Second Life – game?

Using games in education is a thorny topic. Which games? Which goals? Which outcomes? Which games will warp and twist the minds of our youth, which will contribute to their ongoing development in a positive way?

Games created solely for educational purposes often have their content boiled dry as old bones, all the fun ripped from them in order to create “serious” games. “Fun” in education is often viewed as being suspicious – anything lighthearted or playful is seen as not “serious”. Unfortunately, “serious” has more shades of meaning, that do not involve the concept of fun: serious can mean worthwhile, useful, functional and important – while not excluding fun.

One of the reasons that Second Life gets knocked back as an educational tool is that it is viewed as a game. Second Life is not a game. Second Life contains games, but is not itself a game. Let us examine the reasoning behind these statements, commencing with this definition of “game” by Roger Caillois, via Wikipedia:

A game must be:

• fun: the activity is chosen for its light-hearted character
• separate: it is circumscribed in time and place
• uncertain: the outcome of the activity is unforeseeable
• non-productive: participation is not productive
• governed by rules: the activity has rules that are different from everyday life
• fictitious: it is accompanied by the awareness of a different reality

Fun

Second Life contains fun much as it contains games. In the atomic world, fun exists, as does seriousness (for all meanings of the word) – this is also true of digital environments. Digital environments are not fun all the time. However, playfulness and fun are well-supported by digital environments – they lend themselves to lighthearted interaction and creativity more easily than the atomic environment does.

Separate

A game of chess has a finite starting and ending point, It exists in a “game space”, whether that be the physical location, of the game board and pieces, or a mental space in which the player thinks about the game. Second Life does not have a definite beginning or ending, in which people can “play” it. Second Life is continuous – it exists regardless of whether any given user is in the space or not.

Uncertain

An activity that has a guaranteed outcome is not a game. However, an activity that has some degree of uncertainty is not automatically a game. For the most part, it’s about the degree of uncertainty – something that is more uncertain is more likely to be a game. For most non-game activities in Second Life, the degree of uncertainty is similar to that of non-game activities in the atomic world.

Non-productive

pro·duc·tive (pr-dktv, pr-)

adj.

4. Economics Of or involved in the creation of goods and services to produce wealth or value.

Caillois’ definition of productivity, or lack thereof, revolves around the economic definition of the word. Thus, non-productive carries connotations of not making goods or services, not being directly productive. Similarly, un-productive: adding nothing to exchangeable value. Games are more typically only indirectly productive, adding value through increased knowledge and learning. Second Life is productive, directly and indirectly, in the economic sense of the word.

Governed by rules

The rules in Second Life do not differ from the rules in the atomic world, though there are additional rules that cover circumstances that can occur in digital environments that cannot occur in the atomic world, just as any specialist venue in the atomic world might.

Fictitious

Feigned, rather than artificial. A contrivance, the rules of which only work within the system of the game being played. Second Life is an artificial space, or construct, in which real and meaningful interactions can and do occur. The consequences of actions within Second Life have an impact beyond the digital space.

“If you can tell me how real life isn’t a game, I’ll tell you how SL isn’t one.”

Is the game-like digital interface being used, or the use of avatars, or maybe even the hyperbole and misinformation generated by the press, that causes the confusion? Regardless of the cause, it’s long past time to set people’s minds at ease – Second Life is not a game.

Popularity: 4% [?]

Study: Students’ Social Systems Support Successes

Karl Kapp is an expert in the education and e-learning field. In his blog, he regularly answers questions and addresses concerns about the place of technology in educational and training scenarios. In this post, he follows up on three areas of concern that he has been made aware of in recent times. In this post, I’ll address the same questions and expand upon Kapp’s answers.

1) Kids use these “places” like Second Life, Facebook, etc. mostly for socialising.

Students are just as likely to be discussing education or school work as they are to be gossiping, chatting or otherwise passing the time socially when they are using digital social networking tools. These include mobile phones, web-based solutions such as Facebook and its ilk, and the digital environments like Second Life.

This study, completed back in 2007, provides compelling evidence to support this idea. Over a thousand 9-to-17 year olds, a thousand parents and 250 school district leaders who “make decisions on Internet policy” were polled in the study. It revealed that 59% of students discuss educational topics, and 50% of students discuss their coursework when using the wide variety of digital social-networking tools available. Apparently, this academic discussion is performed off their own bat to a large extent, rather than being a required part of their schooling.

