly possible for the coming year.  First, we may see SL in a browser, and that could mean two different things.  Combined with a $50 Chrome netbook could begin to make SL’s role in education more significant, and we could see SL interaction integrated within Facebook apps or iframes – making SL use more seamless in existing social interfaces. Second, Avatar Kinect by MS XBox could allow for SL via a browser on your TV and perhaps REAL virtual world dance parties; Kenny had suggested the same when discussing Probable events for the coming year, and I have suggested previously as well

As for preferences for the next year, Anthony described a scenario in which mesh brings more animators and architects into Second Life.  Plus, Linden Lab splitting the SL experience based on user engagement: basically, focus a web browser experience on consumers and the client experience on producers of content.

What’s really going to happen? And a few closing thoughts and questions.

First, I think it’s a no-brainer that educational institutions will spend significant effort exploring OpenSim and other opportunities.  Open Sim will continue to post record months as HyperGridBusiness.com has reported several times of late.

Second, as that happens, I believe Fleep was dead on that we’re going to see the wheel reinvented in OpenSim – since Linden Lab does not permit the porting of SL content to OpenSim (which they should) and, worse yet, in my opinion, the education community will become more fractured.  Spreading our efforts across multiple platforms inherently fragments the results.

Third, I believe two significant changes will occur at Linden Lab.  The background of the new CEO seems to suggest the manner in which Second Life is promoted and “framed” for potential users will change, as might the user experience.  We may see signs of Second Life become *more* game like.  Plus, I see the ownership inevitably changing.  The leadership thus far at Second Life has seemed incapable of developing Second Life into the lead dog within the niche that is virtual worlds; there’s any number of things they could have done to accomplish that: engage the development of protocols and standards; engage hypergridding; opening SL content to export to extend Second Life’s presence across platforms; making the Second Life browser capable of browing other virtual worlds.  With all of that said, the content and technology of Second Life is invaluable.

Question that I’ll be considering.  When will public virtual worlds begin to move OUT of the trough of disillusionment, and what role will technologies like Avatar Kinect play in that happening?

For those unfamiliar . . .

The Virtual Worlds Education Roundtable (VWER) is a weekly, global meeting of professionals interested in the use of Virutal Worlds in educational environments. Currently, the VWER meets every Thursday in Second Life at 4:30pm Central Standard Time, GMT -6 (Chicago/Houston).

In the previous incarnation of my MUVE Forward blog, I had the search widget below in the sidebar which allows for quick, Google-enabled searching of the listserv archives. I use it quite frequently; honestly, it’s the first place I look when searching for an answer to a question regarding education in Second life. I wanted to post/include it in this space, so as to not lose track of the resource.

One of the panel members was Larry Pixel (RL: Larry Johnson, CEO of the New Media Consortium); my primary interest in the event was to listen to commentary regarding the future of virtual worlds (and perhaps Second Life in particular) within the education sector.  A few notes, comments and thoughts follow.

A quick summary?  I believe Second Life does and will continue to offer unique benefits that other platforms and technologies do not; I believe the capabilities provide value-added benefit to education beyond what other platforms may currently offer.  If at all possible, I believe educational institutions should maintain their presence in Second Life while exploring other platforms in parallel; I understand that an institution’s presence may need to be reduced to meet budgetary limitations, but I do not believe using the elimination of the educational discount as a reason to leave Second Life is a good or rational decision.

Future of Virtual Environments

Larry commented that an exciting aspect of Second Life several years ago was that, “We all thought we were part of something for/from the future.” (paraphrasing).
He was asked as a followup, “Is it still something of the future?”
Larry commented that he heard, “Does Second Life have a future?”  He believes it absolutely does, but it’s more of a mature technology though.  The future will not be as much Second Life as he may have once thought.  It’s an important technology, but it may not be more of the landscape than it currently is.

My thought was then and still is now that virtual environments simply are not going away, and they’ll be an increasing part of the online landscape as we move forward.  I agree with Larry in that the technology may move into the mainstream MUCH more slowly than early proponents thought it might.  For me, there’s three key aspects of virtual environments like Second Life. First, as Larry noted, the magic of the space is the co-location of individuals; the perception of presence of individual people together in the same space.  That’s not something the current, typical web interface and experience can duplicate.  Second, virtual environments like Second Life “bridge the gap” between game developers and those of us with other areas of expertise; it’s much more possible now for educators to create an immersive virtual experience than it ever has been.  Third, Larry commented that the content makes Second Life stand out from other environments; the quantity and quality of work being done in Second Life just doesn’t exist at the same scale on other platforms, currently.  Plus, in comparison to project solutions or endeavors within education or beyond, Second Life is relatively inexpensive by comparison to an order of magnitude of 5 to 10 times cheaper; it’s possible to build in Second Life what is not affordable through other solutions.  Finally, I personally believe the increasing availability of kinesthetic interfaces – like PS3 motion, Wii controllers, XBox Kinect – will eventually spur future use of virtual environments.

