Feb 19

Southampton Solent University in Second Life: library update

People, Reports No Comments »

A short update from Mary Hudson and Alison Williams, for the current snapshot, on library developments in Second Life at Southampton Solent University:

+ + + + +

Solent Life 2 is the Library area of the 3 part Solent Life island developed for Southampton Solent University. It was developed by the Business Librarians as part of a funded project. In late 2009 a training session was organised for all interested library staff to learn more about Second Life and Solent Life in particular. 10 attended and our Learning Technologist trainer, took us through Virtual Ability for basic orientation and into Solent Life. As a result we can now offer multi-subject library and information skills support in Second Life and we look forward to meeting and working with a wider range of students and academic staff in there this year.

We hope to arrange follow up meetings and visits to keep everyone’s skills going and to keep interest in the site alive.

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Jan 26

Second Life PhD thesis of Dr Aleks Krotoski

News, People, Reports, Social media, Videos, Worlds 1 Comment »

Social Influence in Second Life: Social Network and Social Psychological Processes in the Diffusion of Belief and Behaviour on the Web

The PhD thesis, under a Creative Commons licence, of Dr Aleks Krotoski is available through her website; there’s some interesting wordles on there as well. Go here:

http://alekskrotoski.com/post/academic-dissertation—social-influence-in-second-life-social-n

(Shortened URL) http://is.gd/75yo9

Aleks's PhD thesis wordle

(It was thanks to Aleks showing me around Second Life several years ago that I had the ‘Aha!’ moment, so without her there may not have been a Virtual World Watch and accompanying snapshots.)

Aleks is a media and Internet journalist for The Guardian, and a presenter on what many regard as the best TV programme on video games to date (BITS). She twitters, and is also the presenter of The Virtual Revolution, the forthcoming BBC series about the Web:

You need to a flashplayer enabled browser to view this YouTube video

Dec 12

Activity snapshot #7 (Winter 2009)

Reports, Surveys, VWW 4 Comments »

This report is available in PDF format.

Summary

From input to this and previous snapshots, plus background research, institutional website searches and anecdotes, it is evident that every UK university except one (the University of the Highlands and Islands) has members of staff who have developed, or are developing, something in a virtual world – though that ‘something’, and the use and educational relevance of it, varies extremely widely.

This snapshot includes input from new respondents. In addition, several academics who are at the early stages of using virtual worlds chose not to report for this snapshot (and will hopefully do so for the next one).

Overall, the picture is one of more virtual world activity in UK academia than in previous years. Several universities, such as Edinburgh and the Open University, are into their third or fourth year of using Second Life and an academic development community continues to grow, though steadily rather than quickly.

As the snapshots reflect only what is reported to us, rather than giving a comprehensive overview, caution has to be taken in comparing activity by subject area. However, some subject domains do appear to be making more use of virtual world technology than others. The biological, health and medical sectors, in particular, make up a large proportion of virtual world activity in UK academia.

Language learning, patient treatment, computer science, health and safety, and art, performance and design stand out as subjects where several institutions are actively using virtual worlds in teaching. Academics in a range of more specific subject areas, such as criminal detection, electrical engineering and midwifery, have used virtual worlds in their teaching.

All 13 of the JISC Regional Support Centres responded to the snapshot survey request for information. The picture they present is of virtual world use being much more isolated and infrequent in further education (FE) than in higher education (HE). Institutional technical barriers and support are still major issues for further education staff. Where institutions have overcome these, substantive virtual world developments have occurred.

The RSCs themselves are providing support in different ways, e.g. events, forming a national coordination grouping, and levering the experience of HE institutions to support FE colleges. Across the 13 regions, staff hold widely differing views on the effectiveness of virtual worlds in education.

As with all previous snapshots, Second Life is the predominant virtual world of choice. Having said that, OpenSim is being mentioned by more respondents than in previous snapshot surveys, though actual implementations in UK academia remain few and far between.

