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Like the death of Second Life and virtual worlds in education, the apparent or hailed end of Virtual World Watch is premature

Version 5 of snapshot 10 (making it #10.5) will go live on here on Monday May 14th, at the same time as a few new things on this website, and out of date stuff is deleted. That version of #10 will be in PDF format only, will contain the accepted submissions from last winter (all of which are on here) if you go through back entries, as well as some much more up to date information on UK academic virtual world activities.

That will pretty much mark five years that, in some form and on and off, Virtual World Watch has been peering at what some academics on this island (and Northern Ireland) have been doing with Second Life, OpenSim, Wonderland, Blue Mars, Kitely, and some of the other virtual worlds. I don’t think a month has gone by in that time without some academic or educational commentator saying “The virtual world [in education] is dead”. Hmmmm.

Snapshot #10.5 – Zombies Can’t Fly: The continued use of virtual worlds in UK education will be here on 14/5/12. Some of this website won’t work between then and now, due to stuff being deleted and the URL format being changed.

The updated snapshot will also contain an update on the future plans of Virtual World Watch, and an answer to Evelyn McElhinney’s tweet. Here’s a picture of the old front cover:

Toodle pip,
John Kirriemuir
Virtual World Watch

Abstract

In the context of the UoH, a Higher Education Institution in England, this study investigates academic staff’s perceptions of Second Life (SL) as an educational tool within the Faculty of Health and Social Care (FHSC). By looking into lecturers perceptions of SL, the work explores the benefits and challenges to academic staff in using SL in professional nursing and midwifery training, and assesses their potential engagement of this as a teaching resource.

The main aim was to identify the knowledge base of staff and whether the application of the SL method could be embedded into the curriculum to enhance teaching and learning. The results showed that academic staff sometimes confuse SL with other so-called web 2.0 technologies. However, they do recognise that SL can be a useful resource to bridge the gap between theory and practice in pre-registration nursing and midwifery training. Other key issues such as online identity, being able to deal with the unpredictable during an in-world class, and information and communication technology (ICT) skills may also have an impact on academics’ perceptions and adoption of SL.

This research brings to light the importance that student nurses and midwives initially need to be able to practise their clinical skills in a safe environment where they are not putting patients or themselves at risk, and that although an immersive environment like SL could bridge this gap, implementing such a system is complex.

Dissertation

The full dissertation can be read or downloaded from:

http://is.gd/PerceptionsOfSL

Abstract

This thesis explores participants’ experiences of presence in virtual worlds as a specific case of mediated environments, and the factors that support that experience of presence, with the aim of developing practice when using these technologies in learning and teaching. The thesis begins with a framework that was created to bring together concepts from a range of disciplines that describe presence and factors that contribute to presence. Organising categories within the framework were drawn from a blend of Activity Theory and Communities of Practice.

Five case studies in Second Life (preceded by a pilot study employing webconferencing) were conducted in order to investigate learners’ experiences in these environments. Qualitative and quantitative data were gathered from these cases. The data from the separate cases were analysed using a cross-case synthesis and the role of presence, and the factors that support it, were identified. An additional strand of investigation established a typology of different forms of resistance by students to learning in virtual worlds.

The findings of the study were that an experience of presence is strongly linked to students’ satisfaction with the learning activity. This experience of presence was more linked to students’ preparedness or ability to engage with the environment than with technological limitations. Some students’ resistance to learning in virtual worlds were informed by values they held about technology, but others appeared to display an inability to experience embodiment through their avatar.

The experience of presence appeared to develop over time. This can be interpreted as stages in students’ development of a virtual body image, body schema and virtual identity. Different learning activities are more appropriate to different stages in this development. The thesis concludes with a suggested model for supporting students’ development of presence. The implications of these findings for educators and for further research are discussed.

Download

It’s available as a PDF, currently from here.

Presentation

There’s a related slideshare presentation:

Summary

This snapshot is the ninth in a series which stretches back to what seems the almost impossibly distant past of 2007. Many previous contributers to snapshots have contributed to this one, though a series of problems has resulted in there being less content than hoped for. Despite that, at north of 26,000 words, there’s still a lot of content to read through.

And it’s interesting noting that the snapshots have been produced for over three years, as it’s a reminder that the use of virtual worlds in education has longevity – more than some technologies. As one respondent comments:

“Second Life is being introduced to undergraduate students for the fourth consecutive year by Michael Callaghan.”

Virtual worlds are not a new technology, but a slowly evolving component of the toolset available to academics. One positive aspect of virtual worlds having been around for a few years in the education sector is that research results are (finally) becoming available in significant amounts, helping people to independently determine how this particular technology is best used in teaching and learning.

