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.

A Run on Virtual Banks in SL

The Wall Street Journal has taken note of the run on virtual banks in Second Life. In the old days, SL allowed free reign for most anything. Folks could set up virtual casinos. Banks could be operated by anyone, and deposits could earn interest. It was play money, but the play money was bought with real money.

Then came draconian American online gambling laws and the lawyers for SL corporate parent Linden Lab said it would be best to shut down the casinos. You see, even though it was play money, users spent real money buying the play money, and American law would likely not lend a kind ear to such arguments.

The banks struggled on for a while. There were fears of money laundering. Say a bad guy opened up a bank in SL and deposited ill gotten gain in the form of Linden dollars. Then his accomplice withdrew the play money and turned it into real money in another country. So now, Linden Lab has deemed that only banks in the real world can open a bank in SL. And so, folks who deposited money in the virtual banks want their money back, and some have closed.

Robert Bloomfield, a management prof over at Cornell gets a nice quote (“There is not a whole lot that is fake about this”). So does grad student Joshua Zarwel over at NYU, who actually runs, uh, ran, a virtual bank in SL. His bank, aptly named SL Bank, offered 24-30% interest on deposits, with about $25,000 deposited.

What’s fascinating is the opportunity for studying the simulations of real world behavior that can take place in virtual worlds. Researchers can follow the effects of mass virus outbreaks on populations, economic scares, and market theory. Human behavior remains the same, whether in a virtual world or the real world.

References:
Sidel, R. (2008, January 23). Cheer up, Ben: Your economy isn’t as bad as this one. The Wall Street Journal, p. A1.