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On November 26th we held the latest session of Metanomics, focused this time on higher education. Our guests were Chris Collins of the University of Cincinnati and Benn R Konsynski of Emory University. (You can read more complete profiles about them on our previous post.) You can use the links above to review the event, and see the attached text file (below this article) to read the backchat.
Below I've attempted to summarize the discussion in brief, but the event was so rich in information that covering every topic would be beyond the scope of this article. The event generated a tremendous amount of enthusiasm and the full session recordings will prove to be valuable to all educators looking at entering the virtual world.
Chris Collins
Chris Collins (Fleep Tuque in Second Life) began with the MUD and BBS community in the mid-90's, eventually graduating to video games like WoW and Everquest. Most of her recent efforts have focused on Second Life.
In April / May of this year she was working with Nancy Jennings to build an island for their university. When trying to work out what form it should take, they decided to survey what other educators were doing. It took a long time to find everybody. Often land was named after mascots or local figures, so tracking everyone down was a challenge.
They started with SimTeach Wiki, and combined with the in-world Search tool were able to find 170 listings. Only 71 institutions, however, actually had land in Second Life. 70% of these institutions were physically located in North America, followed by another 20% in Europe. Many were dedicating space to student socialization in addition to galleries, auditoriums and libraries.
When they held the "Best Practices In Education Conference" in May, they got an overwhelming 1300 RSVPs. There was a huge contingent of individual faculty members doing work in Second Life without institutional presence. Since then the numbers have been growing, with a current estimated 200 institutions establishing formal Second Life presences worldwide.
Distance learning is really on the rise, but with the increase of interest in that area comes the discovery of hurdles. "One of the complaints that students of distance learning programs have is that they feel isolated," said Collins, "All of us who are involved in Second Life now realize how much of a benefit it is to be able to visualize another person. Even if it isn't an exact replica of the person you get that sense of co-presence. And that carries across to collaboration and research."
Benn R Konsynski
Benn R Konsynski (Rejin Tenjin in Second Life) has been monitoring emerging technology for a few decades. He was involved in virtual reality activity in late 80s and early 90s, and watched MUDs and the first virtual spaces (Imagination, The Palace, Larryland). In his opinion technology is very close to catching up to the aspirations people have had for virtual worlds over the years.
Currently at Emory he's putting together a new class entitled "Virtual Worlds And New Realities". They're interested in social norms, commerce, politics and law, and what the similarities and differences are between how those things operate in a virtual world as opposed to the real one.
Emory's island in Second Life is called "Simsim", and serves four purposes: display of branding assets, basic orientation and building / scripting tutorials, a center posting best practices for virtual business and government, and a space to look at emerging technologies in real life as well as Second Life.
In studying the way groups interact in virtual worlds, he's been able to discover what works and what doesn't. Very large meetings can work well, and so do very small meetings. Outside of these two areas, however, we can run into some trouble: "The historic classroom groupings don't often work well," said Konsynski, "especially if you try to take advantage of mobility. Moving groups from one place to another is a disaster waiting to happen."
Educational Hybrids
A question from the audience prompted a discussion on collaboration of external organizations and educational institutions. "Too often we think of the 20th century model of education separated from training and learning," Konsynski said, "I think that just as we mash-up in our web space we can readily see mash-ups that create new hybrid learning environments that involve both the historic institutions and other providers"
"I would definitely echo that as well," responded Collins, "There is a nice crossover between a lot of non-profit institutions and educational institutions. [...] As far as business education there are so many opportunities here. I think all of us are facing the same challenges with the platform itself and as we find something that works in one environment they're likely to work in another environment."
Internships are one possible area of expansion in this regard. A big box store opening an outlet in a virtual world would benefit from having some student interns staffing the space, and the students would benefit from the in-world experience.
Challenges
One big difficulty is that you often have students more comfortable with the environment than the teachers. "How does that affect your authority as a subject matter expert," Collins commented. A partial solution in that regard is to emphasize that this is happening in a larger context, and that the technology is only a small part of a larger concept at work.
