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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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What are you doing with virtual worlds?

MissionV Education Ltd is running a 20 school virtual world learning programme, supported by the National Centre for Technology (NCTE) in Ireland.

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

MissionV uses the OpenSim platform and provides cloud hosting to schools and other educational establishments. As well as the NCTE MissionV is supported by Discover Science & Engineering and the Centre for Talented Youth in Ireland (at Dublin City University).

Using Opensim allows MissionV to provide a private, secure and safe environment for the 10 to 12 year olds on the programme. In addition, it allows us to tap into a huge community of expertise among Second Life developers.

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

Teachers and students on the MissionV programme have provided positive feedback as regards the benefits of learning in a virtual world. For example, Anne McMorrough, a teacher at St. Martin de Porres primary school in Tallaght, Dublin, responded:

“I love to play with it.. but watching kids work is fascinating. Correcting copies will never be same again – virtual learning is so colourful”

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

MissionV sees exciting opportunities for enhancing virtual world interaction by integrating new gesture-based technologies such as the Microsoft Kinect. As such, planning is underway to develop a Kinect interface in collaboration with the Institute of Technology, Tallaght.

2012 will see the MissionV programme moving into Phase 2 with Moodle VLE and voice integration.

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

We use virtual worlds for teaching Project Management and performing research on identity and other aspects of virtual worlds.

These activities are well documented under http://sl.sanfoh.com/. I supervise currently one PhD and one Master by Research on virtual world aspects.

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

We have used OpenSim this year for the first time. We were using two providers: http://www.3dmetaverse.com/ and http://reactiongrid.com/. They are both fine and I can recommend them. Details about these can be found on a paper I published at ReLive’11; see http://sl.perisic.com/relive11/ for details and presentation.

The reason we moved from Second Life was because of their poor customer support. The person who maintained the avatar that owned our island decided to give up this avatar and Linden Lab was not able to transfer the island to another avatar. This is well documented in various communication I had with them. Therefore we have to decide at very short notice to switch to a different provider.

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

Virtual worlds are now an integrated part of our teaching and are therefore funded as part of the usual expenses, similar as this is the case e.g. for software licences. In particular, OpenSim based solutions are much cheaper in setup and maintenance fee.

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

OpenSim is OK, but it is not Second Life i.e. the context and immersion Second Life offers does not seem to happen in the OpenSim; see the Relive’11 paper for a lot of reflection about this.

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

The students are doing it, but I don’t think they are particularly excited about this.

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

Ask the Sloodle people; they know better than I do . It’s certainly bound to be happen somehow (providers of these Learning Environment are under pressure to ‘add value’ to their systems, and doing virtual worlds is an obvious extension). But I wouldn’t be able to predict how it will happen exactly.

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

Yes, indeed.
First: John you are doing a tremendous job to put this all together. Excellent work.
Second: we are trying to explore the utilisation of Open Sim vs. Second Life a bit further as part of a research project. Anyone volunteering to be interviewed in that matter is very much welcome to contact me (marc.conrad@beds.ac.uk).

We’re on top of contributions, so we’ve extended the deadline for contributions – but this is really it. If you want to get something in, then you have by the end of this Wednesday, 8th December 2011. All that is required is one paragraph minimum for most or all of the seven questions. As a guide, the first (and one of the best) contributions to the snapshot came in within 15 minutes of the first call for contributions going out.

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

The University of Portsmouth has been using Second Life since 2006. We currently have 3 Islands (UoP Island, Chmi Island and Enterprise Centre).

UoP Island is predominantly used for School of Computing student work; the majority contains a mix of materials to introduce students to Second Life and student coursework and dissertation work. Within the Island there is also a small area with the outputs from a project undertaken for the then HEA ICS Subject Centre on teaching tools for Second Life, and an area in which we are prototyping (with students) tools for teaching Forensic IT – this includes a Crown Court.

Chmi Island is used by the Centre for Healthcare Modelling and Informatics as a workplace telecare showcase, showing ways in which IT can be integrated into the workplace to provide healthcare support for employees and their families.

