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1. What are you doing with virtual worlds? (And how long have you been doing it?)

The virtual world activities here at Bromley College started in 2006 using Second Life and then in 2009 OpenSim. The virtual world activities have been driven by the initiatives of two lecturers – Clive Gould and Barry Spencer.

At the present time we have a single virtual worlds activity (Comenious) running at the college, currently in the stages of full participation.

Comenious Overview and Rationale: Provide a collaborative face-to-face working environment. Explore the practical use and reliability of web 3 technology. This project will be used to enhance student communication and social skills both within the college and as part of the Comenius project which links us with two colleges in Holland and one in Belgium. Students will be able to communicate through the Internet and share ideas and resources.

2. Which virtual worlds are you using? Why those in particular?

Second Life and OpenSim. Second life with viewer 2 facilities represents a more fully immersive experience. OpenSim, while not at the same level of deployment, does have the advantage of cost and minimal port requirements.

3. What support do you get in your institution in your use of virtual worlds?

Given the problems encountered with the demands of port access for Second life, we were able to make use of a proxy bypass option for one teaching room. With the arrival of OpenSim and its much reduced port requirements, we now have access to this facility in a number of teaching rooms.

4. What do you like/dislike about the virtual worlds you are using?

Current projects (Comenius) make exclusive use of OpenSim. My principle issues are in the lack of full physics engine implementation and the availability of a viewer that supports Shared Media.

5. If teaching using virtual worlds, what’s the experience been like, for you and/or the students?

I have found that in using virtual worlds my teaching was able to take full advantage of problem Based learning scenarios in support of collaborative learning for my students, activities that are realistically not bound by the traditional demands of time and location.

Generally speaking the response of students in using both Second Life and OpenSim have been sufficiently encouraging and below I have included links to historic student surveys that you may find useful:

• http://cd.bromley.ac.uk/bteccourses/sl/pdf/OpenSimSolarCell2010.pdf
• http://cd.bromley.ac.uk/bteccourses/sl/pdf/WTreport09.pdf
• http://cd.bromley.ac.uk/bteccourses/sl/pdf/island_report_07-2010.pdf
• http://cd.bromley.ac.uk/bteccourses/sl/pdf/maze_report_07-2010.pdf

These reports can also be accessed in-world in my sim at http://slurl.com/secondlife/Star%20Beach%20Island/209/222/23.

6. Any thoughts on the integration of virtual worlds with other learning technologies?

Now that we have Shared Media in Second Life and I assume it will arrive in OpenSim in the near future, I see little need for actual integration from a technical perspective. Using recent trials at my Coders Central base in Second Life, students are now able to collaborate in real time coding exercises with full access to our VLE features such as forums, content and assessment.

7. The catch-all: anything else you’d like to say?

I feel that the use of virtual worlds continues to represent for me one of the most innovative and exciting prospects for student collaboration and learning beyond the classroom.

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1. What are you doing with virtual worlds? (And how long have you been doing it?)

At the moment, we are running 2 modules for students in virtual worlds. The ‘Media Futures’ module for undergraduate media students is now entering its 4th year of delivery, and has not significantly deviated from how it has been described in previous snapshots.

This academic year, we have established a new module called ‘Identity in Virtual Worlds’, which is a combined honours programme elective open to students from any discipline. This module is a modified version of ‘Media Futures’, which is designed to fit with students from a variety of subject areas.

2. Which virtual worlds are you using? Why those in particular?

We are still using Second Life for delivery of these modules and students are also required to engage with gaming worlds. Second Life is primarily used as it has one of the largest active communities out of all of the social worlds available. Students need to be able to interact with a range of other users and environments within the virtual world that we use, and Second Life currently provides the best opportunity for this. Gaming environments are also used, as this provides a basis for students to analyse differences between the two environments.

3. What support do you get in your institution in your use of virtual worlds?

Our institution has supported us in purchasing some island space and if anyone wants to use some of this, quite happy to arrange something if anyone wants to get in contact with me! Also, the fact that we have established the elective module shows a degree of support from our institution. We do still have a variety of ongoing technical issues each year with regards to providing access to Second Life on campus. These are usually related to ICT infrastructure changes, with Second Life always being low down on the list of priorities when rectifying problems that are related to these changes.