Students today have a multiplicity of such tools to choose from when wanting to communicate with their fellows locally and at a distance. Students who would otherwise be somewhat isolated except for family after school, at the time they are doing their homework, and who would be limited for the most part to communication with people who are geographically proximate, are now able to easily contact and communicate with people who are not only from all over the world, with wide-ranging backgrounds. Students have plenty of educational reasons to reach out through these channels. Socially, there is less call to do so, as students are able to communicate with their fellow students  and friends face-to-face and on the phone. What is the likelihood that students are talking about the same stuff they’ve always talked about, and are just using digital tools to do so?

Despite the wonderful news that students are eager to further their own education and support themselves in their coursework through external communication, there is the continuing problem that services available to 9-to-17 year olds are quite restricted. This is in part to protect kids in this age bracket from “adult themes” which are not appropriate for them, and in part to prevent misuse by students. Preventing misuse of services requires greater supervision of kids in general than most educational institutions have the resources to maintain. Nonetheless, educational materials and tools have always been at risk of problematic use – should the majority of students who would use them responsibly be denied because of the actions of the minority?

2) Currently, it seems that much of the Second Life work is more about SL itself — how to use it, what you can do, etc. — rather than the actual educational effectiveness.

Essentially, it is common for new technologies to take in the order of a decade or more to become sufficiently well understood that they can be used as educational tools on a grand scale, unless they have numerous and active advocates. Digital environments and their capabilities are as yet poorly understood, even by the majority of current users, and there is as yet a paucity of data available that gives us any idea as to how effective digital pedagogies have been to date.

3) Much of educators’ enthusiasm falls short of the mark by deferring to what could be called the “You can…” syndrome. That is, the endless possibilities inherent in a system are the source of excitement, but get nailed down in very few instances.

Some of the excitement is bound up in misunderstandings about how tools can be used – it’s exciting to imagine that a new tool is the solution to many, many problems. It’s possible to let the imagination reign, up to the point at which you discover the limitations of the tool you are working with. At this point, some of the excitement fades, and it’s difficult to maintain the same enthusiasm once the hard work begins. Additionally, as with the point above, more testing and trials need to be performed and more data needs to be gathered before solid instances and use cases begin to appear.

If students are let somewhat looser in digital fields than they have been, it would be interesting to gather information on how the students leverage these technologies to further their own education – students make great teachers and leaders.

Popularity: 3% [?]

Taking our biases with us into virtual environments.

People are using the same cognitive tools in their social interactions within virtual environments as they would in the physical world. A recent study has confirmed this happens even though our avatars do not necessarily represent a clear picture of the people behind those avatars, with regards to gender, race, and all those other things that we have biases against.

The study’s co-investigators are Northwestern University’s Paul W. Eastwick, a doctoral student in psychology, and Wendi L. Gardner, Associate Professor of Psychology and member of Northwestern’s Center for Technology and Social Behavior. Eastwick’s past contributions revolve around romantic relationship development, and the use of speed dating and virtual environments to test psychological hypotheses. Gardner’s interests focus on the social aspects of the self, and the sorts of evaluation that are performed in the human brain that are unconscious.

Eastwick and Gardner performed the study in There.com, which is billed primarily as a fantasy environment – it is social, and the interactions are with real people, but there are no programmatical constraints on how people represent themselves within those interactions. The management at There.com showed significantly more interest in having the study performed in their virtual environment than did other services like Second Life.

Two classic social psychology experiments were performed within the realm of There.com: an avatar controlled by the study group attempted to influence an avatar controlled by a member of the native There.com populace to fulfill a request. The door-in-the-face (DITF) gambit, in which a ridiculously large request is followed by a much more reasonable request, and the foot-in-the-door (FITD) technique, in which a small, reasonable request or statement is made, followed up with a much larger request, were used. Then, observation occurred to see how people reacted to a) the request in general and b) to the appearance of two different avatars in acquiescing to the request.

As in the physical world, the most successful technique was the DITF as performed by a light-skinned individual, with an increase in compliance of 20% over a simple request; compare this to only an 8% increase in compliance for the dark-skinned individual for the same technique. Less successful was FITD, which returned a result of only slight more compliance for either skinned individual.