Land Prices, Education & Second Life

Conversation turned pretty quickly to the announcement shortly after SLCC that discount for education and non-profits will be eliminated beginning in January 2011.  Terry Beaubois commented that it’s a matter of the economic times; Linden Lab is going through economic difficulties as well.  Larry seconded that thought with additional commentary.  Linden has taken a pounding in the marketplace; they’ve basically given education a subsidy for six years.  There should not have been an expectation that we deserve or are entitled to it.  Reality is that we are consumers; if we’re paying for any sort of other utility – we’re paying same as everyone else.  Admittedly, many projects will be hurt or hampered by the price increase, but the big projects will survive; they have individuals who can find or obtain additional funding.  NMC has focused on funding the smaller projects – to allow them to survive.  NMC has made arrangements to allow them to commit to their prices for the next two years for their sub-lessees of SL islands.

Alternatives to Second Life

There’s not much doubt that Linden Lab’s announcement regarding the education discount has spurred migration off of Second Life and lead to exploration of other platforms – particularly OpenSim, HyperGrid Business.  Pathfinder Lester has started the Hypergrid Adventurers Club which explores different OpenSim grids and spaces via Hypergridding.  The NMC has had OpenSim for roughly 18 months plus Second Life Enterprise Server; they’re exploring different platforms.  However, in Larry’s opinion, OpenSim is about 3 years behind Second Life in terms of community, development and content.  The NMC has decided to remain in Second Life, “If I’m going to be in a virtual world, I’d prefer one with the most utility.  That’s here [in Second Life].”  There’s too many people doing too many things extremely well.  With all of that said, exploring platforms is certainly encouraged.  Fleep Tuque commented that she “would encourage anyone seriously involved in Second Life to run their own OpenSim . . . You really should do it.  It’s a tremendous learning opportunity.”  She provides a step by step guide for OpenSim installation.

Errata?

There was an interesting discussion regarding the value of “backchat” – the conversation beneath the conversation at conferences etc.  While that may be a separate post, I make two brief comments.  First, the back channel has become a critical part of the conference experience for me; if it’s not active or available, I find myself less engaged and more frustrated with a traditional presentation.  Second, I have witnessed and believe that projecting or disclosing the back channel as part of a presentation potentially chills the backchannel discussion; it’s a back channel; it does not want to be part of the main conversation – leave it alone – let it be the back channel.

My proposal was approved by committee this past January; I collected all pretest data in early February followed by all posttest data in late April, and I’ve been writing on the results since.  It’s taken quite a bit of time, but I think I’m nearing the end.  I have two manuscripts to finish revising and a third manuscript to write.  Once those are complete to my co/chairs’ satisfaction, I will be ready for my final defense.  I was hoping that would happen by the end of this Fall 2010 semester, but I’m not quite there yet.  So, I hope and plan for the final defense to be before Spring Break 2011 begins.

After that, I hope to be back in this space on a regular, at-least-weekly-basis – writing about educational technology and virtual environments.

Oh… The dissertation topic? Computer Literacy Skills of Community College Learners.  I gave a pretest and posttest administration of the IC3 Fast Track to an original sample of 500+ students.  In addition to the general results of computer literacy skills exhibited by this group of college learners, I looked at the effect of learner age – as both a continuous and as a categorical variable – on learner computer literacy skills.

As soon as a few formalities are taken care of, I will post a summary of results and provide links to documents.  The results will be available as an institutional report by the institution in which the study was conducted, and I am writing three manuscripts as the dissertation: a critical literature review and two research reports.

The Virtual Worlds Education Roundtable (VWER) is a weekly, global meeting of professionals interested in the use of Virutal Worlds in educational environments. Currently, the VWER meets every Thursday in Second Life at 4:30pm San Jac time.

The meeting this week was an open discussion by all attendees of the question, “Do we learn better in immersive environments? – including virtual worlds, games, etc.” Participants were invited to “bring any links to articles that support or refute this idea.” A full transcript of the meeting will be available online at the VWER website via the Transcripts link on the main menu.