4. What do you like/dislike about the virtual worlds you are using?

As mentioned, Second Life provides a large active user base that is essential for the success of the modules, and this is the primary reason why I like using this. I do usually have a natural leaning towards using fully open source systems that are free of constraints, and if the future of accessing online resources lies within the realms of a metaverse / 3D web, I would prefer it if this did not lie in the hands of Linden Labs!

5. If teaching using virtual worlds, what’s the experience been like, for you and/or the students?

For me its fantastic, really enjoy it and I really consider it as a massive upside to working as a Lecturer at Newman. It’s also provided some interesting opportunities in relation to collaborating with others. Dr. Mark Childs from Coventry University has really helped out by actively contributing to the modules that we provide, and research work is currently being undertaken to look at student experience on these interventions.

6. Any thoughts on the integration of virtual worlds with other learning technologies?

I’ve been playing around the SLOODLE integration via a moodle test server that i’ve set up. It’s satisfying my desires to mess around with something tekky and also provides an interesting point for student reflection in assessments. However, I think this type of thing still has a long way to go before it provides a meaningful and attractive proposition for student use.

7. The catch-all: anything else you’d like to say?

Yes, but not enough time unfortunately, have to go to bed so I can get up in time for teaching

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What are you doing with virtual worlds? (And how long have you been doing it?)

I used to be active in VWs in a Scottish University, since around 2007, but since taking a career change earlier this year I’ve stopped that particular strand of work.

However, now looking at this from a student perspective (trainee gardener), who has an assignment coming up in which I have to design and plan a vegetable plot, I’ve begun looking at how to simulate that in a VW, so that I can see the layout, growth patterns, sizes and spacing, etc.

Which virtual worlds are you using? Why those in particular?

I would have done it in Second Life so that I could easily get ‘vegetables’ and not have to build those myself, but as I no longer have land there I’m looking at OpenSim or Kitely instead as these are accessible to me. OpenSim I’ll have control over and should be able to take my work into colllege to show my tutors easily (USB key style). I need to refresh myself on what’s available in Kitely.

I was considering using it for Horticultural Mechanisation as well, but I ran out of time. (A giant hydrostatic transmission set up, 4 stroke engine, or cylinder mower would have been great for understanding it better!)

3. What support do you get in your institution in your use of virtual worlds?

No idea as a student of the Scottish Agricultural College, but as we now share a campus at Ayr with UWS, I may be chatting to Dan Livingstone soon.

I’m not aware of any SAC activity in VWs, but there must be lots of possibilites, especially thinking back to the work Ferdinand was doing at GCU with the Sustainable House, as there is a course here on Sustainable Building.
(/waves to Ferdinand – I’ll see what I can find out and get back to you if theres any chance of a lead there! )

Any thoughts on the integration of virtual worlds with other learning technologies?

SAC is now using Moodle …so… watch this space (/waves to Dan & @GianninaRossini! )

The catch-all: anything else you’d like to say?

Glad to see there is still activity in VWs.

Despite the suspicions of some virtual world sceptics – and fanatics – VWW takes a neutral view on the use of virtual worlds in education; we say what we see, and what others do – both positive and negative. Here’s Bex Ferriday, the lead teacher of the school of education and training at Cornwall College with a downbeat submission about their Second Life prospects, in this age of austerity.

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

Still managing Cornwall College Island in Second Life – and have just been given some land for Cornwall College to develop on the Education Grid. At the moment everything just seems to have ground to a halt and I am, quite honestly, at a loss as to what to do about it. Pockets of activity are evident: the Foundation Degree in Arts and Media group are displaying their work on the island and their tutor wants to write a new module for the course that involves mandatory use of Second life, and the RaPAL group meet there regularly. I have just delivered an introductory teacher training course using moodle, Second Life and web 2.0 elements such as wikis and blogs and hope to deliver a second course soon – but cannot see when I will find time. The college has suffered crippling funding cuts, and has had to make a percentage of staff redundant, so with so many people bearing the burden of others’ job losses (by taking on departed colleagues jobs on top of their own), there is no time to indulge in what are seen as ‘luxury’ items such as Second Life.

