Second Life Educational Possibilities

and Considerations

Brett Bixler Lead Instructional Designer & Manager, Instructional Support and Research Educational Technology Services (ETS), Teaching and Learning with Technology, Information Technology Services, The Pennsylvania State University

What is a Virtual World?

Virtual worlds are constructed environments where the computer is used as a window to access the world. As Wikipedia defines them:

A virtual world is a computer-simulated environment intended for its users to inhabit and interact via avatars. This habitation usually is represented in the form of two or three-dimensional graphical representations of humanoids (or other graphical or text-based avatars). Some, but not all, virtual worlds allow for multiple users. ("Virtual World," 2006, para. 1)

Most virtual worlds mimic a real-world environment to a large degree, although they also may include "impossible" abilities, such as breathing underwater without equipment. Most virtual worlds require you to create your in-world presence, or avatar. You avatar interacts with both the environment and other avatars to form a rich exploratory and (in multiuser worlds) social experience (The EduCause Learning Initiative, 2006). Many online games today use a virtual world as the backdrop environment for the game, and educators are modifying instances of these games to provide an educational experience within these environments.

Educational Uses of Virtual Worlds

Virtual worlds provide many educational benefits. The two strongest benefits may be an immersive environment coupled with social interactions. Virtual worlds hold the promise of an immersive environment containing problems and contexts similar to the real world (Dede, Clark, Ketelhut, Nelson, and Bowman, 2005). In addition, multi-user virtual worlds allow users to meet, interact, and form social communities. While either an immersive environment or social interactions can provide for good learning experiences, in multi-user virtual worlds the natural coupling of these two possibilities may be what multi-user virtual worlds do best. Within Second Life itself, many educational projects are underway. They can be classified as follows:

• Virtual Field Trips, Museums, and Replicas of Real-life Places – The NASA Space museum is one example. Real-life places may be exact or augmented in some way. The Glidden Campus in Second Life is an example of an augmented copy of a real campus. Gold Rush! Is a replication of a small 1850's mining town where participants can experience both the physicality and sociality of that time and place. Many of these use active and collaborative learning processes as part of the educational experience.
• Simulations of Real-life Experiences – Virtual medical clinics are one example of this.
• Experimental ecologies – The Svarga (http://slurl.com/secondlife/Svarga/128.0/128.0) is a functional ecosystem with a simulated weather system.
• Information Repositories – The Information and Communication Library, a storehouse of educational happenings in Second Life.
• New Media Research – Using Second Life to explore our changing cultures and identities.

Advantages of Using Virtual Worlds for Education

Good (2004) identifies the following benefits of using Second Life for education. These benefits may be generalized to all virtual worlds.

• The space is persistent. You can leave the world and come back to it. A collorary to this is the space is ever changing. Area you own may stay the same, but areas controlled by others will change, sometimes quickly and radically.
• Your physical presence in-world is always what you want. You can look how you want, whenever you want. No need to comb your hair – your avatar's hair is never mussed, unless you want it that way!
• Creed, color, body type, and sex are choices, and don't "count" as much as in the real world. Diversity is thus increased, and many of the negative real-world issues associated with lack of understanding of the importance of diversity are minimized. When you can appear as whatever you wish, you get to see past the surface of the individual.
• Real-world physical handicaps are minimized. People with major physical handicaps can create a fully functional avatar capable of a complete range of interactions.
• The virtual space can be modeled to match your learning needs.
• Exploration and discovery are possible. When you have a large virtual space and can move about in that space quickly and easily, exploration is enabled.
• Dangerous, risky ideas can be explored. Virtual worlds are a safe area to try things, fail, and learn from those failures.
• Fantasy and imagination are enabled. When you can be whatever you want to be, and can create environments that defy the laws of real-world physics, the gateways to imagination are unlocked.
• Activity in-world can be recorded. This enables asynchronous sharing of synchronous activities. Learners can thus learn from each other across not only space, but time as well.

In a recent online conversation about Second Life (Educators interested in using Second Life as a teaching platform, 2006), the following advantages of using Second Life for education emerged:

• It is a semi-open development environment makes the system extensible to add more effective learning and teaching affordances.
• Outcomes are visible and immediate.
• Social presence is built into the learning environment – you are there, you have a stake in things.
• The more participatory the medium, the more invested and involved you become - hence you are more likely to remember what you learned.