Much of the discussion focused on the concept of immersion vs immersive vs engagement. Generally, there seemed to be consensus that virtual and immersive environments offer a great deal of potential. However, “immersive” environments do not guarantee immersive learning experiences. The key issue is the design of the learning experience.

One item mentioned in the meeting was the “no significant difference” literature regarding the comparison of distance/internet-based learning vs classroom instruction. Generally, researchers found no meaningful difference in the learning or performance of students in distance learning classrooms vs. brick and mortar classrooms. The same can be said of most technological innovations over the past century: radio-, TV-, film-, or audio/video conference- based instruction. Any difference in instructional effectiveness or “learning better” as the question of the day put it is going to lie in the design of the learning experience rather than in the medium in which it is delivered.

It is entirely possible to develop a non-immersive and unengaging learning experience in an immersive environment. Just because the environment may be “immersive” in some sense of the word does not mean a learning experience delivered in that space is also immersive, in the learning sense of the term.

The question becomes, “What design and instructional strategies for virtual environments facilitate more immersive learning experiences?”

Your thoughts?

First Issue. How does a college employee get the funds they need to make in world purchases?  How are those purchases tracked and documented?  The source of both questions is the need to avoid “a gift of public funds.”  Given the budget based on taxpayer dollars, a transfer of college funds to an individual prior to the purchase of any goods is not permitted; plus, the purchase of $Lindens, a virtual currency, isn’t exactly covered by current purchasing guidelines.  I know there’s a tremendous amount of gray area in which we could play – describing $Lindens as software to avoid the currency issue – however, approaching the implementation from an institutional perspective suggests we shouldn’t sidestep the issue or work in gray areas.

Second Issue. When a college developer or faculty member creates/builds items in world with the support of college funds, the college must retain ownership.  IF $Lindens are transferred to an individual representative of the college, any non-consumable byproduct of that transaction must remain the property of the college.  The intermediate, hands on solution is to ensure that all assets are transferred with full permissions to the college; problem is, what “is” the college within Second Life?  Further, that solution presents an administrative nightmare from an auditor’s perspective, and the “creator” of the item will, to my knowledge, still be listed as the original developer.

Solution. I believe one solution addresses both issues.  Purchase a custom, institutional surname from Linden Lab; any employees developing institutional resources with the support of college funds does so with an institutional surname account.  The college retains ownership of all accounts using the institutional name including access to the login credentials.  With that arrangement, the college never transfers funds to an individual – as Lindens$ or US$ – and any items developed begin and remain college intellectual property.

Since I originally started this post, I had the opportunity to chat with ChrisG Techsan (RL: Chris Gibson) of vTSTC in-world.  I learned that the Techsan name is in fact a custom, institutional surname purchased by TSTC, originally for use by their core Second Life development team for several of the reasons I mention above.  Namely, any items created using those accounts remain clearly identifiable in world as belonging to TSTC.  Other benefits of the institutional surname have been realized since then.  Many, but not all, faculty and staff use the institutional name, and it has become a marketing and identification tool.  Currently, however, learners are not issued institutional surname accounts.

Does your institution have an institutional surname?  How is it used and by whom?  If not, to your knowledge did your institution ever consider the option?  Why?

A useful tool regarding Second Life surnames is SLNameWatch.com: founded in May 2007., it is a database of the last names available for selection inside Second Life. Both currently available last names as well as “heritage” last names are tracked. Statistics are collected on the usage of the names, and the date span of their availability (provided they were released after May 2007).

An Architectural Plan for common/institutional areas (as opposed to parcels allocated for individual faculty use).  In the common area, we’d like a consistent appearance between structures for the virtual installation to appear as a coherent whole.  What’s the general architectural approach?  An affordance of Second Life is that we aren’t necessarily limited to conventional, contemporary architectural styles.  As we discussed ideas, I suggested two factors which should impact the decision: prim consumption and development cost.  The architectural plan should not consume excessive resources in terms of prims or development time/cost.

A Terraforming Plan impacts he layout, traffic flow and overall appearance and usability of the space, and looking at other builds, the terraforming may represent much of the character of the island and build (see Etopia Island as an example).  So, we believe terraforming decisions need to be made early on to have an idea of how that influences the rest of the space.  In addition to the topography, we’re considering the island geography and flora as well; Oregon Community College SL space chose terraform, flora and geography representative of the state, in a traditional/replica vein.  Ultimatley, the terraforming seems to the master layout and the architectural plan.