Enterprise Centre is awaiting development by the Portsmouth Business School to support their student placement activities.

Kevin Curtis in the School of Creative Technologies has been using Open Wonderland as part of a European Interreg project looking at developing problem-based learning to students.

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

We are using Second Life for both historical reasons (it was there when we started looking at Virtual Worlds) and for practical reasons (it is readily and freely available, it provides a rich environment for students to explore and learn from, there is a wealth of material available to support the work we do in Second Life, plus we have invested time and money in it).

We use Open Wonderland as part of a cross European research project. With Opensim – we are investigating this as an alternative, cheaper environment to Second Life.

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

We are given provision of server space for Open Wonderland work. Also, payment of the costs of two Second Life islands (the cost of the 3rd is covered by external funding).

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

Second Life provides an easy entry to using virtual worlds as there is a range of materials (books and on the web) to support new users, it is easy to find (direct students to) materials in world on how to build, texture etc, there is a wide range of freebies available which helps both students and staff starting out, and there are lots and lots of examples to look at and investigate. Anything is possible in terms.

The difficulties are that for newbies it takes time to get the hang of moving around and their inventories; the costs of owning an island have increased substantially; running it over a university network can be challenging (but on the other hand it can be run from a stick).

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

We don’t do formal teaching so our experiences have been around introducing students to Second Life and letting them explore and build. We have found with this type of usage that students split into 2 groups – love it or hate it. Those who hate it tend to have a strong gaming background and feel the graphics quality is too low and the interface not game-like enough. Those who love it tend to do so because they can see the potential.

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

Only that the more they can the better – but first we need better “integration” with academic networks e.g. multiple users of one computer for short periods of time with all the attendant problems of storage space and protection of the network from ‘odd’ software. Being able to easily run fully functional virtual worlds in browsers such as IE and firefox would help with this.

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

It is regrettable that changes in educational costs for Second Life have increased substantially over the last year as this may mean we have to withdraw from Second Life.

This is for snapshot #10, which is currently being compiled. There’s a window of opportunity for people who haven’t yet submitted to get something in, but it’s just a few days.

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

I am one of a group of Design lecturers at the Open University who are partners in a European Lifelong Learning project, ARCHI21. ARCHI21 is looking at learning language in the context of design and architectural teaching. Work began a year ago, but my group has used virtual worlds previously for some experimental design teaching.

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

We have been using Second Life, though on reflection OpenSim might have been a better choice. However, using OpenSim would mean someone looking after a server, which could be a challenge too far.

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

The Second Life islands we are using were set up by one of our partners, plus the OU has had its own island for some while. The reasons for this are lost in the midst of time, but probably because this was seen as the most popular virtual world. My institution supports virtual world development; it even hosts a conference on the subject of learning in virtual worlds (ReLive), though we are a long way from virtual worlds being a mainstream activity.

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

The great thing about working in-world is engaging with students in a different way. Our project centres on design and building and the building tools in Second Life let everyone experiment collaboratively in a way that is not easily achieved in other media. The in-world experience also lets students portray themselves in a way that both anonymises and expresses at the same time. The avatar names tell everyone lots about how people want to be seen rather than assumptions being made on the basis of real-world physical characteristics; Cyrano de Begerac might be set in a virtual world if it were written today. Our students enjoyed the informality and playfulness of the virtual world, whilst at the same time seeing it as a place to which they could return to collaborate and build their ideas. The virtual world has also proved to be a good place for assisting the development of language; the informality of the setting seems to foster constructive interaction around this aspect of learning.

What I don’t like about working in-world are technical problems that are hard to figure out; microphones not working; viewers that don’t correspond to expectations or instructions and trying to sort those things out at a distance for a minority of students whilst keeping the majority engaged. I am also not very good at moving around. Fortunately if you are with a bunch of novices no-one minds if you bump into them. Working in-world on a dedicated island feels quite safe but I have been scared off random tours in the wider world by avatars who appear to have Tourettes syndrome. The experience of landing in the Second Life general induction area, into a circle of avatars perched on the fence like evil crows ready to pick the bones of new arrivals, was quickly decided against when we trialled it before our students came in.