Going well? Not? Want to say why?

Honestly? Not going well at all. The island is seldom used – we were featured in the Second Life Destination Guide and were getting 50 visitors or more a day – and many keep returning to this very day – but not for the educational aspects of the island. They return because they want to hang out in virtual Cornwall, listen to the seagulls, drink Scrumpy, eat virtual pasties and hang out on the beach – which is still a marvellous thing! Cornwall College has had frighteningly big funding cuts to make in the next academic year(s), so many members of staff have been made redundant. Those who remain are working harder and have even less time than before to learn about new technologies.

The whole ’18 and over’ thing still weighs heavy too; as an FE college, every classroom will have cohorts of students under the age of 18 (even on occasion, specialty designated HE classrooms), which means that IT Services will not allow Second Life to be installed ‘freely’ in any classroom. If it’s not available in any classroom, only available to staff if they request firewalls to be changed on their office machines, but staff have less time than before to dabble in anything new – let alone something STILL seen as a virtual ‘knocking shop’…then what hope do we have?!!!

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?

Our tenancy runs out in February 2011. We will have no choice but to abandon the island to Linden Labs. That’s going to be a very sad day indeed. And it’s not because of funding really – though we have had massive budget cuts, if the island was ‘earning its keep’ then money would and could be found to keep it going. The honest truth is that the island remains a glorious representation of the geography, geology, history and folklore of Cornwall – but as an educational establishment remains virtually unused.

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?

I see huge potential in using Second Life as a meeting place, and Cornwall College Island’s most successful usage has been based around just that. I am more than happy for educational groups from all over the world to use the island as a meeting place, and the RaPAL (Research and Practice in Adult Literacy) group recently held two pre-conference meetings there to talk about digital literacy. Skype seems to be the medium of choice for one to one meetings and tutorials, but for larger meet-ups or discussions (the RaPAL group now use the island on the first Monday of every month to hold informal discussion groups) Second Life seems to be a better option. The fact that people from around the globe can meet up without travelling, saving time, money and shoe leather seems to be a glaringly obvious reason why Second Life should be used as a meeting place – I just wish I could convince others to see it the same way!

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

Currently just using Second Life – but have been given some free land on the education grid (set up by the Immersive Education Group). It seems clear that because of increasingly tight budgets and, more importantly, the lack of use that Cornwall College has had, the only way to move forward in to have free land and start again, on a smaller scale. I really don’t want to give up – I see real benefits to using virtual worlds in education – but in the economic climate I can see no other option.

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

Anyone who wants Second Life installed on their machine has to ask my permission; then, I have to ring IT services to have the user’s firewall settings changed remotely, enabling them to install and use the Second Life client. This is not going to change. This has to be a big reason why Second Life has not taken off at Cornwall College: the expectation that the only way to access it is at home along with the the fact that staff can use Second Life on their office and staff room machines but not in the classrooms.

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)?

The same people who raved about how brilliant the new viewer was were exactly the same people who, within a week, had gone back to using ‘Emerald’, complaining that the new viewer was awful. I love the media on a prim element – this opens the door for a much more interactive and immersive experience for users / students. The new viewer isn’t as user-friendly as the previous version – or Emerald, which I do admit to having installed on one of my machines – but with every upgrade the experience gets a little better.

Ian can be followed on Twitter.

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The pressures of running a large undergraduate provision have left little time for virtual worlds lately. However, having ultimate responsibility for the learning of 330 students does tend to focus the mind on the practicalities of scaling up the use of virtual worlds in a real world educational context. Motivated by its potential scalability and configurability, I have redoubled my efforts, and have finally got my OpenSim grid up and running. It’s currently only running behind the University firewall, but it’s working exactly as I had hoped. I can pre-register all of my students, which cuts out the nightmare prospect of a Second Life registration session multiplied by 330. I can get student’s real names floating above their new avatar’s heads, which helps them to make the connection between avatars and their real life puppet masters, and avoids premature fantasy identity overload. I can avoid the complications of noob-learners making fools of themselves in front of rude strangers and, most importantly for design students, I can get them building things straight away.

