Oct 27

Snapshot survey #7 of virtual world use in UK Higher and Further Education

Social media, Surveys, VWW 2 Comments »

This is a “Request For Information” for the seventh Virtual World Watch snapshot survey.

This time, there’s just one main question, and a few side points. The main question can be interpreted as broadly, or as narrowly, as you wish. As before, the scope is limited to UK Higher and Further Education.

Blue Mars by Flickr user Connie Sec

The question

How are you using virtual worlds (e.g. Second Life, OpenSim, Metaplace, OLIVE, Active Worlds, Playstation Home, Blue Mars, Twinity, Wonderland) in 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.

Group of Second Life avatars by Flickr user James Schwarz

Deadline

Please send your contributions, in whatever format (e.g. email, Word, text) to john (@) virtualworldwatch.net by the end of Friday 20th November. Relevant content submitted by then is guaranteed to go into the report; content received afterwards is unlikely to make it in.

Thank you for your contribution,
Virtual World Watch

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Sep 21

Professor Austin Tate / Ai Austin

People, Quotes, Surveys, VWW, Worlds 1 Comment »

It’s evident from responses in so far to the latest snapshot survey that a fair proportion of UK academics who are “into” Second Life are also having a good rummage around other virtual worlds.

Ai Austin / Austin Tate

One of these is Professor Austin Tate, who researches out of Edinburgh University. To the question of what virtual worlds he is using, Austin responded: 

Second Life (mostly), Opensim, Twinity, Lively by Google and a range of others for testing. My own interests are for collaboration, task support, emergency response research, training.

He’s intrigued by other virtual worlds:

Opensim already in use, and could be used for behind the firewall systems, and where we need much more real estate for training and simulation related exercises.

Austin maintains a jump page of links to various resources and places in virtual worlds that, if you’re an educator exploring these worlds, is worth having a look through.

Austin can also be found on Twitter.

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