Why Use Second Life? (with examples)
1. Meeting and Planning
Groups discuss using SL in some way, but had not yet reached the stage
of formally planning activities.
2. Actively Planning an SL Presence
Here, academics have secured some resources (staff and/or financial),
and are planning activities in-world. Toni Sants from the School of Arts
and New Media at the University of Hull describes their plans:
The purpose of our current SL development is purely exploratory. We want to see what we can do with/in SL by being in-world. We know we'd like to establish a presence for our department and campus (but not necessarily the whole university) in the coming months, but it's more important to understand what SL is all about than just building it and hope they show up.
3. Research within SL
SL is being examined by many academics for use as a research tool or
environment, or as a subject of research in itself. At the University of
the West of England Manuel Frutos-Perez, the Deputy Head of the
E-learning Development Unit, describes their SL research development:
We are aiming to build a Research Observatory in Second Life for our research students. We have just announced internally a design competition so that students can put forward their ideas about how we could use our space in Second Life. Later on in the year we will design collaborative tasks that groups of students will complete in Second Life. The tasks will seek to maximise group creativity and will encourage students to be enterprising and to engage in discovery, synthesis and fact-finding missions. The tasks will be structured and facilitated by academic staff but will essentially be learner-centric.
4. Developing Tools and Simulations
A smaller number of academics are using SL as a platform to develop
tools. Dr Peter Miller, from the Biological Sciences department in the
University of Liverpool, introduced his work in the first snapshot:
I am currently developing a series of visualization tools that I intend to use in cell and molecular biology lectures and make available in-world for informal student use from September 2007 onwards. They currently comprise two workstations with a strong focus on providing an end-user building capability, one in the context of protein domain structure, the other as a means of animating regulatory networks in gene expression.
5. Staging an Exhibition
Art and design staff, in their responses, were keen to 'test the
boundaries' of what they can achieve in SL. For example, Julia Gaimster,
involved in developing the SL London College of Fashion building,
replied:
We are not aiming to replicate the college but to create areas that enable creative thinking and activities and we are keen to develop collaborative projects using the space.
And indeed, the college did put on a successful exhibition, as Julia noted in September 2007:
We did manage to stream keynote speeches from the designs on elearning conference to LCF and LCC islands. The LCF exhibition continues to attract visitors over 1660 to date.
6. Department or Centre Presence
Several departments, centres and groups have developed their own
individual presence. At Bromley College, Clive Gould developed an
interactive area for prospective students of his computing courses to
use:
Over the years I have come across applicants for the courses who did not have prior experience of programming. This year I have been able to recommend the sim to such applicants. There they can learn LSL (Linden Script Language) programming in a fun environment and see if they enjoy programming and are good at it, before committing themselves to an HE course involving a lot of programming.
7. Using SL to Support a Course or Module
By far the largest number of respondents fell into the category of
academics running courses, or planning to run courses, using Second
Life. Simon Bignell, from the Department of Psychology at the University
of Derby, describes the use of SL in the teaching of 30 psychology
students:
The SL-Labs project at University of Derby is up and running encouraging Derby psychology undergraduates to engage with the unique attributes of a 3D virtual world to learn about basic Psychology skills. We are currently taking a group of 30 psychology undergraduates into Second Life on a supplementary module option of our Psychology Skills module. Here students learn core psychological skills including experimental design, essay writing, presentation preparation, critical thinking skills, and plagiarism avoidance and referencing.
8. Supporting Developments across Several Departments
Some academic developments are designed to support academics and courses
across several institutions. Daniel Livingstone describes collaborative
SL developments being built by the University of Paisley:
We have an island (virtuALBA) which is still in development, but which hosts a share of the Eduserv Foundation-funded Sloodle project (along with virtual neighbour and collaborator, San Jose State University). The island currently also hosts an exhibition, university information centre as well as a corner for the University of Aberdeen medical school and a small area in use by the University of Strathclyde (who now have their own island). Last year we taught a class (Collaborative Virtual Environments) which used a range of technologies including SL - and which should be repeated this year.
Figure 2: Meeting up at VirtuALBA
9. Building a Campus-wide Presence
Several universities, such as Anglia Ruskin, Edinburgh, Hertfordshire,
Oxford and Sunderland, are at different stages in developing a campus
in-world. Coventry University was the first such UK institution to
launch, in September 2007, as part of the Serious Virtual World 2007
Conference. The launch was observed both at the real world conference,
and within SL itself:
Last night the vice chancellor (Madeleine Atkins, who avatar name is Phoenix Watkins) launched the island at a formal launch at Coventry University in a lecture packed with academics and business. In world she cut the virtual tape and set off the fireworks. Many people came to the launch in world as well. We have had a lots of local and national media interest. We also had the first serious virtual world conference outside the USA and it was all streamed into Second Life over the last 2 days. We have more courses starting to use it now, including transport design, fashion design, theatre studies and an MSc in clinical management