Activity 1.5 – Virtual Worlds

Read: Gronstedt, A. (2007) ‘2^nd Life Produces real training results’, T+D Magazine, viewed 2 April 2008, <http://www.learningcircuits.org/2007/0807gronstedt.htm>

How could virtual worlds, like Second Life be used for learning?

Points raised in Gronstedt’s article:

• Second Life can be a playground or a business adjunct, a social networking hub, or a programming haven.
• Second Life is different from gaming environments because nearly everything you see is created by the site’s users. Residents use 3-D modeling language to build houses, trees, streets, and furniture. These tools also can be used by training professionals to illustrate technical concepts in powerful new ways.
  
• Second Life is ultimately a social networking tool that takes online interaction and collaboration to unprecedented levels, breaks down hierarchies, and eliminates geographic boundaries.
• The real breakthrough for Second Life as a learning application is the full integration of voice capability. Instead of having to rely on instant messaging and chat, users can now speak to each other via voice in 3-D. The voices of nearby avatars sound louder than avatars that are farther away, and voice from avatars to your right feed through the right speaker.
• One of the unique attributes of Second Life is what IBM’s Hamilton calls the “sense of self.”
• Second Life is creating more virtual classrooms. Unfortunately, most e-learning still looks like a classroom lecture. It takes time for a new medium to develop its own character and unique vernacular.
• There remain various barriers to widespread adoption of Second Life in corporate training. First of all, it’s primarily a consumer application. There also are firewall issues. Hardware and infrastructure requirements pose another barrier. Second Life’s main challenge, however, isn’t technology, but people. “The knee-jerk reaction to a lot of people is that they have too much work with their first lives to start a second one,” says Thomas. “Second Life excels at synchronous training,” says Widmeyer, “but you still need a website, a wiki, a threaded discussion group, and a blog. Second Life is not a good information repository.”
• Virtual worlds provide learning organizations with a powerful, unique ability to engage and empower employees in ways that accommodate their digital and mobile lifestyles, adapt to their individual learning needs, and encourage collaboration.

Learning applications in Second Life

What are the primary learning applications in Second Life? Here are a few candidates:
Hard skills. Create 3-D models that participants can fly around or walk inside.
Soft skills. Role-play a job interview or sales call, or meet a subject matter expert.
Simulation. Cultivate business acumen by running a virtual business or learn about schizophrenia by experiencing powerful hallucinations.
Meetings. Talk via voice or instant message; gesture, show objects, or go for a walk. Second Life will save us from the conference call doldrums.
(Gronstedt, 2007)

Having a look at Sean Fitzgerald & Jo Kay’s wiki I was blown away by how well designed and set out this wiki is. The information is categorically organised and points are supplemented by images. It makes our wikis look so bland compared to theirs. Their wiki is worth referring to especially in regards to searching for the educational uses of Second Life. The list they compiled seems endless.

We were lucky to have Jo Kay speak to us in a special lecture. My experience of that lecture is documented in a previous post: http://tdinh86.edublogs.org/2008/03/26/e-learning-design-virtual-worlds/