This is the fourth academic year covered by an Eduserv virtual world snapshot, as the first one covered the tail-end of the 2006–07 session. While cases of virtual world use in academia have steadily risen, evaluations and evidence of their effectiveness has been fragmented and low-key. Though the same observation could be leveled at many other technologies – take a bow, Virtual Learning Environments – used in education.

Many academics – possibly a significant majority – are still wary, sceptical or openly hostile to virtual world use in education. More visible proof of where it works may swing the more open-minded of them. With the mass of teaching and research activity currently under way in higher education, it’s only reasonable to hope for more (and better) evaluations, and clarity concerning where virtual worlds can be put to good use and where not. For proof, evidence, data and convincing arguments, 2009 to 2010 feels like the year of virtual world expectation.

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Oct 19

Choosing virtual worlds for use in teaching and learning in UK higher education

Reports 8 Comments »

This report is available in PDF format.

Summary

Virtual World Watch asked previous respondents to snapshot reports – UK university and college academics who develop and use virtual worlds – what worlds they used and why they chose them. Second Life and OpenSim were mentioned or used by most respondents.

Second Life is attractive due to its constant development over six years, there is no need to acquire a server or significant local technical support, the large community of experienced practitioners, and the variety of already-created objects and structures that can be quickly re-used cheaply or for free.

OpenSim is attractive because, compared to Second Life, ‘land’ does not carry the same expense, there are fewer security issues, there is no dependence on a single commercial vendor, and it is easier to configure how private your environment is; content can also be ported from Second Life.

Apart from Second Life and OpenSim, over a dozen other virtual worlds or environments were mentioned; of these Metaplace and Forterra’s OLIVE appeared to pique more interest and use, from an educational perspective, than the others. Some respondents had examined a range of virtual worlds. Sensibly, organisations such as St Andrews University are examining these from the perspective of the educational or project requirements, rather than the attributes of the particular virtual worlds.

Several respondents contributed their criteria lists (given in this report) for evaluating virtual worlds. A few are creating or using more complex frameworks: the Open University, for example, is developing a matrix of virtual world needs containing around 70 weighted criteria.

However, examining just one virtual world from the perspectives of teaching, learning, build, functionality, security, stability and many other criteria of importance to academics is not a trivial operation. Consequently:

  1. Some academics, though they would like to examine more virtual worlds, tend to default to examining just one or two options due to a lack of time/resource. Usually, Second Life or OpenSim is one or both of these.
  2. Many UK universities are, independently of each other, examining a range of virtual worlds. This time- and resource-consuming operation results in a significant amount of duplicated activity across the sector.

Recommendations

  1. It would assist other academics in making a more informed choice, and reduce the significant amount of duplicated activity across UK higher and further education, if institutions would rapidly disseminate their virtual world comparative findings. As virtual worlds are being developed at an extremely fast pace, the traditional academic timeline for dissemination is of no use; a matter of weeks, rather than months or later, and such information becomes outdated.
  2. A number of similar responses indicate a common need for an OpenSim – or similar – platform for current and prospective virtual world users and developers in UK higher education who do not have server and technical resources. As well as providing a low-cost environment with relatively high (and configurable) security and privacy, such an option provides a ‘back-up solution’ for previous and ongoing work created in worlds such as Second Life. Whether this could, or should, be provided by an academic institution or consortium, or by a technology services company, is a debatable point; ReactionGrid appears to go someway towards this requirement.
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Sep 17

End of summer and future reports

Events, Reports, Surveys, VWW No Comments »

You can see what reports are coming up, as funded by Eduserv, over the next 6 months; these are nicely spread out to allow enough time to collect data from the increasing number of virtual world activities in UK academia.

Immersive

As ever, Virtual World Watch is collecting data on teaching and learning activities in the UK Higher and Further Education sector in virtual worlds. And we want to stress; although Second Life is still by far the most-used such ‘world’ for this application, we are interested in the use of other ‘worlds’ as well. Any such information would be warmly received.

