(Another) Southampton University Second Life update

Yes, they’re busy people down there on the south coast of England. Here’s an update, for snapshot #8, from Fiona Grindey from a few weeks back on what she and her team are doing down there.

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Status Quo (not Rockin’ all over the world – or are we?)


So far we have maintained the position we were in back in 08/09 – we have five projects running in Second Life on our University Island. The island has a low profile, which serves two purposes. The island is split into an area for ‘University’ brand type activity (ie recruitment) and the second level which is for academic projects. The whole island is managed and owned by Communications and the projects are run by Fiona Grindey (Education Development Adviser with the Learning and Teaching Enhancement Unit) – I work with the professional services and the faculties across the University to make sure that they all keep going.

So we have not expanded, we are waiting for the projects to complete so that there is feedback to guide us on the future uses of Second Life. So far, it does seem that there is reluctance to take anything forward as there seems to be such a learning curve to get into the software in the first place. Also, the technology does form such a barrier on a massive network such as the one we operate. So for example, just this week, I tried to test a machine to do a little bit of training and the machine said that an update was required and that I was unable to do it as I did not have admin rights for that machine. That type of thing becomes a huge problem when all the University desktop machines (in all common learning spaces) have Second Life installed on them. Each time a user logs in, the installation begins, and this means that they would all be calling our IT people at the same time. The issue of the update isn’t insurmountable, but its another barrier for educators to have to get over.

OpenSim seems like something that we will have to consider when we don’t have the funding to support Second life. I hope that this is something that many of us will try, as I can see the benefit of using VW’s for education and research and doing it via open source seems a better way forward. I have heard a few horror stories about ReactionGrid and OpenSim but I heard them about Second Life and just see it as part of the learning curve!

One new development, our local JISC RSC (South-East) has offered us space on their Community Island, and so we are going to take them up on that. We can transfer some of the objects that we haven’t been able to use onto the island so that the projects can complete – this gives us time so we can make any transition to other VW’s easier. One thing I am hoping for is that we can use a Second Life type virtual world within a browser – no fussing around with updates etc. Then the easier it is to use, the less hassle and we all win.