BRAVE NEW (VIRTUAL) WORLD
Educators are learning how to use virtual realms such as Second Life to offer what the real world can't.
By DARA NARAGHI.
Hundreds of universities today are buying up real estate like never before.
Strangely, the newly acquired acreage consists of . . . islands?
Yes, islands. That's the term for plots of land in the virtual world called Second Life or SL, one of many computer-simulated realms bound only by imagi-nation (and, of course, virtual water). Ohio State and other institutions are among the groups exploring the promise of this new medium that offers both entertainment and education.
THE POWER OF CREATION
Robert Griffiths, an e-learning consultant at Ohio State's Technology Enhanced Learning and Research office, says virtual worlds are "essentially a three-dimensional Internet . . . where information is communicated through movement and interaction rather than buttons and text."
The beauty of virtual worlds is that they allow users to interact with each other in real time. And they're "persistent," meaning the worlds and their content continue to exist and evolve even when some users are not actively connected.
While most virtual worlds simulate the real-world rules of physics, gravity, and topography, they also can violate those rules by putting the power of creation in the hands of their users. Participants use avatars, virtual representations of themselves, to explore the worlds and perform tasks. They can build complex objects: clothing, vehicles, houses, and, as some enthusiasts have done, near-perfect re-creations of the Sistine Chapel and the International Space Station.
The worlds have a complex economic infrastructure. Using special currency, avatars can sell, trade, or barter the user-generated content, just like in the real world.
Avatars can be realistic (or in some cases, enhanced) representations of their creators, but they also can be anything from cartoon-like characters to fantastic creatures straight out of mythology. If while hanging out in Second Life you happen to meet a lavender-haired woman on roller skates, for example, she might be Sharon Collingwood, a lecturer in Ohio State's women's studies department.
Collingwood used a grant from the Office of Continuing Education to buy a Second Life island, where she teaches a course on women, culture, and society. On the island, which she named Minerva, she built a replica of University Hall. She also constructed seaside and hilltop gathering spaces where students can meet in discussion groups.
Collingwood has taught online classes through more traditional means, but she found them lacking in some areas. "Distance education was still . . . distant,"she said.
Second Life's fluid visual metaphors are much more conducive to learning, she said. "We can work on questions of gender, identity, and race on the very first day, when students choose what they [their avatars] will look like in the classroom."
One of Collingwood's students was studying disabilities. "With a little research, she managed to meet a Second Life resident who has cerebral palsy in real life," Collingwood said. "He gave her a virtual wheelchair, and she toured the virtual world in it, learning about people's attitudes about disability."
BEYOND GAMES-PLAYING
The origin of today's virtual worlds can be traced to the popular "sword-and-sorcery" adventure games of the late 1970s. The games allowed a dozen or so users to roam a fantasy world, kill monsters, and talk with each other through typed commands.
Credit for the first large-scale, commercial virtual world goes to Lucasfilm's Habitat, launched in 1985. It featured an interface that allowed thousands of users at the same time to chat and play games.
Habitat's users could affect each other in profound ways. Avatars could trade with, steal from, even kill other avatars. The prospect of virtual mayhem spurred the user community to adopt rules and regulations, in a form of self-governance.
As online games became more sophisticated, a new category of virtual worlds developed that captured the imagination of gamers and casual Internet users alike. Today's realms eschew scores, rules, and goals in favor of social interaction and objectives determined by the users themselves.
And they've seen a vast migration of corporations, political parties, religious and nonprofit organizations, and educational institutions to their shores. Several countries have opened embassies in SL. Musical groups have staged virtual concerts, and more than 2,000 virtual art galleries and museums are operating in SL, according to Linden Research, the company that created the world.
NO LIMITS TO LEARNING
The Technology Enhanced Learning and Research office recently bought a SL island, which it named TELRport. With that purchase, Ohio State joined the 300 or so colleges and universities that have staked out land in Second Life to pursue educational possibilities.
Earlier this year, the TELR office evaluated applications from Ohio State faculty for its SL pilot program. The first classes will use TELR's space this autumn quarter. Their success will determine the future of the program. (See "Test runs.")
Griffiths hopes instructors will "think about how they would ideally teach or communicate their subject area if real-life limitations did not exist." He believes the most innovative uses of SL will come when educators abandon preconceived limitations based on size, cost, or even physics.