I see OpenSim as a means to an end, rather than the end itself. It will provide me with a safe training space – a studio space – for my students to mess about in and learn the ropes. I’ll then encourage any intrigued students to venture out into a truly massive multiuser virtual world like Second Life. I don’t think I’ll need to hold their hands in the same way that I did when we all jumped straight into Second Life in the early days. Once acclimatised through fun-time in the OpenSim playground, students should be able to confidently explore Second Life and beyond without a tutor cramping their style. They can always ask for help if they need it, and we will provide guidance and coaching as we do for all our students, but they will be in control. They can go where they like and do what they like, just like in real life. We will encourage them to report back on their discoveries, if they are relevant to their learning. They can show us snapshots of their exploits, and they can quote freely from their chat-logs as they reflect on their learning. They can even log-into our OpenSim studio and discuss their pseudonym’s exploits with their real life virtual friends and tutors.

I am of the opinion that students should have access to a private, institutionally managed virtual world, which is linked to their authentic, accountable, assessable and accredit-able enrolled identity, but should also be free to roam a public virtual space in whichever manner and attire they choose.

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This academic year at Bromley College we have moved away from using Second Life to trialling OpenSim.

We have production and test Linux servers running OpenSim 0.6.8 and staff and students have access to OpenSim, both from within College and externally.

We have found that two of our computer rooms already have graphics cards which are Meerkat compatible and are converting two more rooms of PC’s by adding appropriate graphics cards.

Using a standalone installation of OpenSim means that it is much easier for us to provide and control access to the MUVE. Although OpenSim is currently in in alpha we have found it works well in the classroom environment.

This academic year we are using/planning on using OpenSim with two groups:

1) National Diploma IT year 2 – Developing and assessing skills in Object Orientated Programming.

2) FdEng Software Development year 2 – Investigating Web services practically as part of a Database Development course.

I am continuing to maintain the Linden Script exhibition in Second Life on Hyles Infopoint. However I have also ported it to OpenSim to help our students learn LSL. Additionally, I have made the exhibition available as a download so that others can install it into their own OpenSim standalones.

For more information please visit our blogs:

http://bcopensim.blogspot.com/
http://www.linuxtraining.org.uk/blogger4.html

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Cornwall College’s School of Education and Training (SET) has been successfully running the Level 3 Award in Preparing to Teach in the Lifelong Learning Sector (PTLLS) as a blended learning course for three years. This eleven week course is delivered with 7 sessions studied in students’ own time using moodle and remaining sessions taught using traditional methods in the classroom. However, with the college’s island on “Second Life” now complete, SET has decided to pilot a version of the course that replaces college-based sessions with content delivered in a virtual environment. This is a first in terms of Cornwall College and use of Second Life as a teaching and learning environment. To date several courses have taught users how to teach in Second Life – but an officially accredited course has never been offered that teaches real world, transferable teaching skills in a virtual world environment.

Twelve students have signed up to work through this pilot: by enrolling a group that are based in locations such as Italy, Portugal, France, Romania, England, Wales and Spain there are no issues with time zones and by ensuring that the group consists of qualified, real world practitioners au fait with using Second Life, any technical and delivery issues can be ironed out before rolling the programme out internationally and to people who have no teaching and / or Second Life skills. The group are enthusiastic, excited by the prospect of being part of this ground breaking new project and are all fully involved in the activities. Feedback has been wholly positive, with many members of the group commenting on how well they feel they have bonded as a group. This has led to a slight revision of the course schedule, with regular discussion-based get-togethers now being offered as a way of keeping students motivated and maintaining this group dynamic.

The course is still in its early stages and anything can happen. However, if the course continues to run as well as it has so far The School of Education and Training will be looking to offer this to an international audience, and on a regular, twice-yearly basis.

A second group of students are also making creative use of the island. The Foundation Degree in Arts and Media has begun a building project, and are experimenting with the physics of Second Life, adding textures to prims and honing their building and scripting skills in order to make works of art that simply could not be made in real life. Their tutor is building an art deco-style art gallery in which to house these creations, and currently sits at the bottom of Dozmary Pool, the bottomless body of water from which Excalibur was reputedly held aloft by the mythical Lady of the Lake in Arthurian Legend.