Virtual World Watch will be participating in the JISC e-Learning online conference 09 event towards the end of November, and will also be at the Learning Innovation National Workshop earlier that same month in Coventry. If you are interested in VWW speaking at your event or to your crowd, then get in touch.

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Jun 22

Early summer 2009 snapshot

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The early summer 2009 snapshot of virtual world activity in UK HE and FE is now available in PDF format.

Executive summary

Second Life (SL) was launched on June 23rd, 2003, making it nearly six years old. Virtual worlds such as SL are therefore not ‘new’. This is apparent when noticing the growing number of UK universities who are into their second or third year of teaching and learning using this technology.

Second Life remains, by far, the ‘virtual world of choice’ for academics in UK universities and colleges. Though OpenSim is mentioned by a minority of vocal academics, the number of non-SL uses and investigations across UK academia is still a small fraction of the SL uses. This does not mean, of course, that Linden Labs should remain confident, or that academics should focus solely/blindly on Second Life. Though well developed (and well used) in academia over the past half-decade, SL still throws up a number of technical, administrative and logistical hurdles for academic practitioners and their institutions.

Second Life in particular is being used in a very wide range of teaching and learning activities. The number of students who take part in these activities varies wildly from just a few to over a hundred in several cases.

A core of universities, most significantly the Open University, Edinburgh and Coventry, have many groups, courses and departments using virtual worlds as a central technology for teaching and learning activities, e.g.

“Virtual worlds have become a core technology for our teaching, learning, research and collaboration.” – Fiona Littleton, Virtual Worlds Development Adviser, University of Edinburgh.

Other universities, such as Lancaster, Teesside, Southampton Solent, Glasgow Caledonian and Strathclyde, are also developing a significant virtual world presence, e.g.

“Lancaster University’s long term plans are grand. We are laying the ground work for more courses to be taught, more students to have access and more research to be conducted.” – Michele Ryan, Department of Management Learning & Leadership, Lancaster University.

Some universities, such as Glasgow, Oxford and Cambridge, report little or no virtual world development, though investigation often shows more activity than is being stated in some of these institutions. Activity in further education remains difficult to quantify, locate or obtain clear information on (this is becoming a long-term problem with the snapshot series).

Trends, especially subject areas of use, are becoming clearer. The academic health and medical science sector in particular has a disproportionate number of virtual world activities. This could be because the subject matter lends itself more easily to such development, and also due to the (relative) ease of funding for such applications. For example, hands-on maternity and birthing simulations have been developed in several UK universities (Coventry, Nottingham, Teesside and Worcester). The full experience is especially difficult to convey in mere textual words, and the author of this report recommends trying one out as a good introduction to the experience of learning in virtual worlds.

Other emerging subject areas where there are several instances of virtual world use include health and safety, art and design, and computer science. However, none of these exhibit anything near the activity of the health and medical sector in its use of Second Life. Fewer academics are complaining about technical issues, such as equipment and Second Life viewer update access in universities. This reduction is most likely due to a combination of some academics giving up in ‘unfertile’ institutions, whilst other institutions are now more supportive of virtual world activities.

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Feb 17

Virtual World use in HE/FE (Spring 09)

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The Spring 2009 snapshot report is available online for viewing and download.

Summary

This report is the fifth in a series of snapshots of virtual world activity in UK higher and further education. It is the first to be conducted under the umbrella of Virtual World Watch (VWW). VWW and the previous snapshots are funded by Eduserv and supported by the Eduserv Foundation.

Questionnaire data for this snapshot began to be collected at the end of December 2008. Several staff within the JISC Regional Support Centres provided additional information; together with monitoring mailing lists, ‘soft’ information from contacts and searches of the web and Second Life, this contributed to a more rounded picture of virtual world activity in UK academia than was achieved in earlier snapshots. However, this report focuses on the 54 valid responses to the survey questionnaire.