Research has shown this disparity in the physical world for decades. DITF relies on a person’s perception of the person making the request: is this person worth impressing, and do I feel that I can risk offending them? FITD relies more on self-perception: how do I feel about my own reputation, and do I care how I appear to the person making the request?

Interestingly, many people seem to share the opinion that virtual environments are exempt from social influence. This idea possibly stems from the anonymity of having an avatar with which you do not identify, and which has no connection with your real identity. Or perhaps from the idea that virtual environments are in essence games in which anything goes and no-one can be harmed. Or even from the perspective that virtual environments are easy to leave, and therefore there need be no social ties with them. Nonetheless, it would appear that most people using virtual environments are heavily socially invested in them, to the extent that they apply their everyday social biases to the appearance of the avatars of those they interact with, and that they are just as susceptible to social gambits designed to increase compliance.

Source:  Real-world Behavior And Biases Show Up In Virtual World

Wendi L. Gardner’s professional page.

Paul Eastwick’s entry at the Department of Psychology, Northwestern University.

Social Influence Journal article.

Popularity: 3% [?]

A true EDUCAUSE

The EDUCAUSE Review for September/October 2008 was released recently. For those unfamiliar with the publication, it is an “award-winning magazine for the higher education IT community”. It is published bimonthly in print and online. EDUCAUSE itself is “a nonprofit association whose mission is to advance higher education by promoting the intelligent use of information technology.”

Below are three features from the EDUCAUSE Review, précised:

1. Virtual Worlds? “Outlook Good” AJ Kelton (“AJ Brooks”)

AJ Kelton poses this question: Are Virtual Environments (VEs) viable teaching and learning environments?

Kelton’s perspective is that Second Life is the current reigning champion, having both multitudes of educational folk working within it, and having brought the concept of VEs to the mainstream. He goes on to list many of the other VEs in the educational domain, and points out that there has been interest in the educational value of VEs all across the globe.

Kelton mentions Media Grid and its Immersive Educational Initiative, and their continuing work in forming standards and best practices, and creating interoperability for VEs with an educational bent.

Under the challenges and drawbacks section, Kelton lists:

• Perceptual: VEs are still treated as ‘games’ by those with no personal experience; ‘fun’ is not expected to be a part of education, so anything that could be construed as being enjoyable is suspect.
• Technical: Collaborative tools (especially for working with text) and interoperability will be the greatest challenges we will face; other technical considerations will work themselves out over time as broadband services and hardware become cheaper and more accessible.
• Operational: The learning curve for VEs is steep. There are often technical difficulties with VEs, especially those that are more ‘experimental’. With younger age groups particularly, there are legal restrictions.
• Pedagogical: Each institution must decide for itself whether the tool is appropriate for them, and whether they can sort out methods of assessment.

In conclusion, Kelton seems to think that VEs have a solid future in education – but that the extent of their involvement is as yet unknown and unforeseeable.

2. Higher Education as Virtual Conversation Sarah Robbins-Bell (SL: Intellagirl Tully)

Sarah Robbins-Bell turns a deft hand to answering the question: how can we increase student involvement? She feels that emergent social media are key in turning “passive, knowledge-receiving students into active, knowledge-making students.” The more conversations we can get going, the more student involvement there will be. As levels of participation increase, students’ knowledge will increase in active ways.

On the topic of why there has been a slow increase in the use of social media in education: “I think the problem is that our pedagogy often isn’t ready for an increase in conversation.”

Robbins-Bell states that the best way to integrate social media into education is to take one form at a time: she begins with ‘Virtual Worlds’. She then lists the characteristics of Virtual Worlds, and why they work for educational purposes.

• Persistence: A virtual world can be used at any time, whether or not other avatars are there.
• Multi-user: Communication exists between users synchronously.
• Avatars: Avatars with a flexible appearance allow play with identity (roleplaying). Cultural literacy can be studied and learned from them.
• Wide Area Network: Students can reach out and communicate with students and teachers at a wide geographical divide.

She goes on to caution that instructors will need to come to an acceptance of the lessening of control that they have in this environment, but notes that this can produce useful results: more communication and less sterility.