Antonacci and Modaress (2005) stress the constructivist affordances of Second Life. In constructivist learning, learners solve problems and interact, forming knowledge as they do so. In constructivist environments, reality is a product of the mind, and learning occurs as the world is interpreted. The EduCause Learning Initiative (2006) also matchs constructivism with virtual worlds, as does Dickey (2005). Collaboration is important in constructivist learning. In Second Life, collaboration is an integral part of the environment. Learners can chat with each other via a text-based chat tool, although this is a bit primitive. Educators are exploring additional internet audio tools, such as Skype, to allow learners to converse verbally as well.

General Educational Uses of Second Life

Conklin (2005) lists many educational activities for which Second Life or any virtual world could be used. These can be categorized as follows:

• Explorations of identity in this environment What does it mean to have an avatar? How are avatars a reflection of self? What is unique about communications in a virtual world?
• Building/creating in a virtual environment This is perhaps more useful for some disciplines than others, but all users can learn more about the affordances of a particular virtual world by manipulation of the environment itself.
• Exploration of the virtual environment. Virtual field trips and scavenger hunts are easily implemented in virtual worlds.

Discipline-specific Uses of Second Life

Conklin (2005) lists discipline-specific activities for which Second Life or any virtual world could be used. The Information and Communication Library in Second Life itself also lists many of the same activities.

• Economics Any activity with associated commerce and values. These include cooperation, competition, and variable value sets.

• Business
  
  • Comparison of in-world business affordances with real-world parallels.
  • Advertising and marketing in a virtual world.
  • In-world and real-world business crossovers (where things in-world are sold in the real world, and vise versa).
  • Complete business simulations.
  • Virtual real estate.
  • Virtual intellectual property issues.

• Social Sciences
  
  • Class and status issues.
  • Subcultures.
  • Relationships, politics, and religion.
  • Diversity.
  • Criminal justice for in-world offenders.
  • Legal rights of avatars.
  • Communication.

• Humanities
  
  • Cultural studies and recreations.
  • Virtual art and theater.
  • Virtual existences.

• Sciences
  
  • Programming.
  • Physics of game design.
  • Analysis of real-world scientific phenomenon, such as biological evolution or physics principles in action.

Possible General Learning Outcomes

• Explorations of new media, self, and society.
• Using virtual worlds to simulate, compare, and contrast real-world activities, processes and events.
• Using virtual worlds as tools to meet specific learning objectives.

Factors for Use

When considering the use of Second Life or any virtual world for education, the following factors should be examined:

• The changing role of “teacher.”
• Preparation time and tips.
• Student age.
• Establishing in-world parameters.
• Assessment.
• Creating learning spaces and communities.

The Changing Role of “Teacher”

The traditional “sage on the stage” model of teaching just won’t work in Second Life. Consider the following observation:

How should an instructor react if a student attended class while cross-dressing, dressed as a monkey, or as a floating point of light? How would we react if students blipped in and out of existence during a class or were constantly talking over us as we delivered a lecture? While conducting courses in Second Life, a 3-D virtual environment, these kinds of behaviors are common place. Turn taking in discussions changes; student behavior changes; the environment we consider a classroom changes; thus, our pedagogy must change. The traditional model of instructor in front and students in seats simply does not work in an online environment such as Second Life. Attempts to shoehorn old pedagogy into new technologies brings us dangerously close to Friere’s “banking model” as instructors struggle to acclimate to new learning environments by falling back to tried and true models of disseminating knowledge instead of fostering its independent growth. (Robbins, 2006).

Instead, a more constructivist approach may no only be desirable, but necessary. An in-depth discussion of constructivism is beyond the scope of this paper, but the fundamental concept – learning emerges from within an individual as s/he reacts to an environment (Ryder, 2006), seems to naturally fit with virtual worlds.

Preparation Time and Tips

Preparing students for Second Life should be addressed by introducing the environment to them, walking them through initial avatar creation, and demonstrating the options and controls available. After this initial session, you should give students at least an hour to enter Second Life, create and customize their avatar, and learn to use the options and controls. The following is a suggested but no means exhaustive list of initial activities you may want students to follow:

• Access the Second Life client. If this is in a lab, you should have the client installed and ready to go. If students are using personal machines, they will need to download and install the client from http://secondlife.com. Make sure these students are using machines capable of adequate performance and have a high-speed connection to the internet.
• Log into Second Life and Create a New Account Currently there are several options here. Once you click on the “New Account” button in the Second Life client, you will be redirected to a new account web page. One can obtain an account without providing more than an email address, but you don’t receive any Linden Dollars (in-world currency), making you a true pauper. Optionally, if you provide a credit card number you will receive several hundred Linden Dollars. Although the credit card is never charged, your students may not be able to supply a credit card number. They may not have one, or may not be allowed to use it for this purpose. If your planned activities require your students to have in-world virtual money, you should plan accordingly. You may want to consider transferring virtual money from your avatar to their avatars. This is easily accomplished in Second Life.
• Initial Avatar Creation and Tweaking When you create a new account, you currently have several default avatars to choose from. You may want your students to further refine or change these avatars. If so, consider placing some free clothing, outfits, and other props on your land for them to take and use.
• Practice Using the Controls While it takes several hours if not days to master all the controls in Second Life, students should be familiar with the chat, maps, search, and inventory tools before any true assignments/tasks begin. In addition, you should direct them to your home location in Second Life; all newcomers start at the same location in Second Life and thus may have a hard time finding your home location. One option you may consider is creating an SLURL, short for Second Life URL. This is a web site (http://slurl.com) that allows you to create a link to your home location. After students enter Second Life for the first time, you can give them your SLURL. When one accesses it, Second Life will be opened (if it’s not already) and the student will be teleported to your home location.
• Have Students Complete a Mini-assignment The objective here is to give the students a tangible task they forces them to utilize the controls in Second Life to accomplish the task. This may be as simple as “Visit this place in Second Life, take a snapshot that includes your avatar, and send it to me.” You can attach minor incentives to this task, such as a small percentage of their overall grade, or perhaps upon completion of the task they receive some Linden dollars from you. Upon completion of the task, the students should be ready to tackle any more complex tasks or assignments you have planned. Many educators using Second Life advocate a scavenger hunt as an initial activity for students. This may be self-devised, or you may want to send your students on the "Teleportation Trail," a guided tour of Second Life that provides some just-in-time learning about Second Life, as well as a number of freebies, including clothing and vehicles. The Teleportation Trail starts at Darkwood 21, 87, 25, or you can search for it under the "All" category in the Second Life search tool.

Student Age

Second Life is actually divided into two parts – Teen Second Life, for people less than 18 years of age, and regular Second Life, for people 18 years of age and older. Teen Second Life is restricted and PG. As an educator, you have to make special arrangements with Linden Labs to have access to it. You have greater control over what your students can do here. Regular Second Life offers less control. While you can control who can visit your land, you can't keep anyone from leaving. One problematic concern here is when you have students that span the 18 year old gap. If you have some students under 18, and some 18 or older, it is impossible to have them all in the same Second Life space. You can't cross spaces, nor can you transport something you've built in one space to another, so creating duplicate environments for both spaces is difficult, and may require assistance from Linden Labs. Establishing In-world Parameters Where can your students go? What can they do? What in-world etiquette should they follow? Establish these things up front. While it is possible in the teen area of Second Life (see http://teen.secondlife.com/) to lock down students to a particular location, it is impossible to do so in the regular, “adult” version of Second Life. If your students wander around the world, dropping items on other people’s land (a big no-no in Second Life), being rude to other avatars, etc. they will eventually be reported and perhaps punished by Linden Labs. They may even be sent to “The Farm” a virtual cornfield they cannot leave for several weeks, with but one black and white television set for amusement! Worse, they may be permanently banned from Second Life. Perhaps most important, you will have gained a bad reputation in Second Life, making future activities more difficult to implement. Assessment How will you assess your student’s activities? Activities that produce a tangible product are easier to assess than others. Providing clear instructions and rubrics will assist both you and your students. Creating Learning Spaces and Communities If your students will be accessing Second Life outside of a structured classroom/lab, you may want to consider creating a group. Groups have several purposes beyond the social aspects. For example, you can lock your land so only group members can enter it. Once you create a group in Second Life, you can add your students to it. Then you can send out messages to the group and your students will all receive them. You may want to identify other groups that have similar interests to you, and ask if you can join these groups. Also, you can create a "friends" or buddy list in Second Life. If you propose friendship to another avatar and he/she/it accepts, then that avatar will appear on your friends list, and you will know whenever that friend is in-world. Technical Issues and Concerns The technical challenges listed here must be addressed well in advance of the actual use of Second Life for any educational endeavor. It may take several weeks to completely address the technical issues. Software and Hardware Second Life requires a stand-alone client. It runs on both Macintosh and Windows platforms, with a beta Linux version available. On a Windows machine, a Pentium III 800MHZ or higher, with 256MB RAM or more is recommended. On a Macintosh, a 1 GHZ G4 or better with 512 MB RAM is recommended. On either platform, the recommended Video Cards are: nVidia Geforce 2 (32MB RAM) or higher, or ATI Radeon 8500 (32MB RAM) or higher. High performance video cards greatly enhance the visual experience in Second Life, allowing for realistic shadows and waves, and faster rendering of images. A reasonably high-speed connection to the internet (cable modem or better) is also required for adequate performance. While these requirements seem reasonable in terms of today's available computing power, institutions running computer labs with low-end machines may have difficulty with the performance of Second Life in those labs. Second Life does experience downtime, when the system is unavailable. Sometimes these outages are announced, sometimes not. They are especially prevalent immediately after an upgrade to the client. Therefore, when scheduling a synchronous session in Second Life it is recommended you have a backup plan, alternative activities, and a "rain" date. The Second Life client is frequently (at least once every other week) updated. These updates are often mandatory; you must download and install them to enter Second Life. Firewall issues are a potential concern as well (Dede, 2006). It may take some time to establish a working connection with Second Life if your computer sits behind a firewall. Currently, Second Life basic accounts are free. Arrangements may be made with Linden Labs, the creator and owner of Second Life, to provide students with Second Life registrations for a fee of $125 per 25 students. The only advantage to this is you may assign unique names to the avatars.

