Beyond Second Life
Tony Bates refers us to an article in the Chronicle by Jeffrey Young: After Frustrations in Second Life, Colleges Look to New Virtual Worlds.
The article details the challenges universities have faced when trying to integrate SL into lessons. Consequently, they are exploring other venues for instruction that offer more controls and fewer distractions.
Sometimes this leads to additional problems. Few companies in this specialty are as established as SL’s parent, Linden Labs. Some have gone broke, taking virtual classroom space with them when the plug was pulled.
A couple of promising efforts either underway or coming this year include Open Cobalt from Duke University, funded by the NSF and the Mellon Foundation, and OpenSimulator which leases virtual space for instructional purposes.
Several initiatives are out there to offer classroom space to educators at no cost to them. Young notes Aaron E. Walsh over at Boston College hosts about 2,000 educator accounts on Education Grid, a world devoted to online instruction that Walsh set up through his project, the Immersive Education Initiative. The mix on Education Grid is about 80% university profs and 20% secondary teacher accounts. The IEI leases space from OpenSimulator.
To counter the academic exodus, SL now offers a version of its software universities can host on local servers, which effectively prevents outsider access and the ability for students to wander over to red light districts.
It’s interesting to see the idea mature from a fanciful notion, to gritty reality, to something tailored for specific educational needs. For instance, initially universities set up virtual spaces identical to real world lecture halls. This resulted in unwieldy virtual space that was hard to navigate. It’s also interesting to see the day coming when SL will be considered “old hat” by professors and students, who will be using newer, more robust environments geared specifically for virtual education from the ground up.
Tags: Aaron Walsh, Duke, Immersive Education Initiative, Jeffrey Young, Linden Labs, Mellon Foundation, Open Cobalt, OpenSimulator, SL, Tony Bates
Game Discussion, MMORPGs, Second Life, Serious Games, Simulations, Virtual Worlds | John Rice | 
March 27, 2010 7:44 am
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By jason, March 27, 2010 @ 10:12 am
I am curious to see how education can be seen as something isolated from the world around it, virtual or not. When education exists behind high walls, how meaningful does it get? I’m curious. I live in an urban environment, and don’t teach at a school miles from anywhere.
I’m still interested in SL vs the rather arid otherGrids because it is still immersed in complex communities, still is engaged in informal learning, and sees learning as not wedded to the classroom. That and the resources are better. I can list problems forever, but that’s not the point, since those problems seem ubiquitous.
I’ll have more local sims on our school’s machines, but the idea of education always being done behind locked doors always makes me wonder.
By WUstudent, April 7, 2010 @ 6:40 am
I find this topic very interesting. I think a related topic would be development of ed. software that is as engaging as some of the more popular commercial packages. Perhaps these topics and environments will evolve simultaneously.
By laurawelch, July 22, 2010 @ 11:45 pm
The article deals the challenges of the universities trying to integrate SL into lessons. This was very nice.
Through this blog i came to know about many things.Thanks for the informative blog.
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By Sarah, July 27, 2010 @ 9:44 am
Very interesting, we had a lecture taking part in SL and I don’t think it’s good enough in the present. There have to many developments coming up. Oh, and btw thanks to Laura for sharing that site!
By Sabrina, September 8, 2010 @ 3:21 am
Even the earliest adopters of Second Life are turning elsewhere. After all, the Web-based parallel universe is a przeprowadzki messy marketplace where you’re as likely to see a bare-chested, rabbit-headed avatar trolling for adult-themed entertainment or vandalizing a digital store as a corporate suit leading a training session. And some companies want to target age groups younger or older than the average 30-year-old denizen of Second Life.
By Acmevinoth, October 14, 2010 @ 12:27 pm
The Immersive Education Initiative is a non-profit international collaboration of universities, colleges, research institutes, consortia and companies that are working together to define and develop open standards, best practices, platforms, and communities of support for virtual reality and game-based learning and training systems. Thousands of faculty, researchers, staff, administrators and students are members of the Immersive Education Initiative, which is growing at the rate of approximately 2 new members every day. Immersive Education was recently recognized with a prestigious national award by Computerworld for being “innovative, promising technologies which hold the potential to significantly affect society in the near future”.
The Immersive Education Initiative is a merit-based, not-for-profit initiative of the Media Grid international standards group. Membership is free (no fee) and open to the public but restricted to organizations and individuals that have experience using virtual worlds, simulations, or game-based learning technologies.