A presentation at the JISC RSC Eastern Regional Conference, The Reality of Virtual Worlds, held at Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge.

1. Virtual Worlds:
Their use in UK learning
and teaching

2. Virtual World Watch
 Funded by Eduserv (thanks @andypowe11 et al) for a year
from mid-October 2008.
 Started tracking Virtual World activities (originally just Second
Life) in UK academia in the summer of 2007.
 Five such reports done, which contain a swirl of informal and
formal information on these activities.
 Latest report released in mid February 2009.
 Starting to build up the resource base with other “stuff”.
 Huge fun, seeing a niche technology expand within education.

3. www.virtualworldwatch.net

4. Summary of Snapshot 5 (and since then)
 All bar one UK university has some evidence of Second Life
“activity” i.e. research, design, study, teaching or learning.
 Building a replica of your campus in SL just for the sake of it is
rare now (hurrah!).
 Activities diverse, but newer universities tend to be more into it
than older ones.
 Huge amount of duplicated work going on across universities in
investigating use of Second Life in teaching and learning :-(
 Major obstacles are the (linked) issues of attitude and
evidence.

5. Large areas of darkness
No activity or unreported
activity?

6. Reported activity in UK universities (generally HE)

7. Reported activity in UK colleges (generally FE)

8. Data extraction from survey responses (January 2009)

9. Inquiry skills

10. Studying SL as a learning environment
“A pilot study looking at Interprofessional education in Second Life.”
- Coventry
“Determining whether SL is a suitable environment within which to
develop students' business enterprise skills.” - Leeds
“Through the Open Habitat project, we are piloting various
approaches to teaching and learning in Second Life and
OpenSim.” - Leeds Metropolitan
“This project investigated pedagogical issues related to teaching
within 3D virtual worlds using Second Life as the delivery
platform.” - Ulster

11. Virtual worlds as simulations of dangerous environments

12. Derby
“A virtual quarry in
conjunction with the
Institute of Quarrying.
This work is intended to
replicate real quarrying
situations: dangerous
overhangs; explosions;
hazardous working
vehicles.
Students move around
the quarry identifying
those hazards.”

13. West of England
“The witnesses go
down to the simulation
set and the
investigators stay at
the gathering point.
The tutor runs the
simulation through – in
this case a fork lift
truck accident in a
small warehouse which
the witness students
can view through their
avatars.”

14. Health and medicine

16. Medical equipment created by Glasgow Caledonian
“A simulation of a full
working model of an X-ray
machine.
This allows for safe
practice; is flexible
either to be used in a
class or for self study.
It is scaleable - only
one exists on campus
but we can copy the
simulation as many
times as we wish.”

17. Machinima
“A section of the island is designated for film making
(machinima), with an adaptable diorama and terraformable
landscape for creating sets.” - JISC RSC (Northern)
“A group of media students are undertaking a project on
creating machinima and guidance on the use of the event
simulator described above as part of their interactive media
course.” - West of England

18. LIVE project

19. Staff introduction
“We held a number of induction events to allow interested
members of staff to familiarise themselves with the
environment.” - Leeds
“Teaching our staff about virtual worlds and the possibilities of
these as a learning and teaching environment.” - Glasgow
Caledonian
“Currently exploring SL with a small group for staff to look at the
feasibility of using SL to exchange and work with other
educational establishments or projects.” – Strode College

20. INCORE project
(Norther Island conflict)

21. Just to complicate things: Other worlds …
Playstation Home

22. Metaplace
University of
the West of
Scotland
- Web-based
- Flash
- extensible
- avatars
- scripting
Isometric view
Easy to work in
(Sims meets
Second Life?)

23. OpenSim
“We expect to see more interest in OpenSim, and
possibly Wonderland - emphasising the need to keep
the ‘intelligence’ of any solution out of any one
particular virtual world. We also still see no ‘Second
Life killer’ out there.” - Daden Limited
“The latest OpenSim server builds offer outstanding
performance, and are rapidly maturing and becoming
reliable for everyday use. Porting objects and scripts
(but not all of them) from Second Life to OpenSim is
now possible.” - Plymouth

24. Educators in World of Warcraft …

25. Attitude

26. “IT services say no.”

27. Student developments in
Second Life

28. But in the same university...
"On top of this my computer in my office is completely
locked down by UICS and I can do nothing, I am not
allowed to have Skype...I cannot use Elluminate, I cannot
use virtual classrooms, and so on.
My research into virtual worlds (Second Life) is done at
home and I had to buy a new computer for there because
my work one has no access, is far too slow...and it is not
allowed anyway."

29. VIEWS of the future
http://blogs.cetis.ac.uk/rowin/2009/03/27/111/
"Lack of support from institutional IT departments for VW-related
activities, even to the point of refusing to unblock the
ports necessary to actually run them.
Some institutions apparently blame JISC/Janet policies for
this, but the inconsistent application of these supposed
policies suggests that there might be other reasons for
this…"

30. Scepticism for the sake of it

31. For lots of other people ...
Proof or evidence
...that using Virtual Worlds for specific teaching and
learning applications is better than using some other
technique or technology.
* Funding applications * Students, bossy parents
* Internal authority to use * Peers

32. Evidence

33. For IT Services ...
MANY UK Universities have used Second Life for a very
wide range of teaching and learning activities without
ANY incident or apocalyptic event.
So why can't you? Be honest ...
Laziness? Control freakery?
Mis-allocation of IT funding? Neo-ludditism?

34. Made in just 9 months from 1 egg and 1 sperm …

35. … so why does a bunch
of words take so much
longer to get published?

37. Adventures of Yoshikawa

39. Survey and report release dates
Mid May 2009
 Snapshot #6
 Second Life and alternative virtual worlds in education #1
Start August 2009
 Snapshot #7
Mid October 2009
 Snapshot #8
 Second Life and alternative virtual worlds in education #2
 Virtual worlds ongoing research

40. In it for the long haul ...
VWW until at least the end of 2010. Focus stays on UK activities.
Mixed funding model.
Adding lobbying to research and dissemination activities.
Still doing:
 Weekly podcasts.
 Snapshot reports.
 Adding UK content to resource directory.

41. VWW needs your help ...
Say what you are doing. Free publicity! Make your funders happy!
Advance your career!
Oh, and the chance to win a book token.
In fact, if you have any other media e.g. blogs, YouTube videos,
can promote those through the VWW website.
Evidence of teaching and learning activities especially welcome.
Weekly podcasts, gaining a cult following. Can do over Skype,
phone ... or later today. Takes 15 minutes.