Teaching in virtual worlds

Thinking about getting into Second Life? Here Mark Childs (Coventry University) provides an introduction to the issues raised in teaching in virtual worlds. Mark (SL Gann McGann) is currently undertaking a PhD into learners’ experiences in mediated environments – see Mark’s e-portfolio for more details and examples of his Second Life avatars and machinima.

This resource was produced for the UKCLE seminar on simulation learning in 2008.

Virtual worlds, computer-generated visual 3D environments, have been used in online gaming and as a form of social networking since the mid 1990s. In virtual worlds participants adopt an alter ego known as an avatar, a computer-generated representation of themselves, which can be moved by the player or participant through the virtual world encountering other participants’ avatars and communicating with them.

Virtual worlds are now being increasingly used to conduct educational activities, but, although there are some innovative exceptions, this has been largely confined to recreating classroom situations in the virtual world rather than fully exploiting the potential of the environment.

Educators are experimenting in creating new learning spaces within these worlds where students can get together virtually through the representation of their avatar and communicate with other students and their teachers. Seminars can be conducted, lectures given, and debates presented – all within the confines of the virtual world. Moreover, the technology gives the ability to create a simulated environment to allow students to practise in situations which would not be possible or even desirable in the ‘real’ world. Students can undertake tasks and activities in a safe and controlled space where they can assume a certain independence and responsibility for their actions – and where they can be monitored, mentored and assessed.

Introducing Second Life

Second Life, or SL, is currently the most popular virtual world, with thousands of participants (or ‘inhabitants’). SL consists of two continents (the ‘mainland’) and many small islands. Participants can buy land on the mainland, or for more privacy – and more prestige – they can buy a whole island. A number of UK higher education institutions have already purchased their own islands and are experimenting with new delivery methods.

Once residents have purchased some land they can create their own objects within their space, built from adding together many basic geometric shapes. An active economy exists within SL buying and selling these and other objects, with communication taking place through text or voice.

Participants in Second Life adopt a name by which they will be known in the virtual world. For instance Mark Childs has chosen the Second Life (SL) name of Gann McGann.

Second Life seminar given by Gann McGann (in foreground)

Benefits of using a virtual world

As in text-based systems such as discussion boards virtual worlds bring people together across distances to communicate and enable the storing and sharing of information. In addition they can include 3D objects which can be explored by movement through and around them, recreating places (particularly useful for presenting buildings that no longer exist or to explore places not easily accessible, such as a courtroom), as well as media objects such as images, Flash, PowerPoint and QuickTime files.

These facilities are also possible on the Web, however the use of avatars provides the following unique possibilities:

• participants feel embodied within the environment – they have an actual presence within the virtual world, meaning that they experience the 3D recreations more fully and engage more in tasks; for example in a skills module students could take part in a client interview
• participants are usually pseudonymous and may take on any appearance – this provides flexibility as well as role playing opportunities; for example in a criminal justice module you may wish the student to see the process through the eyes of the victim or the accused

Michele Ryan (Lancaster University; SL Shelly Waco) has compiled a list of 16 ways to use Second Life in a classroom:

1. Adding a visual element (use objects that explain things in a visual way).
2. As an interactive repository (for PowerPoint presentations, exercises and quizzes, video/audio).
3. As a connection device for Internet telephony, instant messaging or chat (as an alternative meeting place, live or recorded).
4. As a role play device (with predetermined roles, tasks or themes).
5. As a simulation device (to practice complex processes).
6. To create and play games (content or skill-based games, puzzles, scavenger hunts and other competition-based activities).
7. For skill development (for example to practise a social skill).
8. For research (to study in-world behaviour, for example gender roles).
9. For virtual tourism and field trips (taking students to a place they couldn’t otherwise visit).
10. As a social device (to help team members to get to know each other and practise communication skills).
11. To create anonymity (to gather confidential information).
12. Machinima (use the creation of machinima – ie creating a production using game tools – as a primary task).
13. For recruitment (create an in-world presence to showcase work or promote your department).
14. For awareness or event promotion (creating an island that contains information and/or builds awareness).
15. Building for the sake of learning how to build (working with prims, scripts, textures, animations and 3D rendering).
16. Open learning (as an open, non-structured, student centred learning community).

What you need

Registation and the software to access Second Life is free, however some IT service departments block access to Second Life through their firewalls – check your institution’s policy.

Second Life is resource intensive – you will need a PC with a good graphics card to run the software and high bandwidth. You also need to ensure your students have access to the appropriate technology, and you will have to consider their training needs.

No specific skills are required, however many users find the interface difficult to get used to. The help function and in-world introduction (Orientation Island) are also widely considered to present a barrier to new users. One alternative is to run an introductory hands-on session providing advice as required.

Second Life residents have to be over 18, although there is a ‘teen grid’ for under-18s.

