Peter Miller response for snapshot #9
Contributions to snapshot #9 are coming in – feel free to add your 2p’s worth if you want. One of the first responses was from Peter Miller of the University of Liverpool. Here’s his response:
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1. What are you doing in virtual worlds? Teaching, learning, research, publicity, and/or anything else?
This past year I’ve used Second Life to teach microbial bioinformatics for the second time though the subject matter was significantly changed (from cell wall defences in Gram-negatives to an analysis of homologous genes in mycobacterial species). I also supervised an undergraduate project that involved the student constructing a build themed on the cell wall of Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Finally, I gave a Masters group a brief introduction that was intended to give them some idea of what it would be like to attend a conference in a virtual world.
2. Going well? Not? Want to say why?
My general impression of the bioinformatics sessions is that there is a minority of students that really likes this kind of thing but that I still need to make the experience less bumpy for the majority. Fortunately there seem to be very few that absolutely hate it. Given that this year was radically different in content and approach from the previous one (e.g. different topic, greater emphasis on teamwork), I thought the end-result was sufficiently good to justify running a streamlined version of the same sessions next year.
The (much longer) project seemed to go reasonably well. I personally liked the way the student became largely independent and we had some good conversations, both online and offline, about subject content and design issues as well as the mechanics of building.
Sadly, the Masters group session suffered from some scheduling issues (the class ended up being run multiple times) and coincided with the introduction of the new viewer which also caused some problems. Most of the students were, however, reasonably proficient in basic navigation by the end of the single session. That said, I don’t think the implementation, however well-intentioned, hit the intended target. With the benefit of hindsight, it would have been much better just to have facilitated some kind of actual conference inworld. Obvious really.
3. Money is tight. The ‘golden age’ of education money may be ending. How are you getting funded? How do you think your virtual world activities will be funded in the future?
As of the end of May, I am no longer supported by the University Library but I have managed to locate some residual teaching monies and this, together with the financial support normally afforded project students, should suffice for one more year. Sadly, I don’t do enough teaching inworld to warrant funding as “infrastructure”. I am, however, hoping to share the island with a US educator who will be contributing funds that will enable continuation for a further year, i.e. two in total. Her subject interest meshes well with my current teaching so there is potential for synergistic interaction, including running a meeting involving both student groups. I hope this comes off as I see this type of subject-level collaboration as the future in the absence of any direct support locally, at least in the short term.
4. Long distance travel is increasingly precarious. Ash, strikes and airlines going under ground flights. Travel is expensive (even in the UK with extortionate train fares) and takes up a lot of time. Virtual Worlds could, possibly, be used instead of many workshops, conferences, meetings et al. Your thoughts on this? And how do virtual worlds such as Second Life stack up against other event-replacing media such as Elluminate and Skype?
I attend a lot of remote meetings and conferences via SL and find it very convenient and much less fraught than it used to be. A number of the Masters students, however, were less than enthused about the lack of facial feedback from avatars and, I suspect, also begrudged the loss of the opportunity to network in person as well as visit new and exciting real-life places.
I have relatively little experience of Elluminate — my recollection is that it didn’t seem to engender as good a backchannel and, of course, there was negligible sense of shared presence. If I’m speaking, I do like to rez things as well as show slides and that seemed to go down reasonably well at the Virtual Worlds Best Practice in Education talk I gave.
5. Second Life. Using just that, or considering other virtual worlds? If so, why?
I’m only anticipating using SL for the coming year though, if time permits, I will have a look at some of the alternatives. Some further ruminations under Q.9.
6. Problems with universities blocking access to Second Life. Is anyone still having that, or are we over it now?
Never had that problem.
7. Handling large numbers of students in virtual worlds simultaneously i.e. more than 30. Do you have experience of this? How did it go?
The Masters class was more than 30 but I was forced to schedule that into smaller groups anyway so the inworld supervision was not a major issue.
8. What do you think of the new Second Life viewer, both the UI / usability changes and the new functionality it enables (e.g. media on a prim)?
I do agree with the Linden Lab notion of simplifying the initial experience and I think the web browser-like features are an improvement, albeit somewhat reminiscent of the earlier OnRez viewer. The sidebar and communications aspects are less well implemented but hopefully they will be improved in the next release. I am very enthusiastic about shared media and will be talking on that topic at our local Learning & Teaching conference. I am hoping that it will go some way to simplifying aspects of what I currently teach although I do see some issues, not least legibility as well as lack of synchrony between different users seeing the same media prim unless you are using special apps.
9. Do you have a view on the new Second Life Terms of Service conditions and ownership rights which are creating a bit of a hoo-hah in some quarters? Do you think it will affect you? Does it matter in the grand scheme of things?
I don’t think it has changed my views and intentions significantly, given that I was never anticipating migrating my builds (or, more to the point, anyone else’s) to other worlds. I do create quite a lot of content from scratch so the option is there for some of it; anything computationally intensive is handled by an external server anyway. Ultimately I suspect I would be able to migrate to an OpenSim world reasonably easily provided it had decent scripting performance — that can’t be far off now.
That said, I have no idea whether I will ultimately end up in OpenSim or somewhere completely different. If the University was suddenly to endorse a.n.other non-OpenSim virtual world, I would do my best to support that, possibly for new developments in the first instance. That means that I most likely wouldn’t abandon SL; I see it as the metaverse hub for some years to come.