3. Looking to the Future: Higher Education in the Metaverse Chris Collins (SL: Fleep Tuque)

Chris Collins examines the place of higher education within the arena of VEs.

Collins follows the development of VEs with regards to major corporations (IBM is working towards people coming together virtually to save them from having to be geographically congruent), industrial giants (Seimens and the University of Cincinnati are working together to allow models created in 3D software packages to be able to be imported into VEs), and governmental departments (simulations of weather phenomena, natural disasters, and workplace training scenarios carried out in VEs).

Collins’ expectation of higher education is that it will produce people ready to become employees in this virtually aware workplace.

Collins then covers the typical obstacles faced by educational facilities in attempting to provide sufficient learning resources for their students, whether they be learning on campus or by distance education.

She finishes by stating that the optimal goal is for students to have fostered within them an interest in lifelong learning, which can possibly be achieved through the technology of VEs – education through this format create more personal autonomy and a greater sense of personal investment.

The other two features from this edition, also worthy of note:

Educational Frontiers: Learning in a Virtual World Cynthia M. Calongne (SL: Lyr Lobo)

Drawing a Roadmap: Barriers and Challenges to Designing the Ideal Virtual World for Higher Education Chris Johnson (SL: ScubaChris Wollongong)

Sources:

September/October 2008 issue of EDUCAUSE Review

EDUCAUSE Review: Back to (Virtual) School (Chris Collins’ original post).

Popularity: 3% [?]

A match made in Second Life.

Public services.

Education.

What do these two things have in common? Typically, people outside those fields would consider them to be necessary but uninteresting. Many people have experienced the rough ends of these services. You’d think it would be difficult to create a useful and engaging experience in a virtual environment that combined the two fields.

In this case, you’d be surprised to find that those challenges have been faced and overcome.

The Ontario Ministry of Government Services has worked in concert with metaverse developers TheSLAgency to produce that most remarkable of things: a fun and educational experience about careers in the public service. No, seriously.

The Ontario Public Service Careers Island is situated in Second Life. At first blush, the build is pretty, the scenery extensive and attractive, and the main building contains web links for a whole variety of pertinent information regarding career choices with the Ontario Public Service (OPS). Look a little further afield, and you find that outside the main building (that also comprises the landing point), each section of the island has an instructive purpose that is not just interactive but also interesting and fun! For each career path available with the OPS, there is a representative display, with an activity that gives prospective employees some idea of what their job might be like.

I visited the OPS Forest Fire Simulation first. You are given a hose to attach to your avatar to fight the fire, while in Mouselook mode. You also get a list of instructions to assist you in fighting the fire. It includes information about evaporation of water from the hose impeding your ability to put out the fire, the spread of fire, and letting you know where to concentrate your efforts. Our attempts to put out the fire were laughable in their futility. I suspect greater persistence is required in training water on the flaming parts. I spent a great deal of time taking photos during the process, too – photojournalism and firefighting do not mix.

The second stop was the Water Testing Facility. You receive a HUD in the form of a vessel to contain water. You search the island for a body of water, and if you are close enough to the water when you click on the HUD, you will obtain a sample to take back to the laboratory. We found a small puddle of water out behind the airfield, and brought that back to be tested. Here is what the Water Analyzer CK-225 had to say about its quality: ‘This water suffers from heavy lead and hydrocarbons levels, petrol derivates, synthetic oil in quantities that makes its potability virtually impossible. This water is definately dangerous for health, and measures should be taken to clean up the area and limit its accessibility.’ Not a surprising finding, given the test sample’s location.

The effort put into the project, and subsequent success of it, have not gone unnoticed or unrewarded. The ‘OPS Virtual Career Fair on Second Life’ received a merit award in the innovation category at the 2008 Showcase Ontario awards. TheSLAgency Managing Partner Joe Mastrocovi states, “Our innovative government work in virtual worlds has produced a lot of successes, and we’re honored that the Ontario government feels that our work is award-worthy. We’re proud that beyond awards, this engagement brings our client real results with increased job seekers, applicants, and final hires!”

Overall, it’s a neat idea that has been well executed. Other government and educational services would do well to take a look and incorporate some of these ideas into their own virtual environment projects.

Popularity: 6% [?]

SLEDcc: focusing on fun, fruition, and finances.