Four main geographical clusters of academic Second Life activity have emerged in the UK:

• Edinburgh: the University of Edinburgh and nearby Heriot-Watt University.
• Milton Keynes: the Open University.
• The West Midlands: Coventry and the nearby universities of Birmingham City and Warwick.
• Leeds: the universities of Leeds and Leeds Metropolitan, and Leeds Art and Design College.

A number of universities, such as Lancaster, Southampton, Teesside and the West of England, have seen Second Life developments and teaching across several departments, and there is evidence that nearly every UK university is using Second Life to some extent for development or teaching work. However, in further education colleges the picture is more sparse, with evidence of development and student activity in a minority and little or no evidence of activity in the rest.

Eighteen uses of virtual worlds in UK higher and further education were identified, each described in several survey responses. Learning and teaching activities predominated, with these supporting many subject areas; however, the medical sciences, mathematics and art and design were mentioned more often than others. Simulations, the visualisation of complex structures and safety role-play were also described by several academic respondents.

Many universities are studying the use of virtual worlds – mainly Second Life – in education. There does appear to be a large amount of duplicated research in this activity. Some are using virtual worlds in courses about e-learning, while others are teaching staff how to use these environments to best effect.

Second Life remains the virtual world of choice for learning, teaching and research in UK academia. However, a cluster of universities, groups and lone academics are starting to experiment with OpenSim as an alternative.

Respondents to the survey reported mixed attitudes to the use of virtual worlds from both students and peers; however the large majority of respondents said they planned to do further virtual world learning and teaching in the next year.

The practice of solely creating an exact reproduction of the university campus in Second Life is now somewhat rare. Most institution-wide, in-world campuses make fuller use of available virtual world resources, for example providing teaching facilities for departments and courses, and exhibition spaces for student work.

Thank you

Thank you to the many people who responded to the survey, or passed on the details.

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Oct 17

‘Second Life is not the only fruit’

Reports, VWW, Worlds 2 Comments »

Virtual World Watch and the Eduserv Foundation are pleased to release the latest snapshot of virtual world activity in UK Higher and Further Education.

The report can be downloaded in PDF format. Feel free to pass it on to anyone who may be interested; cheers.

Summary
This is the first snapshot survey where a significant number of respondents were supported by external, often research-based funding. The spread of funding sources is diverse, including national sources (JISC are mentioned by several respondents), European funding and non-academic sources. Of the other respondents, the majority had institutional support, e.g. from central funds, the department, or a Pro-Vice Chancellor’s fund; such funding is sometimes multi-departmental in nature.

Many respondents had either carried out some kind of teaching and learning activity, or were planning such events for the new academic year. These included collaborative learning and design, seminars, workshops, tutorials and induction courses. Several lecturers and supervisors were using Second Life to hold tutorials, or communicate with remote undergraduate or PhD students. A significant number of universities are carrying out research as to the effectiveness of using Second Life especially in teaching and learning.

Some, but not all, teaching and learning activities were assessed, with no particular method of assessment being predominant. Positive benefits were mentioned by the majority, such as student skill acquisition, ease of communication and the ability to meet peers one would otherwise not meet. Problems such as the amount of work required to run in-world sessions were also reported.

As with previous snapshots, the two issues of obtaining funding for virtual world development, teaching and learning, and technical problems, predominated. Several respondents indicated a need for guides and tutorials, as well as a ready-to-use ‘kit’ of high quality, education-specific resources.

The general reaction of peers and academics to virtual worlds seems to have improved over time. More respondents reported largely positive, or a mixed, attitude locally and in the wider university sector. Some academics who were previously cautious or negative about the use of virtual worlds in education become more positive after using the technology, or seeing the benefits. Funding for research and virtual world projects has also had a positive effect on academic attitudes.