Second Life in Public Labs

The second problem is the feasibility of running Second Life in the Penn State public labs. As mentioned, the Second Life client is frequently (at least once every other week) updated. These updates are often mandatory; you must download and install them to enter Second Life. In a public lab where write permissions are limited, it is necessary to work with the Information Technology lab staff to devise a method to allow individuals, upon accessing the client, to download and install the updates. Unlike many lab applications where one client may be shared by multiple users at any given point in time, Second Life requires each individual to run his or her own client. Thus, methods must be devised and implemented to allow this to happen. Extra storage space (50 MB) for individuals are required to implement these methods. Unfortunately, any solutions generated to meet these demands cannot be universal as most computer labs have unique infrastructures. While Penn State has the expertise and storage space to successfully implement a solution to the frequent update issue, smaller institutions with secure public computer labs must consider this technical issue carefully before committing to any Second Life projects.

Internal User Support

The final concern is one of user support. Second Life maintains a web site offering comprehensive user support should common technical issues arise. You may want to have additional local support, depending on your lab setup and number of students accessing Second Life.

Bibliography

Antonacci. D. M., & Modaress, N. (2005). Second life: The educational possibilities of a massively multiplayer virtual world (MMVW). Paper presented at the EDUCAUSE Southwest Regional Conference, Austin, Texas. Conklin, M. S. (2005). 101 uses for second life in the college classroom. Retrieved July 11, 2006 http://trumpy.cs.elon.edu/metaverse/gst364Win2005/handout.pdf

Dede, C. Second life chat. Retrieved July 12, 2006 from SimTeach: http://www.simteach.com/wiki/index.php?title=Chris_Dede_Transcript_10_Ju...

Dede, C., Clarke, J., Ketelhut, D., Nelson, B., & Bowman, C. (2005). Fostering motivation, learning, and transfer in multi-user virtual environments. Paper presented at the Annual Conference of American Educational Research Association (AERA), Montreal, Canada

Dickey, M. D. (2005). Three-dimensional virtual worlds and distance learning: two case studies of Active Worlds as a medium for distance education. British Journal of Educational Technology 36(3): 439-451.

Educators interested in using Second Life as a teaching platform. Retrieved July 26, 2006, from https://lists.secondlife.com/pipermail/educators/2006-July.txt

Good, R. (2004). 3D virtual spaces for learning and collaboration. Retrieved July 11, 2006 http://www.masternewmedia.org/2004/09/27/3d_virtual_spaces_for_learning....

Robbins, S. (2006). Another abstract for another conference. Retrieved July 12, 2006 http://www.secondlife.intellagirl.com/

Ryder, M. Constructivism. Retrieved July 12, 2006 http://carbon.cudenver.edu/~mryder/itc_data/constructivism.html

The EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative. 7 things you should know about virtual worlds. Retrieved July 14, 2006 http://www.educause.edu/LibraryDetailPage/666?ID=ELI7015

Virtual World. (2006, July 10). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved July 10, 2006, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_World