If you were the lucky recipient of a limited edition print version , then apologies for the couple of typos that slipped in. The online version of snapshot #10 will be slightly, but not significantly, different with a few minor updates included.

Thanks for your patience and support. There may be some delay in responding to emails between now and when the snapshot is available online.

Regards,
John Kirriemuir
Virtual World Watch

A round-up of things.

Snapshot #10 is slightly delayed (thankfully only by a few weeks, this time). It’s been the most enjoyable of the ten snapshots that have been compiled since, gosh, the Spring of 2007. Rather a lot has changed in that time, in the world (anyone remember Tony Blair and George Bush running things?), the economy (no-one used words such as “sub-prime default” or “austerity” then), in technology (such a long list), and in education (compare the cost to students then, and now). But the basics of compiling a Virtual World Watch snapshot report have stayed pretty much the same.

So the online version of Snapshot #10, which is slightly more up to date than the printed versions sent out over the last few weeks, will be on this website on Monday 23rd January. It may be up here a bit before that, but the announcements will go out there.

Here’s a screenshot of part of the front cover:

To answer the most frequent questions over the last month or so:

1. What next for Virtual World Watch? Well – and this will require funding or income from somewhere – we’re looking to take the focus away from solely doing a snapshot, to looking at the evidence concerning the effective use of virtual worlds in education. Back in 2007, there wasn’t much out there relating to virtual worlds. Several years on, with much research completed and ongoing, and open access making more research openly available, there’s some meat we can get our teeth into. There’ll be more of that in the snapshot report.

2. When will the next report be? As said before that depends on finding funding, which for snapshot #10 was one-off in nature. Personally, it would feel good to do several more in the three years of 2012 to 2014, including another one in 2012 to see if there is much shift from Second Life to OpenSim and other worlds. But, we’ll see.

3. Can I still submit for snapshot #10? No. But if you send something relevant and non-PR in nature about your virtual world activities in a UK educational institution, we can put it on the website as a blog entry.

First – there is a final deadline extension, as a few people are still writing away. You can have until the end of tomorrow, Thursday 8th December 2011. But that’s it – no more extensions, as on Friday summarising has to begin. Anyway, the minimum that is required is a paragraph for most or all of seven questions, on what you, your department or university are doing with virtual worlds. This doesn’t therefore require a massive effort; the first response to the call for this snapshot – and one of the best ones – came within 15 minutes.

So, you have until the end of tomorrow to write six or seven paragraphs, for inclusion in the snapshot report. Details of the seven questions to answer, plus who will be getting copies of the snapshot report, are elsewhere.

And what’s going to be in the report? And what’s the situation with virtual worlds in UK education? A few teasers…

If you look at the previous 25 entries on the website, 22 of these are submissions for the snapshot. And there’s a stack not yet blogged on the website; some of them very good. In addition to these, some UK academics are active but haven’t submitted this time round for a variety of reasons (or said they would, and didn’t: the “survey data collection” section of the report is going to be entertaining ), and to keep sanity, “quality control” has been set a little higher this time, with a larger number of submissions rejected than before.

As opposed to previous snapshots, there’s also going to be mention of several UK academic virtual world activities, projects and research that were not submitted in response to the call for “What’s going on?”

The overall picture of virtual world use in UK education is the second most frequent question Virtual World Watch gets asked (the most frequent being “Where can I get funding?”). Before we get stuck into the summarising process for the report, it would appear that the overall picture is … pretty much the same as before. Fragmented. Some academics are ending their involvement with, or use of, virtual worlds. Some others are sticking with it (of which several have been using this technology for over half a decade). And some others are new users of such technology.

The other trends that seem to be emerging from an informal read of the submissions and other poking around the Interwebz are:

1. A lot of UK academic users of Second Life are/were not happy at the prices going up, or Linden Labs removing the educational discount, whichever way you look at it.
2. Having said that, many of those academics are sticking with Second Life.
3. OpenSim could eventually be good, and preferable to Second Life, but at the moment the technical resources required are too great for most.
4. Wonderland is getting more attention, as are a few of the other virtual worlds. Incidentally, check out the offer from Kitely to all educators, in the comments of this snapshot submission.
5. Internal funding is being squeezed in every university, without exception; sometimes, really hard. This manifests itself most of all in staff cuts. In some places this has hit virtual world use and maintenance; in others, not.
6. Increasingly, European Funding is becoming a main source of income for UK academic research in virtual worlds.

Anyway, it’s time to start summarising and collating the responses. The process of report production is a lot better than previous ones, so the report will be out in the next few weeks. Priority is given to getting the report out to the 219 specific people and organisations, before we dollop the report online for the great masses to read. Expect to see it here before the month (and therefore year) is out.

And in the meantime; there’ll be some more contributions to snapshot #10 put up on here. Remember, if you haven’t contributed yet; six or seven relevant paragraphs by the end of tomorrow, and you’re in…

Happy holidays.

http://virtualworldwatch.net/snapshot-10-autumn-2011/

Please note the timetable which will be stuck to, as the date that the snapshot goes live is fixed. VWW has a list of people* in funding and governmental agencies, as well as relevant organisations, to send a copy of the snapshot to before they all go off on Christmas / New Year break.

So if you are in the UK or Ireland and want to get word of your virtual world activities in front of lots more people, then tell us what you do.

Regards and thanks,
The Virtual World Watch team

* – 214 as of this morning.