‘How to’ tip sheet

As yet there is little practical advice available on how to embed a virtual world into an existing course or module, and very few evaluations have been conducted. However, activities built around communication and role play draw on the strengths of the environment.

Below is an outline set of tasks developed as part of an introduction to the technology.

Getting started with Second Life: 10 tasks to help you acclimatise

1. Register a Second Life account.
2. Get through Orientation Island and design your own avatar.
3. Teleport to the home of a Second Life contact (for example, Gann McGann) and create a landmark for that location. If at any point it seems a bit dark where you are, force the sun to noon.
4. Meet and converse with some other residents and add them as contacts.
5. Find and explore some nearby landmarks (some within walking distance, others you need to fly to).
6. Find a busy place with lots of residents and teleport there, observe what sort of place it is, create a landmark, then teleport back. (This task is intended to be a random introduction to the type of things that go on in Second Life – some things can be a bit strange, so skip this task if you’re uncomfortable with it.)
7. Find a place that provides free objects. Go there, create a landmark, acquire the objects and dress your avatar with them, then return home and exchange those objects with other residents.
8. Explore some landmarks to educational resources or venues (for example?), go to them and explore them, then return.
9. Find one additional educational venue, or a simulation of a real life place with some relevance to teaching. Create a landmark, explore the place, then return.
10. Exchange one of those two landmarks with one other resident, then visit the place for which you’ve received a landmark. Explore that place then return.

Note the warning about strangeness! Second Life is a public space, and although divided into ‘PG’ and ‘mature’ areas sometimes activity of a sexual nature may be accidentally encountered. Be aware of the three levels of control and responsibility:

1. Highest level – the areas you own and build. Here you can exclude griefers (people who participate only to harass or aggravate others in SL) and inappropriate behaviour.
2. Approved landmarks – other people’s spaces, where you have checked that the environment is appropriate. Bear in mind however that you have no control over what other residents do.
3. Lowest level – the rest of Second Life. As in any field trip, once students are exploring on their own there is the possibility of encountering content inappropriate for most teaching sessions – free activities in Second Life can be made optional to get over this.

If the lowest level is still problematic, consider using an alternative virtual world such as Active Worlds Europe, which has a strict policy on being free of adult content.

Examples/case studies

An example of Second Life being used in legal education is CyberOne: Law in the court of public opinion, a module offered at Harvard Law School during 2006. As part of the module a mock trial was held on Berkman Island, the Second Life presence of Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society.

Austin Hall, the Berkman Island courtroom, is designed to resemble a real life courtroom. Module participants took on avatars and played particular roles, with evidence brought in using media player screens – see the CyberTrial post mortem for full details.

screenshots from the CyberTrial post mortem showing the submitting of evidence and Austin Hall

Watch out for…

There are numerous barriers to implementing Second Life, not least the technical requirements and the time needed to acquire the skills to use the interface. Other barriers are perceptual and cultural, and hence may not be apparent in advance. These can be reduced by providing an opportunity to discuss them beforehand.

Perceptual and cultural barriers to implementing Second Life:

• It looks like a computer game – this leads to false comparisons to games. Students who are gamers will be disappointed by the graphics and the lack of set goals, and non-gamers (both students and colleagues) will dismiss it as fun, simplistic and infantile. A closer comparison however is with computer-mediated communication platforms such as discussion boards.
• The pseudonymous nature of the environment – this can cause anxiety for some students, who feel exposed unless they know who the other participants ‘really’ are.
• Screen readers don’t work – there are currently no ways to make Second Life accessible for visually impaired users.
• The ‘Heeter one fourth’ – experiments by Carrie Heeter (Michigan State University) indicate that the sense of immersion within the environment, which is what makes a virtual world a useful platform, is only experienced by three quarters of the population. Polls indicate that about one in four students ‘don’t get it’ and feel a disconnection from the visuals (typically they feel they are moving an image on a screen rather than moving within the world themselves).

Further reading

---

• Controlling Second Life: six barriers to innovation in MUVE-based learning and teaching
• Learning and teaching in immersive virtual worlds ALT-J vol 16 issue 3 (2008)
• Getting started with Second Life – JISC guide (2009)
• Second Life in education wiki – includes resources on educational uses of Second Life and a list of virtual worlds, platforms and building tools
• Second Life learning videos – E-learning Technology blog (16 June 2008)
• Second Life training – Learning Circuits Blog (31 May 2008)
• Top 20 educational locations in Second Life – from the SimTeach wiki aimed at teachers in multi-user virtual environments
• Virtual World Watch – blog and ‘snapshots’ on the use of virtual worlds in UK higher and further education

Law case studies:

• CyberTrial post mortem – account of the use of Second Life at Harvard Law School (2006)
• A little grafting of Second Life into a legal research class – using Second Life to teach legal research at Nova Southeastern University, Florida (2008)
• Second guessing: is there a context for Second Life in legal education? – using Second Life on a legal IT module at Glasgow Caledonian (2009)

Last Modified: 4 June 2010