E-Mail 'Educators sour on virtual worlds' To A Friend

8 Comments

1. 

   It may be worth drawing attention to the sterling work done by the Virtual Worlds Education Round Table which continues to meet in SL and provides a useful forum for networking with other educators. Details here: https://plus.google.com/u/0/communities/101630374387475211030

2. 

   Educators may be souring on SL (and I would argue that a large portion of the educators previously in SL – including myself – soured on SL seven years ago when SL announced the end of the educator discount). Still, I believe the suggestion that SL is somehow a bellwether for all educational virtual world use is patently false. Use of the OpenSimulator platform to stage educational virtual world simulations continues to be a popular choice for instructors (owing to the affordability, ability to create private FERPA-compliant grids, and the available in-world building tools). Further, it is the OpenSimulator Community Conference (@ http://conference.opensimulator.org) that is the premier
   conference for educators using OpenSim (and educators appeared to be well represented at the OpenSimulator Community Conference last year). Finally, in order for the [OpenSim-based] educational use of virtual worlds to continue to grow, I believe OpenSim needs
   a viewer that can be integrated into learning management systems as a third party app (see the article @ https://www.hypergridbusiness.com/2017/02/prof-asks-opensim-viewer-devs-to-help-schools). https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/c21a23bdc55ba796781d7a316b3123721959784ccc0b40d273f65a5037754c35.jpg

3. 

   I’d like to add to Kay’s comments below that SLMOOC has been a growing mixed reality event also. I just think VWBPE and SL are not the only games in town that educators are using as Kay and Graham point out, also the development of Sansar and High Fidelity hangs heavy over our heads as the “other shoe” waiting to be dropped that will certainly rock the existing SL community.

   On another point, I used to buy into the argument that SL possibly had a prohibitively steep learning curve. I didn’t find it too hard but I didn’t try to learn everything in a day or a week either so I wasn’t sure how that affected students who needed to accomplish tasks in a set period. At that time when I started my own (music) project in SL, I hadn’t played a computer game since PacMan on Commodore64 so I had nothing to compare SL’s complexity to in those early days (2006). Then I took a New Media course that involved exposure to a multi-player online roleplaying environment (Lord of the Rings Online), the type of game played by millions of students. It was incredibly more complicated than SL, I spent hours trying to accomplish the tasks needed for my course while gamer savey millenials were able to do things much more quickly, so I really dispute the idea that SL is too complex for most students to navigate.

4. 

   I think the decline is only partially based on mismanagement, but the requirements of educators have changed, too. There is demand for better integration of virtual worlds into other learning environments (and vice versa), e.g. MOODLE.
   This year’s SLMOOC already demonstrated a lot of these requirements and solutions for the educator’s problems.
   One path is the introduction of web based virtual worlds running entirely inside the browser. No installation and shallow learning curves allow for a quick assessment by educators and easy introduction to students.
   As everything is based on HTML you can include the virtual world “view” into any existing web page.

   I am developing such a platform for several years now and have presented it at the Virtual Worlds Education Round Table and SLMOOC 2017. Introducing new features, like improved document management and handling is quite easy and I am always interested in new ideas for improving the platform.
   You can try out things (without any registration) at:
   https://cyba.world/location.html?locationid=800000004&dl=true

   https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/796e45e5ec78db3f35ab5079fbf55073150d996eff4f40f6c5a782cef6a5dd64.png

5. 

   Second Life is a Social Virtual Environment. For applications in education that rely on the community and social aspect, or commerce, I don’t think there’s a better option. I like using other platforms that don’t have the steep learning curve but still allow for interactivity, easy document/screen sharing capabilities, video, file sharing, etc. for most educational applications. For courses in business, event planing, hospitality and that ilk, Second Life has it all.

6. 

   I know this is mostly focused on SL but come check out Immersive Terf at http://www.3dicc.com. Education is a large part of our business and we offer a substantial education discount. Plus we have all the tools you need for a terrific virtual classroom.

   1. 

      Hi Ron. Waiting to hear back about testing your pilot…..

7. 

   At some point the possibilities provided by a virtual platform can become a disadvantage. The Immersive Technology program at our school continues to flourish using Active Worlds. It serves the purpose without a high learning curve and all the “distractions” and pitfalls of an adult-oriented platform. Unfortunately this observation will continue to be ignored by teachers enamoured with the platforms that house their own social networks and virtual relationships. It will continue to be impossible for 3D virtual spaces to become mainstream in education until and unless this is recognized and addressed.