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

Our students are very enthusiastic about the experience that they had in-world. Interestingly, none of them really knew about virtual worlds before we invited them to join our experiment. Our students are all mature, so maybe that ignorance is to be expected, but our European partners tell us that the young students that they work with need to be convinced about virtual worlds. Those who take most naturally to the environment are gamers, but gamers are a small minority and their coolness is, apparently, questionable. The challenge is how to break down the perceptual barriers to in-world participation.

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

In my opinion, the virtual world should be used for the things that it offers that can’t be done elsewhere. I know from experience that it is possible to use other means to deliver lectures with some interactivity in other interfaces (I use Elluminate for that a lot). It is also possible to use VOIP interfaces for online meetings and to work on Google apps at the same time. What the virtual world offers is the chance for a playful experience, for building and role-playing and for interacting in a different way. It is these affordances that we should be developing and celebrating so that students come to the virtual world for learning and leave with enthusiasm as well as knowledge, understanding and skills.

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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.

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As well as its Second Life regions (currently 7 in use) the Virtual University of Edinburgh (Vue) has had access for the last 5 years to an OpenSim-based grid “Openvue” – running on 3 server computers hosted within the Artificial Intelligence Applications Institute (AIAI) in the School of Informatics in the University of Edinburgh. Most of its regions are accessible over the “HyperGrid” by avatars in other OpenSim grids. Vue also has regions on other OpenSim-based grids with open avatar registration – on OSGrid and New World Grid (regions NewVue and NewVCE). A Freeswitch server provides voice support on the Openvue, Newvue (New World Grid) and OSGrid.

Openvue is being used for experimentation and feedback to the OpenSim development community, often running the very latest development version of the OpenSim server software. Openvue and the Open Virtual Collaboration Environment projects at Edinburgh have also supported the development of an entire OpenSim region with meeting rooms, lecture theatre, expo pavilion and classooms, along with presentation screens and a link up with web portals. This “OpenSim Archive (OAR) file is freely available and has been ported between the Openvue grid, OSGrid, New World Grid and the MOSES Grid.

Two years ago some work took place in the School of Informatics to test Moodle linkups to Second Life using the SLoodle classroom kit. This work is now being retried using Moodle 2.x and Second Life and OpenSim virtual worlds. A new PhD student project in the School of Informatics starting in Autumn 2011 has started to look at intelligent classroom educational technologies involving I-Rooms and Moodle/SLoodle.

Tomorrow, it’s the turn of Dr Suzanne Lavelle, from Leicester University.

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

The main focus of the Serious Games and Virtual Worlds team at the University of Ulster is on Engineering Education.

Our research looks at the integration of virtual worlds, virtual learning environments and external hardware (sensors, test instrumentation, circuit boards), and the use of gameplay mechanics in this context.

We are looking at creating engaging collaborative/competitive group/team based learning experiences to teach electronic and electrical circuit theory.

We have also started to look at the use of intelligent tutoring systems in the context of virtual worlds and the nuances/affordances this offers e.g. how can these sort of systems be used effectively in 3D virtual environments.

We’ve been working with virtual worlds for over four years.

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

We are using Second Life, but moving to Opensim and Unity. OpenSim for the cost and flexibility. Unity as we are doing a lot of work in games.

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

Our research is mainly externally funded.

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

The usual. Installing clients, frequent updates, network/firewall problems, and support when using open source technologies.

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

Positive. The students are generally highly engaged, very open to trying new technologies and interested in trying new approaches to learning.

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

This is the main focus of the team’s research. The bringing together/integrating of a range of different/diverse technologies, usually not designed for this purpose, into coherent teaching tools is challenging, interesting, frustrating and rewarding, all in equal measures.

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

Yes. I’m still interested, and excited, about the potential of this area.