"Second Life as a medium allows an instructor to move beyond passive viewing," Griffiths said. "Theories abound describing how presence, identification, interactivity, and a host of other applicable concepts increase learning potential." For example, he said, "what if someone could fly through your concept and investigate it from all angles?"
Among the many advantages of SL, Collingwood notes the ease with which she can bring in guest speakers from all over the world, or collaborate with students at other universities. And compared to real-life classes, she said, "I never have the problem of students dominating the conversation and ignoring everyone else. The software makes that kind of behavior very difficult."
LIFE IN SECOND LIFE
It's no accident that when Ohio State administrators decided to venture into this brave new world, they chose to buy land in Second Life. Of all the commercially available virtual worlds, perhaps none has capitalized more on the promises
of the technology.
San Francisco-based Linden Research launched Second Life in 1993.
"We changed our minds numerous times about whether Second Life should be a game," said Cory Ondrejka, who until recently was the company's chief technology officer and lead engineer. Eventually, the Linden team decided SL should be governed by its residents rather than its creator. That opened
it to exploration and development by any and all, not just hard-core computer gamers.
Ondrejka predicts that "like the Web and e-mail, virtual worlds will become increasingly basic parts of how we communicate with people throughout the world."
While basic membership in SL is free, a monthly fee gives residents access to advanced functions, including land ownership. The sale of islands generates revenue for Linden and grants a degree of autonomy to the residents. Residents also control the copyright on content they've created.
SL's active user base stands at a bit over a half million. In contrast with popular, and much larger, social networks such as Facebook, which averages 10 hours of member use per month, SL residents spend an average of 45 hours a month in their virtual world.
SL's in-world economic engine uses its own unit of currency, the Linden Dollar (L$). SL even allows for the exchange of real-world currency for L$ and vice versa. (The typical exchange rate is one U.S. dollar to 250 L$.) Residents could potentially earn up to thousands of real-world dollars simply by creating and selling virtual products in SL.
THE 'DIGITAL DIVIDE'
As with other technologies, there are disadvantages to using virtual worlds for education. For one, many educators point to the high learning curve inherent in learning to navigate the worlds. For another, the higher bandwidth and processing power needed to use the technology raises issues of accessibility.
"I am concerned about the ‘digital divide,'" Collingwood said, referring to the gap between those who have the means to access information technology and those who don't.
Dineh Davis, an associate professor at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, was one of the first in her field to study how people learn in online environments. "It's not just physical or financial access but language and cultural issues, as well as the inherent culture of technology," she said. The cutting-edge nature of the education platform can itself become an impediment.
From a sociological point of view, Davis believes virtual worlds have "taken to extreme all the voyeuristic/exhibitionistic tendencies built into the technology."
While such detachment may allow educators and students to perform social or financial experiments in a "safe" environment, it can be counterproductive. Spending time in a simulated world may not be an effective way to teach people how "every action they take can have a real environmental consequence, social as well as physical," Davis said.
However, Griffiths, of Ohio State's TELR, believes that "the cognitive processing one goes through to learn is not different in the virtual world.
"Virtual worlds can teach the same skills as learning in the real world. You learn social skills, you learn about identity, you learn about objects and their properties, you learn about limits and affordances, and so on," he said.
Ondrejka contends that virtual worlds are just a different form of communication technology. Issues of ethics and philosophy mostly boil down to common business challenges, he said. "Virtual world operators have a host of customer service responsibilities. If they fail to live up to them, their customers will go elsewhere."
For those unsure about how simulated worlds fit into their own, Ondrejka said, "take a look around and find whether virtual worlds are more fun or a better use of time than other activities. If not, come back and visit in six months, because virtual worlds are continually improving."
Within the educational community and beyond, one thing is clear: virtual worlds are immensely popular and versatile. As they're driven forward by user-generated content and usage models not even dreamed of by their developers, they will continue to evolve in form and function as fluidly as their own virtual landscapes.
LEARN MORE:
www.telr.osu.edu/secondlife
www.wosu.org/imix (search for "Second Life")
TALK TO US
What do you believe are the pros and/or cons of virtual worlds?
Reply to talktous@ohiostatealumni.org. Include your name, class year, and town.
This story was published in the May/June 2008 issue of Ohio State Alumni Magazine. The magazine is a benefit of membership in the Alumni Association. To get your copy when it's hot off the press, join now.
