JISC and virtual worlds

One of the noticeable elements of the recent snapshot survey was that JISC (the Joint Information Systems Committee) was funding several initiatives in this area. These include:

• The M3 project at the University of Southampton, one output of which will be ‘a set of demonstrator Second Life teaching activities and learner feedback presented as case studies.’
• The DELVE project at the Open University and the University of Nottingham, which will ‘evaluate a range of 3-D virtual learning spaces, immersive and non-immersive, realistic and non-realistic, with students, in order to propose models for a variety of pedagogical requirements.’
• The EMERGE project whose ‘primary aim is to support the creation of a sustainable community of practice (CoP) that will develop and exploit new emergent technologies (e.g. social software, pervasive computing) for use in educational settings.’
• Examining Intellectual Property Rights in virtual worlds.
• The MOOSE project at Leicester University, which will ‘investigate the scaffolding and processes needed to enable groups of students in Higher Education to establish their socialisation and engagement for more productive information and knowledge exchange and learning through the medium of online 3-D Multi User Virtual Environments using Second Life.’
• The PREVIEW project, which aims to ‘develop, deliver and test problem-based learning scenarios within virtual worlds.’
• The OpenHabitat project, partnered by Leeds Metropolitan and Oxford Universities and Kings College London,
• Various conference streams and presentations on the use of Second Life and other virtual worlds in UK academia.

There are other JISC-funded things in the pipeline which, all round, adds up to a significant chunk of commited research funding.

Rachel Bruce, the Programme Director of the JISC Information Environment, sent us some reflections on the JISC ethos towards virtual worlds:

I have to say I’m really glad that there is work on Second Life in our Innovation Programmes! Understanding how virtual worlds can be, and are being used in learning by creating simulations or immersive environments or even as a type of scenario planning/ testing environment for universities (even for service providers like JISC) seems important to me. Personally I really like the way in which something like Second Life can bring people together from all over the globe and think it begins to really show how virtual world technologies can support collaboration.

I see SL supporting a lot of the pedagogic practice that was really effective in our Digital Libraries in the Classroom projects; these projects were funded well before SL but they allowed collaboration between the US and UK and helped equip students with technical skills as well as experiencing a “surrogate” experience of a real life situation. So that’s my personal view. I know SL is not very accessible or scalable and there are problems with it on those counts, but it shows potential and I think it helps stretch the way people think.

In terms of JISC Policy we have funded some projects as part of the Users and Innovation programme. We haven’t specified SL, the programme is more interested in exploring the use of multi-user virtual environments generally, especially as a way to explore collaboration. I think we at JISC see virtual environments as something that can be used in a variety of ways and I wouldn’t be surprised it’s use emerged in other JISC programmes. There’s definitely a view that SL and other environments should be explored further. I think this is only the beginning.

VWW looks forward to following the progress of these projects and seeing what deliverables and findings they produce.