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

Virtual worlds have some use here in teaching; we are also developing and evaluating tools to integrate Virtual Worlds and VLEs (i.e. SLOODLE). I’ve been doing this stuff for around five years now.

Over the last year I was involved in a JISC LTIG project “Supporting Learning in Virtual Worlds with VLEs”. This was with partners at Imperial College London, The Open University and The University of Ulster. With pilot studies across four universities in engineering, computing science and medicine, and with pilot groups using virtual worlds to support learning through simulation, informal discussion groups and through clinical role-play, the project was able to explore a range of the different ways in which web-based learning environments can be used to support learning in virtual worlds.

More here: http://virtualworldsandvles.jiscinvolve.org/wp/

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

Second Life and OpenSim. We have a much reduced presence in Second Life due to their increased costs and our reduced ability to get funding in current climate.

I started in Second Life; it’s very easy to get started (still is really), very flexible for a wide range of tasks. The ability for SL objects to communicate with internet at large is very useful for developing new features and tools.

OpenSim has developed fantastically well – but it’s still having issues with getting everything working with the complex multi-domain and very firewalled network setup at the University of the West of Scotland. For example, I can very easily run OpenSim on staff domain – but then it is only visible within that domain. To run on the public web, I am reliant on tech support. Tech support here is very constrained; they are willing to help, but limited in time available.

Student projects last year also included one project using Half-Life 2 with Garys Mod to develop a game. A bit tangential, but there is quite a bit more game based learning/serious games work at UWS that doesn’t quite fall into the ‘virtual worlds’ domain.

One member of staff is currently exploring Open Wonderland. ICT are providing some support and have made a server available. This is early days, however, and further work has yet to be done before it is available to additional staff and to students – but the plan is to explore how we can make use of the platform to provide additional support to students.

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

Technical support have agreed to set up OpenSim & OpenWonderland. This is proceeding, but slowly.

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

Overall, they are very time consuming – and I am finding I never have quite enough time! They all have a range of limitations, but lack of time is really my biggest problem.

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

Computer science students are often underwhelmed. Games oriented students in particular are often disappointed by how clunky Second Life is in comparison to the latest version of Call of War: Shoot them In the Face IV, or whatever. Providing a good *reason* for using virtual worlds is something that really has to come at the start of a class, or there are real challenges engaging students. To an extent, this is true for doing anything outside the norm with students; for example, with other students we have to carefully explain why we are asking them to blog.

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

Yes. In brief, to get the full potential of virtual worlds, they have to stop being a ‘ghetto’ type activity. Barriers have to be broken down between virtual worlds and the wider web, and usability has to dramatically improve.

Rather than try to repeat them all here, can I direct people to http://www.sloodle.org/ and
http://virtualworldsandvles.jiscinvolve.org/wp/ The final report of the latter is also available online and has two conclusions:

General Conclusions

Across the range of pilots, students have generally responded enthusiastically to virtual world based learning activities – whether individual or group simulations, tutor groups or role-play. This provides some support to prior claims on the uses of virtual worlds for learning and teaching.

As specifically regards the integration of VW and VLE, integration with VLE does not require the use of specific software, but can be as simple as providing adequate scaffolding and guidance on VLE for VW activities – but students do not always read instructions. Thus it remains important to use signage or other guidance within the virtual world itself: design not just of the learning tasks but of the surroundings can be very important for self-guided use of simulations as it is easy to get lost in a 3D environment such as SL.

Conclusions for Wider Community

SLOODLE has now been tested on one of the very largest production Moodle environments in the world. From this, and the close code review by core Moodle developers that preceded this, we have greatly increased confidence in the reliability, security and performance of the SLOODLE software.

Yet the OU experience offers a conclusion that the institutional reviews necessary in order to implement anything on the VLE should not be underestimated – getting additional software added to an institutional VLE may take many months and require multiple approvals before it can proceed. Tighter integration between VW and VLE (such as by using SLOODLE) can support enhanced formative and summative assessment, and allow tutors to more easily track student progress. It can also benefit students by allowing them more rapid feedback than might be the cases if VW and VLE activities are separated.

