Virtual World Watch

The irrepressible Kate Boardman, from Teesside University, provides her thoughts for snapshot #9. You can, too!

* * * * *

1. What are you doing in VWs? Teaching, learning, research, publicity, anything else?

We’ve never really done publicity, although that’s not my role, so I’ve never needed to. Had an interesting exchange with marketing over the fact they had no idea we were doing cool stuff, but I don’t think there’s any plan to move into publicity. I think a lot of what we are developing could be construed as research as we are constantly aware of developing in order to enhance the student experience and improve learning and teaching, so the scholarship in learning and teaching underpins most of what we do.

Are you asking what what, as in details? A few new things from previous snapshots. More development for Health, based around establishing shared scenarios for inter-professional learning. Will be tricky to pull off, but great vision to try. We seem to be good at developing for rated screenshots, so presumably Virtual World Watch will be monitoring our upcoming temporary mortuaries closely Business scenarios that have been floating free will hopefully turn into concrete (virtual concrete, well, you know what I mean) plans very soon and we also have some pressure-immersion projects for disaster management in design as well. There’s also been some funding secured for research on the factory environment which we’re looking forward to learning from.

We really need another island. Have finally begun looking at how to capture then archive some projects which were one-offs in order to reclaim the prims for reuse, whilst retaining the potential to re-rez if required. However, it has meant that we are also now beginning to implement some of our original ideas to create multi-agency and multi-occupancy spaces, in order to make each build work hard.

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

It could be going better, but to go better we’d need more input. At the moment, I have some frustration that people buy into the ideas, and want to develop, but are on tight timescales and can’t always continue to put time in. I think we’re beginning to see – if not a tipping point – the potential for a tipping point in some places, and that it would, in theory, be almost reachable. I have two hesitations about this. One is that even though there are an increasing number of machines on campus that can manage SL, I have decided that they’re possibly not really up to the kind of spec that encourages SL activity – that staff and students can see things rezzed around them and can move with confidence. I don’t envisage all machines being routinely of a standard that really facilitate fast and complex scenarios.

Secondly, although there is a [comparative] rush of people now there is a little time for development over the summer, I’m not sure whether there will be enough development in place to keep up the pace when the main member of staff currently supporting projects leaves the institution. There are technical staff who are beginning to engage and a new post about to be advertised, but the need for a champion until established is pretty clear. ‘Established’ isn’t very far away, and I hope that it’s enough to keep going. We are, obviously, about to have to engage with how/what we hand over responsibility for the university island and the developed content.

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?

We have done everything we’ve done on a skinny shoestring. The only funding we have used has been to buy and maintain the island – this was funded first under TQEF by our Centre for Learning & Quality Enhancement, and so far has successfully been kept in the budget. I don’t know how safe it will be next year. Realistically speaking, as the development of projects spreads around campus, it’s a pretty small amount of money compared to other softwares or activities on campus. Over the last eighteen months, a growing number of projects have successfully bid for central Learning & Teaching Innovation Fund monies with which to develop or study their intended activities. If this were to continue, island rent could be covered from these bids, but I don’t anticipate there being always money given to a Second Life project. The School of Health has also found some money to fund buying kit for a set of pilot scenarios and now looks to employ someone for a few months to develop some more cross-School activities, so there is definitely a move towards engagement financially as well as intellectually. Whether it will be enough? I hope so. I’m quite proud of what we’ve managed with very little budget. I wouldn’t actually like to look at my own personal transaction history to see how much I’ve spent during the last two years on work things, but I haven’t really noticed it. Whether it’s an acceptable amount when someone else has to pay it remains to be seen!

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 a lot of time. VWs could, possibly, be used instead of many workshops, conferences, meetings et al. Your thoughts on this? And how do vws such as SL stack up against other event replacing media such as Elluminate and Skype?

