Bex Ferriday: Cornwall College in Second Life
While waiting for the proofreader to do whatever he’s doing (hopefully proofreading), VWW is putting up a few more of the submissions that came in for snapshot #9.
Despite the suspicions of some virtual world sceptics – and fanatics – VWW takes a neutral view on the use of virtual worlds in education; we say what we see, and what others do – both positive and negative. Here’s Bex Ferriday, the lead teacher of the school of education and training at Cornwall College with a downbeat submission about their Second Life prospects, in this age of austerity.
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What are you doing in virtual worlds? Teaching, learning, research, publicity, and/or anything else?
Still managing Cornwall College Island in Second Life – and have just been given some land for Cornwall College to develop on the Education Grid. At the moment everything just seems to have ground to a halt and I am, quite honestly, at a loss as to what to do about it. Pockets of activity are evident: the Foundation Degree in Arts and Media group are displaying their work on the island and their tutor wants to write a new module for the course that involves mandatory use of Second life, and the RaPAL group meet there regularly. I have just delivered an introductory teacher training course using moodle, Second Life and web 2.0 elements such as wikis and blogs and hope to deliver a second course soon – but cannot see when I will find time. The college has suffered crippling funding cuts, and has had to make a percentage of staff redundant, so with so many people bearing the burden of others’ job losses (by taking on departed colleagues jobs on top of their own), there is no time to indulge in what are seen as ‘luxury’ items such as Second Life.
Going well? Not? Want to say why?
Honestly? Not going well at all. The island is seldom used – we were featured in the Second Life Destination Guide and were getting 50 visitors or more a day – and many keep returning to this very day – but not for the educational aspects of the island. They return because they want to hang out in virtual Cornwall, listen to the seagulls, drink Scrumpy, eat virtual pasties and hang out on the beach – which is still a marvellous thing! Cornwall College has had frighteningly big funding cuts to make in the next academic year(s), so many members of staff have been made redundant. Those who remain are working harder and have even less time than before to learn about new technologies.
The whole ’18 and over’ thing still weighs heavy too; as an FE college, every classroom will have cohorts of students under the age of 18 (even on occasion, specialty designated HE classrooms), which means that IT Services will not allow Second Life to be installed ‘freely’ in any classroom. If it’s not available in any classroom, only available to staff if they request firewalls to be changed on their office machines, but staff have less time than before to dabble in anything new – let alone something STILL seen as a virtual ‘knocking shop’…then what hope do we have?!!!
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?
Our tenancy runs out in February 2011. We will have no choice but to abandon the island to Linden Labs. That’s going to be a very sad day indeed. And it’s not because of funding really – though we have had massive budget cuts, if the island was ‘earning its keep’ then money would and could be found to keep it going. The honest truth is that the island remains a glorious representation of the geography, geology, history and folklore of Cornwall – but as an educational establishment remains virtually unused.
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 see huge potential in using Second Life as a meeting place, and Cornwall College Island’s most successful usage has been based around just that. I am more than happy for educational groups from all over the world to use the island as a meeting place, and the RaPAL (Research and Practice in Adult Literacy) group recently held two pre-conference meetings there to talk about digital literacy. Skype seems to be the medium of choice for one to one meetings and tutorials, but for larger meet-ups or discussions (the RaPAL group now use the island on the first Monday of every month to hold informal discussion groups) Second Life seems to be a better option. The fact that people from around the globe can meet up without travelling, saving time, money and shoe leather seems to be a glaringly obvious reason why Second Life should be used as a meeting place – I just wish I could convince others to see it the same way!
Second Life. Using just that, or considering other virtual worlds? If so, why?
Currently just using Second Life – but have been given some free land on the education grid (set up by the Immersive Education Group). It seems clear that because of increasingly tight budgets and, more importantly, the lack of use that Cornwall College has had, the only way to move forward in to have free land and start again, on a smaller scale. I really don’t want to give up – I see real benefits to using virtual worlds in education – but in the economic climate I can see no other option.
Problems with universities blocking access to Second Life. Is anyone still having that, or are we over it now?
Anyone who wants Second Life installed on their machine has to ask my permission; then, I have to ring IT services to have the user’s firewall settings changed remotely, enabling them to install and use the Second Life client. This is not going to change. This has to be a big reason why Second Life has not taken off at Cornwall College: the expectation that the only way to access it is at home along with the the fact that staff can use Second Life on their office and staff room machines but not in the classrooms.
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)?
The same people who raved about how brilliant the new viewer was were exactly the same people who, within a week, had gone back to using ‘Emerald’, complaining that the new viewer was awful. I love the media on a prim element – this opens the door for a much more interactive and immersive experience for users / students. The new viewer isn’t as user-friendly as the previous version – or Emerald, which I do admit to having installed on one of my machines – but with every upgrade the experience gets a little better.