Next week, we’ll feature submissions by Mark Conrad, Sheila Webber and Daniel Livingstone, amongst others.

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

We are still focussed on using virtual worlds for education/training, and building/data visualisation. I’ve been in Second Life (SL) since 2004, and in virtual worlds since VRML back in 1997.

Our big project in the education space at the moment is working with Academy 360 up in Sunderland. They are a through school – 5 – 16 – and we are working with them to create a successor to the PIVOTE virtual world authoring tool. The new system will be far easier to use and allow you to not only build the logic and 2D content of a learning exercise on the web, but also to design the 3D environment using the equivalent of a 2D “kitchen designer” drag and drop system. Our initial scenarios include a beachcombing exercise – where teachers will be able to lay out the beach from a set of library objects, and a classroom management exercise – again with a library of school type assets. Working with the school means that we are getting real user input form the word go, and we are also collaborating on the project with the educationalists at the University of Hull. We hope to have a first public release early in 2012.

Another project we had this year was creating a distance learning space for Hamdan Bin-Mohammed eUniversity in Dubai. This was a conventional, if futuristic looking, teaching space, which brought their Moodle system into SL using shared media, and we then developed a HUD system which let the teacher “push” pages to the students, and enable the students to raise questions through a HUD based “hands up” mechanism.

Something else we did that was a little bit different for a University in Florida was to create an SL to SMS gateway so students from SL chat could SMS message their teachers for help, and the teacher could reply back into SL via SMS – with everything being logged. The core SL application was for accountancy training – not the first thing you think of using SL for.

We are also continuing to support projects at places such as Coventry University, the University of Leicester, the University of West England, University of Central Florida and City University of New York.

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

Second Life, OpenSim and beginning to get involved with Unity and HTML5. We love the flexibility and ease of development in SL, and OpenSim then lets us not only run that locally but also to add server code functionality, either direct, or through region modules, or though mechanisms like the bounty we recently paid to have the osNPC functions fixed.

Some clients though want something more closed down and installable, and Unity seems a good route for that. And HTML5/WebGL looks like it could be a good next step on the road to a standards based, zero foot print virtual world architecture – I think we’re more attracted to that than the OpenSim/Unity hybrids.

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

Not applicable since we’re a private company, but we still get the impression that our clients find it an uphill struggle in their institutions – private and public. The recent RelIve conference had a good summary of the challenges – near and long term.

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

SL is still not 100% solid – especially voice, but the new mesh support is great, and viewer 3 looks like what viewer 2 should have been. But having got used to OpenSim where I can develop worlds on the train I find it hard to see why I should spend much more time in SL – although you do miss the social side.

The OAR capability is stunning, being able to save whole builds off and email them to people, and the emerging osNPC functionality will mean that we can finally populate the virtual world with virtual people.

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

Not applicable – although again from our clients feedback there is still some polarisation of student views, but after they’ve actually been exposed to the environment and use it the net feedback is far more positive. We just need to make it a lot easier to get in and do stuff.

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

Lots. Virtual Worlds need to be embeddable within a VLE, need to be able to exchange data with a VLE, and to be able to embed the VLE on screens with the world.

However a virtual world experience is very different to standard VLE content (slides, quizes) so we’ve never been particular advocates of sucking existing VLE content out and representing it in the virtual world. One insight we had at the reLive content was not so much “what would happen if SL dies” but rather “what would have happened if Google’s Lively had lived”. Imagine being able to drop users into a bespoke virtual world from every page of your VLE – perhaps HTML5/WebGL will give us that.

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

Just about covers it. I think everyone is still finding it a bit of an uphill struggle, and the stability and complexity of the technology isn’t helping at all. But we’re finding converts in some very surprising places. Again the ReLive Delphi session defined the problem and opportunity pretty well:

1. Short term: Getting it to work & be desirable
2. Medium term: Interoperability & mobile
3. Long term: Radical UI changes (gesture/nervous/brain) & societal change (both changes that effect VW, and how VW effects changes)