The Master Layout Plan considers how the island will be layed out and navigated.  For the initial build, we want to have a common/institutional area which is the official shared space of the institution, but we don’t want that to consume the entire primary vertical space.  So, we are going to divide the island into parcels to make space on the primary level available for individual faculty instructional projects.  Related to that and part of the master layout is the navigational elements: welcome center, footpaths, signage, teleport centers and automated tours.  For the navigational elements, I believe we’ll draw on the work of Jennings & Collins (2007) to inform our planning and decisions.

The Island Administration decisions probably are the most critical over the long term; we’ll be relying on consultation from the New Media Consortium regarding security and access, at least at the outset as we experience the learning curve; that consultation is included in the lease agreement for the space.  Additionally, we also will be addressing: project communication, island use scheduling, faculty parcel/project application process, island use tracking and project evaluation, purchasing guidelines/issues, acceptable use considerations, and general student use of and participation in developing the space.

I’m interested if your institution or group seemed to go through the same issues and/or identified them similarly.  Were there other issues you’ve addressed during an island planning process?  Was your process more or less defined?

I’ve read as much as I could find regarding the planning of an institutional Second Life presence, but I haven’t seen much about how *institutions* are approaching – internally – the planning and development process. If you have experience with various groups within your institution, I’d appreciate hearing about your experiences. Our experience may be nothing new, but I hope blogging about it may be helpful to others somewhere along the way.

Our advisory group includes roughly 11-13 representatives from each service area of the college which may or should be impacted by the institutional presence in Second Life. The purpose of the advisory group is to serve as a flexible oversight group that provides feedback to and generally approves the broad direction of any subcommittees; the bulk of day-to-day decisions, however, lies in the smaller committees. The advisory group includes what may be the usual suspects in a Second Life build: faculty, multimedia development and instructional design/technology. But, it also includes:

• Information Technology Services. We wanted and are getting direct support for installation, bandwidth, system compatibility, and other technical support issues. We’ve been discussing Second Life with at least one Director in the ITS group for 2+ years; we’ve worked to have open discussions, and we’ve had a healthy exchange and give and take during that time (that’s an entirely different post).
• Data/Web Development. This is a subgroup within ITS; however, we included a member of this team as well; as Second Life and the web continue to evolve – and perhaps merge – we may have increasing need to integrate the two. Having this group present may enable a public-facing Second Life project presence via our website in the short term and, hypothetically, something like a custom institutional account creation site for our faculty and students in the long term.
• Training. We have a small group of technical trainers that to this point have focused primarily on the business administration systems and MS Office; we hope that group will be branching out a bit in the near future in collaboration with the instructional technology group to provide training on a broader scope of applications, so we included that department in the advisory group.
• Student Services. Instead of approaching student services and development independently as we consider student interest areas frequently found on educational islands, we wanted to involve student services and development from the ground up. We’re hoping to engage that group in a manner similar to the instructional group by pursuing a student services project in the space.
• Marketing. We are willingly approaching the development of the island to include established branding and marketing strategies; I don’t expect we’ll be using the space as a marketing or recruiting tool per se, but we do want to make sure the space is definitively recognizable as belonging to our institution by matching the graphics, logos etc to those used in other areas. The Second Life space will be an extension of what we’re already doing rather than independent of it.
• Facilities. Our build likely won’t use the traditional/replica or traditional/mimic approaches I described in a previous post. We didn’t include our facilities group to help us define what our Second Life facilities should be or look like; given the different needs and capabilities of 7m tall, flying avatars that might actually be counterproductive. We do, however, have a recent bond issue passed which will bring to our physical campuses a number of new buildings; we’re hoping that our institution might leverage Second Life in the planning and development process of the physical buildings to be.
• Purchasing. We’re working closely with our purchasing group to try to define what has yet to be defined: procedures for managing the purchase of goods and services that are even less tangible than other technologies. I’ve yet to find an institution that has defined a process through which Lindens can legitimately be distributed to faculty and or students for use in Second Life to the benefit of the institution.

Currently, we have one smaller subcommitee: planning and development. This group, lead by the project manager, is much smaller and simpler. The decision makers on the committee include two faculty and a Dean that represent our three campuses, respectively. This group researches and makes decisions in the planning process by relying on the resources represented in the advisory committee: training, ITS, marketing etc. By consulting with those recognized representatives, by the time we reach a point at which we need general approval of the advisory group, we’re hoping that process will be a formality.

At your institution, What’s your experience? process? involvement?