Experiences of teachers using the island are that there are few differences between teaching in Second Life and traditional classroom delivery. This comes as something of a relief as if there were a generic Initial Teacher Training course that contained no classroom or face to face delivery would be destined to fail. Planning is still written on traditional documentation, web-based delivery means that it makes sense to have a dry-run and to make sure there is a Plan B should anything go wrong – but this is how any session with an element of ILT should be planned. Ground rules need to be set at the start of the course, and though these may be different – for example, to only use text-based speech when the teacher is using live voice rather than ensuring mobile phones are switched off – this again is something that needs to be done at the start of all courses. The common notion that body language is impossible to read in Second Life is, to some extent, an exaggeration. Poses are sophisticated enough for avatars to be able to show how they feel by the way they choose to sit, inactivity means that the word “Away” appears above avatars’ heads – an explicit signal to the teacher that the avatar in question is distracted or bored, and the frequency and content of both written and verbal responses from students also shines a light onto the way they feel. Nuances may not be as subtle as they are in the real world – but there are enough signals to be able to get a sense of individual and group moods.

Use of the island continues to grow and attitudes towards this virtual world as a teaching resource appear to be growing ever more favourable. While the island lay empty people couldn’t really see the point. Now that things are starting to happen and both filmed and photographic evidence in available for all to see on flickr and YouTube, minds are slowly changing and the pace is picking up.

I think I was designated the next host for the Second Tuesday meeting, 9th Feb at 8pm UK time, noon SLT:

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Infolit%20iSchool/223/36/28/

Peter/Graham suggested we should take a theme, and my proposal is:

1) Discussing/drafting a proposal for the VW Best Practices in education conference (at the last meeting it was suggested that we put in a “Dance your way through the UK sims” proposal)

AND

2) SL tools for discussion/brainstorming in groups in particular applying 2) to 1)

*However* if it turns out that people now think that doing a VWBPE proposal is a rubbish idea, we could still demo or chat about 2). This does not rule out the usual free-form discussion about life the universe and everything.

—
Sheila Webber
Senior Lecturer, Department of Information Studies, University of Sheffield,
211 Portobello Street, Sheffield S1 4DP, UK
0114 222 2641
s.webber (@) sheffield.ac.uk
The information literacy weblog – http://information-literacy.blogspot.com/
Sheila Yoshikawa (SL) blog: http://adventuresofyoshikawa.blogspot.com/

In the last week we have begun to open our OpenSim platform for student access here at Bromley College. We thought it would be a good idea to have a record of their progress in the virtual world, and so we have launched a new blog: http://bcopensim.blogspot.com.

Please feel free to visit and comment.

if you have any particular questions or requests then again please feel free to contact either Clive Gould (Clive Pro) cliveg (@) gmail.com or Barry Spencer (Vega Starlight) barrys (@) bromley.ac.uk

There’s one main question which can be interpreted as broadly, or as narrowly, as you wish. As per usual, the scope is limited to UK Higher and Further Education.

The question

How are you using virtual worlds in your teaching, learning or research?

Things you may want to include:

• Why you are using a virtual world.
• If teaching using a virtual world, how it fits into your curriculum.
• Any evaluation of the experience of using the virtual world.
• Will you do it again next year? Why (or why not)?

A few side points

• Do you know of any other individual, group or project at your institution using virtual worlds for teaching, learning or research? If so, a contact detail would be appreciated.
• Do you have any interesting screenshots of what you’ve been doing in virtual worlds? If so, then please consider submitting them to the Virtual World use in UK Education Flickr group – thanks.

Deadline

As per normal there is a backlog of “stuff” to process. *sigh* If you get your submissions in by mid-March, then they’ll make it in. After that, and they *may* make it in.

Thank you for any and all contributions.

Sending information in

Please send your contributions, in whatever format (e.g. email, Word, text) to john (@) virtualworldwatch.net

Please note that these reports are fully public – and available under creative commons – so what you say will be readable by anyone.

This is the last snapshot funded under the Eduserv Foundation/Research regime, before Virtual World Watch moves to the new funding streams. More on that later in the Spring.