I finally realised the power of SL when attending a streamed conference event on the Eduserv island. The stream (sorry Andy) was pretty flaky back then, but the sense of presence was phenomenal. I’ve now attended and indeed presented at conferences around the world from my desk at home (at least once, I confess, in my pjs) and I think there’s a huge potential for sharing, bonding and networking. I wouldn’t say it completely replaces f2f meetings, but it is a real potential today, that should be just as much an option as doing a webex or video conference. I’m not a fan of video conferences, never have been, and although I do webexes regularly with Blackboard designers I kind of see that as a different type of event. Sharing content online in a webex/elluminate session is a very tailored event, and almost always has a particular focus to be presented/discussed, usually in voice above a presentation. As often pointed out there is a turn up, do then leave straight away thing with these.

Arriving at a virtual conference, hanging out with coffee in the back row gossiping on the back channel, incorporating a social aspect to nurture existing and new relationships is a very different thing. Complementary. Worth trying, even if you’re sceptical. Although clearly the electricity/power requirements are not carbon-free, I think very many more project meetings etc as well as conferences could be held inworld. There is a major professional development agenda that we are missing here. If you don’t believe me, believe one of my team!

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

Just SL. No central IT support to install OpenSim – that hasn’t changed in all the snapshots I’ve written for and is unlikely to change in the near future. I have installed OpenSim at home (with mixed results, depending on whether I want to be in glorious isolation on my continents or open them to others but be myself locked out by my router ) so I could have a look, and the extra prim limit could really spoil a girl with a building fetish. However, until movement of ‘stuff’ between grids or the capacity to buy stuff in OS (or that I have triple the time to build everything I wanted) becomes commonplace, I can’t see that it’s in anyway a real alternative for us.

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

No, that’s never been a problem for us. Although we have had a moment or two where the virtualised updating of software hasn’t worked and has been fine when tested and then not fine when members of staff went back in to hold a class… Mainly it’s access to decent PCs. There’s usable and usable, I’ve decided.

However, I have been to other institutions this academic year and found that although I can access the wireless on a campus, there is no access to SL, so I don’t think it’s completely gone yet!

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?

No, but having more than 10 staff at a time gets interesting. Talk about herding cats I’ve had 20 or so a few times without too many problems.

8. What do you think of the new SL viewer, both the UI/usability and the new functionality it enables (ie media on a prim)?

Still getting my head round it. I know I should use it more and then it would be more intuitive still, but although I use it regularly with alts and although I know that they say stuff won’t be lost when upgrading, I’m somehow still illogically nervous of logging into viewer 2 with my main account and her ginormous inventory. Just in case… I never use the camera or movement controls, so I’d personally prefer option setting to select what I wanted in the navigation panel at the bottom – didn’t realise just how often I used the map – a bit like you don’t realise how often you look at your watch until you forget to put it on one morning. And I find it a little disconcerting that the inventory etc menu shifts the focus of the screen rather than just overlays the view, but that’s just being picky.

Media on a prim is a game changer. Not just because you can do that, although flash-based tools like Edistorm being able to be shared by students inworld has real potential to extend learning scenarios without breaking the immersion, but because it removes the cost implication from lots of things. Being able to take snapshots and send them to Flickr, for example, means students can share these without having to pay. Or to use presentations in role play scenarios without uploading them (this doesn’t of course, include those activities based around building things, for which textures may still be required, but to be honest, that has very little to do with our main developments).

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?

It might matter re ownership of content at institutions for backup purposes, if you have to be the creator of something. Where we’ve had an external builder, we’ve carefully made them use our prims, but it will apply soon to all the stuff created by someone leaving the institution. Mostly, I imagine it won’t affect us too much – we’re not doing much grid switching, we never planned to cheatingly copy other people’s work/builds etc etc. Although I sort of appreciate the idea of having a covenant statement about allowing photography (the snapshot and machinima tos), I’m not likely to check when I go somewhere new either. But I would be a bit shocked if I went to log in one day and found my own builds staring me in the face from the login screen!