The expense of getting upgraded machines to access the virtual world is a problem, as are the logistics of keeping a lab full of systems updated with the latest client. Students can't be expected to purchase the high-end systems they would require either, so what's the solution?
Discussion along these lines continued, bridging into subjects like multitasking, attention span, the lowest technological common denominator, and even a certain amount of criticism with regards to our previous session with Castranova. You can view the session in full through the links above.
Upcoming Metanomics Event
The next Metanomics session will be on Monday, December 3rd. Robert Bloomfield will host, and he has arranged for two in-world business people to come and speak: Stroker Serpentine and Temporal Mitra. We'll explore the challenges of managing virtual businesses, managing virtual employees, marketing in Second Life, adult entertainment, and intellectual property issues.
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I agree that virtual worlds will likely create the first viable virtual classrooms. But even so, something will always be missing. Prior instances of Internet-based distance learning have not caught on to the level many expected, despite the appeal of not having to travel in order to attend class. But this phenomenon has never surprised me since the idea of attending a class that is not interactive seems fundamentally inferior – so much of the educational experience is the classroom dynamic and the interplay between students and faculty, particularly in professional school settings like law and business school. Virtual worlds, unlike other internet classrooms, begin to reproduce a “classroom” setting by facilitating multidimensional interaction. But just as interaction in virtual worlds will never equal real-world interpersonal interaction, virtual classrooms will never equate.
What, then, is the motivation for fostering nascent virtual world education? To justify the effort needed and, even more importantly, what students give up by not having real-world interaction, something must be gained. Most logical is the idea that virtual worlds may improve access to education, particularly by making higher education available to those who cannot afford to attend school in real life. But, as suggested in the presentation, do virtual worlds actually do anything about this problem? Second Life is a technology-hungry application – my $2000 laptop and $30/month cable internet connection sometimes has difficulty rendering the virtual world in a manner even remotely realistic. This is a problem because the same people who can afford the equipment necessary to participate in a virtual classroom are the same people who can afford to attend real-world institutions. And, given what one sacrifices in moving to a virtual classroom, why would anyone choose to do it? The idea came up about having people use library and other public access computers capable of running the program. But what public library in a poor neighborhood will have equipment adequate to run Second Life?
If anything, virtual classrooms seem a way for educational institutions to save money by increasing class sizes or outsourcing instruction, all while charging students the same tuition.
At least today in their relative nascence, virtual worlds are like any other innovative technology – they are for the haves, not the have-nots. While virtual-world classrooms will never be equivalent to real-world institutions in the quality of their experience, they are similar in who can access them.
A couple of interesting opinion pieces on the topic you raise are:
"Second Life's Potential Not To Be Overlooked"
http://media.www.thesantaclara.com/media/storage/paper946/news/2007/11/1...
"Second Life: Let's Not Replace The First"
http://media.www.thesantaclara.com/media/storage/paper946/news/2007/11/0...
I have posted a few photos from Higher Education Takes On The Virtual World at
http://flickr.com/photos/seesaw8/sets/72157603308458868/
There are many indications that virtual worlds such as Second Life and digital games change the way people communicate and learn by provide meaningful learning experiences, and serving as a cognitive bridge between concrete experiences and complex abstractions (Gazit, in press).
Beside the technical & the financial barrier pointed out above by TripalThreat Watkins, I believe that we need to address key issues such as: How to assess the interactions and learning within virtual worlds? What tools should be used for studying the complex relationships between virtual worlds and real world interactions? What kind of instructional and pedagogical approaches should be implemented within virtual worlds for enhancing engagement and meaningful interactions?
In the coming IDC workshop entitled: Virtual Worlds Real People, which will take place next month, I’ll present some of the innovative methodologies which are needed for bridging between micro and macro levels of interactions (individual and collaborative) which occur in different space and time scales.