How many UK universities are active in virtual worlds?

A question in from an academic this lunchtime. It’s a recurring question, so blogging the answer:

Can you, from the top of your head, tell me how many universities in the UK were active in virtual worlds when you started the snapshots & how many do so now?

1. When the snapshots started, three years ago (summer 2007), VWW found 41 UK universities who were ‘active’.

2. Now (summer 2010), it is all of them.

3. It is important to define ‘active’. In this context, it means some kind of development work in virtual worlds has taken place. In some instances, at one extreme, this is a lone academic, working at home as his or her university blocks access to e.g. Second Life. In other instances, it happens at the institution, as part of a team, department or group, or is university wide. The general trend is (slowly) moving towards the latter cases.

4. It’s also important to note that VWW has never been aware of all the activities of UK academia in virtual worlds. For several reasons it’s impossible to get a comprehensive overview, so you can take numbers as underestimates.

[More] An expansion on answer 2, as requested by comment 1.

There are many levels of activity within institutions, including (but not limited to):

• University-wide, multi-departmental, everyone buying in or having the option of buying in
• Departments or groups maintaining islands for teaching
• Research teams using virtual worlds, or studying them
• Lone researchers, working openly in their department with virtual worlds
• Lone researchers working at home “below the radar” (there can be many reasons, not just technical, for this)

There can be more than one of these within the same institution – or department. In fact there are specific cases where, in the same university department, some academics teaching using virtual worlds, while others work at home “below the radar”. Therefore, a 2D linear scale of universities usage of virtual worlds is tricky to do (though, perhaps not impossible).

Looking at spreadsheets of previous responses, VWW would estimate that in a third to a half of UK universities, the virtual world activity consists of one or several lone researchers i.e. a very small number of people, either using virtual worlds openly or at home, for work purposes. It’s also very likely that there are other ‘lone researchers’ in these institutions who are doing things that are undetected.

It’s in the other half to two-thirds of universities where more ‘joined-up’ virtual world development, use and collaboration is taking place.