Some of the trends of previous snapshots continue. The large majority of reported and identifiable virtual world activity appears to be happening at the university, as opposed to the college, level. Activity involving virtual worlds is a mixture of teaching, learning and research. Though this issue lessens with every snapshot, some academics still have problems with freely using virtual worlds (and especially Second Life) in their institution.

Another continuing trend from previous surveys concerns using virtual worlds (especially Second Life) in universities and colleges. Access issues, such as installation and upgrades of the viewer, tend to be more in the older, than the newer, universities, and in colleges. It is odd that, even after several years of virtual world use across UK academia – enough time to assess their dangers (has there actually been any major security issue with SL in a university?) – some institutions still ban or heavily restrict their use by lecturers and academics.

Attitudes to the new service conditions for Second Life were generally relaxed or non-caring, while attitudes to the new interface for Second Life range from mixed to positive. Media on a prim is welcomed by most as a (possibly overdue) development. Despite this, the drift away from Second Life towards OpenSim, and similar environments, continues. Many of those respondents staying (for now) with Second Life are aware of the dangers of having “all their eggs” in the “basket” of a commercial company. The relative technical demands of OpenSim, and the lack of a national OpenSim grid initiative (though much discussed), probably prevent this drift from accelerating. However, forseen funding constraints may finally be the tipping point for some academic projects and services wishing to use virtual worlds.

And it’s funding that is the key worry, issue, concern, for most respondents. It’s sometimes more interesting what people say, but don’t want made public, when they get in touch with responses. With this particular snapshot, many correspondents expressed private concern over the future funding landscape. Some are worried that the incoming government may reduce funding for research, or be more ‘traditional’ teaching and anti-technology in attitude. Others are less pessimistic but more uncertain, seeing possibilities for virtual worlds to be ‘pushed’ as a cost-effective technology in education. No-one appears to have great certainty for the future, hence the title of “What next?” for this snapshot.

Download the report

This report is available in PDF format.

From this, the report moves on to outline the main trends which have emerged during the three years which virtual world watch has been monitoring the use of this technology in UK academia.

Following on, Virtual World Watch takes a look at how it has operated in the last three years, including successes and failures, and what it intrinsically means to be a ‘service’.

The report concludes with some well due acknowledgements and thanks.

You can download the report from here. Note it’s a rather large PDF file; sorry about that.

Summary

This snapshot report was put together against a backdrop of political and economic uncertainty. It comes, therefore, as a pleasant contrast to notice many cases of continuity, where academics are building on their uses of virtual worlds in previous academic years. It’s also good to welcome details of new sustainable virtual world projects and initiatives from universities such as Middlesex, Bristol and Bath Spa.

Specific subject areas, where several universities are using virtual worlds, continue to come to light. For example, previous snapshots have highlighted contributions from academics involved in midwifery, with at least four UK universities using Second Life to assist in the training of this practical skill. To these and other well-defined subject areas can be added Environmental Health, with universities such as Coventry and Middlesex using virtual worlds to model and explore urban socio-economic decay and decline.

The global access capabilities of virtual worlds become more evident with each snapshot. As universities rely more (especially in these economically uncertain times) on overseas, remote, home-based and part-time students, so technologies that allow learning to take place far away from a physical campus become more useful. For example, Daniel Livingstone writes:

“I am still making good use of Second Life’s ability to bring people together across large distances. I have scheduled virtual guest talks for my own students. Students at the University of the West of Scotland will also be involved in an online virtual cultural exchange with students at San Jose State University in the US.”

…while from the Open University, Shailey Minocha writes:

“A couple of my part-time PhD students don’t live in England, and are able to travel to the university’s campus for a face-to-face meeting only once or twice in a year. We regularly meet in Second Life for supervision meetings.”

Reading this snapshot, several academics, and independent developers, are making virtual world content and artifacts available for other academics and students to use. For example, one developer writes:

“[We are creating] a free set of law (barrister) clothes and accessories.”

…while a JISC-funded virtual world development will be used in several universities:

“As well as being used in the classroom at Bristol, the model will allow Bristol students to collaborate with undergraduates studying a similar module in Liverpool”

In these economically stringent times, and with one of the main hurdles to virtual world use in academia being the time it takes to create content, this makes virtual world a more attractive options to academics. However, there are still issues over how academics (especially those unfamiliar with virtual worlds) can quickly locate and comprehend constructs that have relevance to their teaching or research.

As with all the previous snapshots, Second Life remains the virtual world ‘of choice’ for UK academics who responded to the survey. However, also as with previous snapshots, other virtual worlds are in use, such as OLIVE at Coventry University for emergency planning, and OpenSim at Leeds for handling large numbers of art and design students.

Download the report

This report is available in PDF format.

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

(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 tweets, and is also the presenter of The Virtual Revolution, the forthcoming BBC series about the Web:

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.

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.

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.