Discussion: Contribute your ideas for future events on Infolit iSchool.

When: Tuesday August 31st, 12 noon SLT (which is 8pm UK time, see http://tinyurl.com/323l83u for start time in other countries)

Where: Infolit iSchool
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Infolit%20iSchool/127/236/22/

We already have lined up for Oct/Nov: talks from Alexandria Knight (Esther Grassian) & Adra Letov (Diane Nahl) and Sheila Yoshikawa (Webber) plus a reading group! But we want more! Come with more ideas of visits, discussions, events to do with information literacy and learning.

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Apologies for the lack of the summer snapshot #9. Proofreader number 3 (don’t ask) is currently processing it. It’ll be live monday morning.

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 the outline of how the Virtual World Watch service will hopefully not only survive, but prosper, in a post Eduserv funding world.

You can download the report from here. Note it’s a hefty 550Kb 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.

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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.

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 twitters, 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.

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.

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.