Looking ahead, most respondents who chose to answer thought that virtual worlds were more likely to be a ‘mainstream’ feature of UK education, rather than a ‘niche’ or ‘novelty’. However, several of these respondents felt this would be a gradual long-term development over several years.

Many respondents had used, or were considering examining, virtual worlds and online environments other than Second Life. A dozen such applications were cited. Of these three were mentioned by far the most: Google Lively, Wonderland and OpenSim. Lively was found to be disappointing in terms of education-relevant functionality, Wonderland had considerable communication potential, and OpenSim had attractive options for creating a closed virtual environment.

This theme, that Second Life is not the only option for teaching, learning and other educational activities in virtual environments, will be explored in future snapshots and activities of Virtual World Watch.

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May 22

Second Life use in Higher and Further Education

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The report is available in PDF format.

Summary

The number of UK academics who are developing or operating teaching and learning resources in Second Life (SL) has grown rapidly in the last year. While an accurate figure is difficult to determine (partially due to the non-public nature of some developments), as a rough estimate some three-quarters of UK universities are actively developing or using SL, at the institutional, departmental and/or individual academic level. Of these, many institutions support several ongoing SL developments, often involving groups of people rather than individuals. However, the proportion of UK FE institutions actively using SL was much smaller.

Many of these developments are funded internally, with staff often donating significant amounts of their own time. There have been a few heavily over-subscribed sources of funding for SL work in the last academic year; feedback indicates a need for more resources and funding opportunities. To quote:

Funders are always welcome. That’s the question I am asked most at my seminars and workshops – ‘where can I look for funding?

An increasing body of academics are reporting substantial use of their SL developments, and successes in teaching and learning activities. Measuring the usage of these developments tends to be through raw visitor statistics or informal feedback, though a few academics teaching in Second Life use more rigorous evaluation techniques.

Academics who have successfully developed in SL report that their host institution and technical services are largely supportive, though with the latter there are often problems with firewalls, PC capability and enabling voice functionality. Academics report varied reactions to SL from colleagues, ranging from interest and curiosity to suspicion and “hatred”. Unlike their US counterparts, UK academic libraries are not significantly involved in SL activities.

Academics described a very wide range of SL activities spanning teaching, learning, research, performance, construction and demonstration. The key advantage of SL in teaching and learning is that there are many activities in which the student must be more than a passive learner in order to progress. The student has to develop “stuff”, collaborate and participate. Before these can occur, he or she has to master a new and transferable skill set, meaning that, in SL, learning is done more by participating and doing than by listening and absorbing.

Though use of SL in UK HE/FE is growing, many academics are not “welded” to it, being aware of its deficiencies and open to moving to alternative virtual environments, especially open source and more localised versions, in the future.

Overall, and perhaps not surprisingly, the three most mentioned requirements of UK academic SL developers are:

  • more funding opportunities
  • more time to develop
  • better technical facilities within SL, or a viable alternative environment
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Mar 03

Measuring the impact of Second Life for educational purposes

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The report about this question is available as a PDF file.

Summary

In late 2007, the following question was asked to UK academics known for developing, or teaching, in Second Life.

I have a question. How can (if it can) the “impact” of using SL for educational purposes such as an in-world seminar or tutorial, over not using SL, be “measured” or quantified?

I’m currently a little stumped on this. For the next “snapshot”, I want to focus more on the “impact”. In other words, to come up with more proof or evidence that using SL has some benefits, or positive advantages, over not using SL or using some other practice.

How to do this in a form of questions has me stumped :-(

This report contains a collection of informal responses to the question.

The Eduserv Foundation facilitated a meeting, on their island in Second Life, for further discussion on this issue. This took place on 23rd January 2008 at 4pm, and lasted some 90 minutes.

The question put to the meeting was:

How can the use of SL to engender learning best be assessed?

The transcript of the meeting is provided in the report. The transcript is also available in a separated and colour-coded format online: http://sleeds.org/chatlog/?c=219

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