In response to the occasional “What’s happening with VWW?” “Is it coming back?” “Where have the snapshots gone?” questions…

Nothing really much has happened with the (funding absent) VWW so far in 2011 – in fact, the last post is from December 2010.

Round about the end of last year, the website was compromised and partially rebuilt, though a lot of the content is still missing. A full rebuild, though attempted several times, didn’t work out; my lack of technical skills, lack of patience, and rickety old wordpress versions were not a combinations. It also didn’t help that I ended up spending an unexpected four months over several trips in the USA, and the ramifications of all that caused spare time plans to be torn up (funded work is ringfenced; the rest is on a “when there’s time” basis). I also spent too much time being distracted by pie.

Mmmm, pie.

I like pie.

So since the end of last year, VWW has been on an extended sabbatical, which was refreshing, especially after the “If it can go wrong, it will go wrong” problems with the last snapshot. We’re thinking about how to do the next one differently.

The newest version of WordPress, along with other upgrades, a change of package and update procedures, has helped tremendously and stuff appears to (finally) work now. The domains (we’re also .com now) and hosting have been renewed for another year, and we also have a bit of informal technical support in the form of my domestic boss (who is a US college systems librarian in real life).

Apart from one last platform memory problem, we can put the remainder of the content back in over the next few weeks, most importantly being all the snapshots. This will be a relief, as it was unnerving to look at the webstats for the first in a loooong time and see that the site still, bizarrely, gets a lot of traffic.

More good news. As have said recently, VWW (finally) has a confirmed small amount of independent funding to do one snapshot. We aren’t restrained to doing a standard PDF/RTF report, so am thinking of a possibly better way of doing both the data collection and publishing the results. One thing for definite is that we want to avoid the quite ridiculous problems that bedevilled the last two snapshots, and were a disincentive to do any more. The snapshot has to go live on here by Friday December 9th 2011 by the latest. Also, it’ll include Ireland as there were a few requests from there to participate in any future snapshots.

In more good news, we’re also negotiating to do an ebook on examples of virtual world uses in education, which looks promising. This won’t come out (or, digitally appear) until deep into 2012, partially as we need to fill in a lot of knowledge gaps and catch up. That’s another incentive to go hunt and find examples of virtual world use.

Speaking of which, we’ve been quietly having a look around UK academia of late, and it’s quite interesting, after an extended period of not looking at virtual world stuff, to see what’s changed. Unless that pie has zapped my memory, there seems to be some new/unfamiliar names who are doing things in both HE and FE; but more using OpenSim and similar, than Second Life. That’s just an impression, but will be asking these to hopefully explain what they’re doing. I’d hazard a guess, but there seems as much, if not more, open virtual world activity in UK HE/FE now than there was in 2008 or 2009.

In Second Life I’m still Silversprite Helsinki, and can be found on various islands when not based in the ruins of the conference centre building on Eduserv Island.

So, timetable for Virtual World Watch:

To end September: Rebuild this website + put remainder of content, especially snapshots, back in. Work out format of data collection and dissemination for next snapshot.
Early October: Sort out social media aspects of Virtual World Watch
October to November: Data collection for autumn 2011 snapshot.
November: Finally get some decent hair for my avatar.
Early December: Summary (format unsure) of snapshot.

Time for some pie.

Regards, and thanks for your patience,
The Virtual World Watch team
(John, Butterfingers and Reeses)

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.

There is some additional information on the Games and Virtual Worlds Special Interest Group.

VWW is now putting together snapshot #9, which will be out later this summer.

Staff of three UK education funding bodies have requested copies of this particular snapshot. It will also be the last snapshot until December.

A gentle request – if you haven’t already, would you like to have a go at answering a question or two from the list for this one?

If you email me anything by this Sunday, then it’ll go in. Please email to:

john@virtualworldwatch.net

+ + + + + The Questions + + + + +

1. What are you doing in virtual worlds? Teaching, learning, research, publicity, and/or anything else?

2. Going well? Not? Want to say why?

3. 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?

4. 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?

5. Second Life. Using just that, or considering other virtual worlds? If so, why?

6. Problems with universities blocking access to Second Life. Is anyone still having that, or are we over it now?

7. Handling large numbers of students in virtual worlds simultaneously i.e. more than 30. Do you have experience of this? How did it go?

8. 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)?

9. Do you have a view on the new Second Life Terms of Service conditions and ownership rights which are creating a bit of a hoo-hah in some quarters? Do you think it will affect you? Does it matter in the grand scheme of things?

Thanks for your input – this is much appreciated.

Answer whichever of the 9 questions below you want to answer. Please send your submissions to john@virtualworldwatch.net by the end of this week; thank you.

+ + + + + The Questions + + + + +

Please do some or all of these – or ignore the lot and write something relevant instead.

1. What are you doing in virtual worlds? Teaching, learning, research, publicity, and/or anything else?

2. Going well? Not? Want to say why?

3. 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?

4. 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?

5. Second Life. Using just that, or considering other virtual worlds? If so, why?

6. Problems with universities blocking access to Second Life. Is anyone still having that, or are we over it now?

7. Handling large numbers of students in virtual worlds simultaneously i.e. more than 30. Do you have experience of this? How did it go?

8. 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)?

9. Do you have a view on the new Second Life Terms of Service conditions and ownership rights which are creating a bit of a hoo-hah in some quarters? Do you think it will affect you? Does it matter in the grand scheme of things?

Thanks for your input – much appreciated.

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.