The Second Life Education Community Convention (SLEDcc) ran in Tampa, Florida, over the last weekend. Presented here are wrap-ups of three keynote speeches given over the course of the weekend, each with a different focus on the issues facing education in virtual environments.

Why Second Life Can’t Tip: The Power and Perils of Living La Vida Ludic

Presenter: Barry Joseph (GlobalKids Bixby in Second Life)

Barry Joseph is of the opinion that until society becomes more familiar with integrating play into every day life (the “ludic” life), Second Life will not tip.

The word ludic holds its roots in the Latin ludere, meaning “to play”. It therefore shares a common root with the word ludicrous, meaning “amusing or laughable.” Though ludic started out as a word with meanings relating to aimless play and squandering of time, those meanings have lost their derogatory status, so that in the context of modern education the connotations are far different.

According to Joseph, ludic, in this context, best describes the way in which “game/play dynamics, aesthetics and sensibilities … increasingly define our social interactions.” Thus, the ‘ludic life’ is one in which we bring gaming skills to bear in our everyday lives, rather than one in which we treat life as a game, as in the philosophy of ludism.

Until more people are living the ‘ludic life’, it seems unlikely that Second Life will tip. To date, Second Life has hit a major peak in the rate of people joining up, only to have that rate steeply fall off again; clearly the statistics are showing that Second Life is nowhere near tipping yet. Is this what it will take, for us to nurture our game-playing selves, to create ludic lives for ourselves in the real world, in order to make Second Life more appealing?

Explicit Bargains: Setting Realistic (Yet Powerful) Expectations for Teaching in Virtual Worlds

Presenter: Sarah Robbins (Intellagirl Tully in Second Life).

Sarah Robbins’ keynote speech covered how to increase the effectiveness of in-world education. Borrowing from Clay Shirky’s book, Here Comes Everybody, she presented the following structure:

• The promise: what are we expecting to get?
• The tool: how are we going to achieve the promise?
• The bargain: this is what I am going to do; this is what you are going to do. We achieve the promise by fulfilling the bargain.

In essence, “Innovation fails when the bargain breaks down.” However, each part of the structure must be analyzed to ensure that any given educational project goes off well. If the tool is inadequate, the promise is not sufficiently promising, or if the bargain is being consistently broken by one side or the other simply due to circumstance, any one of these can jeopardize the whole project.

Why Johnny Can’t Rez

Presenter: Beyers Sellers (”Metanomics” presenter).

Beyers Sellers addressed the tricky issue of how to get support (funding, resources and other types of assistance) for educational ventures into virtual environments from faculty and other educational staff.

Essentially you need to demonstrate that you are supporting the goals of the educational facility at which you teach by using virtual environments in your classroom. Without this reassurance, you are unlikely to get the support you require.

Sellers identified these three questions as ones that administrators are likely to want answered:

1. Which goals, for yourself and for the institution, are being supported, and how will they be supported?
2. Why should a virtual environment be used to accomplish these goals, as opposed to another solution?
3. What are the costs and risks of using a virtual environment?

In conclusion

Second Life could be a promising educational platform under the right circumstances. However, not only does Linden Lab need to make preparations at their end to make the magic happen, there are plenty of opportunities available for educators, and the wider public, to do their bit to support and improve education on the Second Life grids.

Popularity: 6% [?]

PacRimX, Skoolaborate and Global Challenge merger: the beginning of an Education Grid?

PacRimX (Pacific Rim Exchange)

Stan Trevena, director of technology for Modesto City Schools, is the man responsible for the PacRimX project, developed in 2007. The idea was that kids from Modesto and their counterparts from Kyoto Gakuen in Japan would be able to interact with each other in a virtual environment, prior to an international student exchange in which 20 Modesto students traveled to Japan, and vice versa with 50 Japanese students.

Due to time-zone issues, video-conferencing was ruled out as a solution early on. Instead, Trevena bought an private Island on the Teen Second Life Grid. He fitted it with some basics, including a welcome centre, but noted that “a lot of the innovative use of the island will come from the kids.” The number of islands has now expanded to four. Trevena describes the facility as “a place for our students to communicate and collaborate with each other in building a place where they can share their interests, cultures and languages.”

Students from Kyoto arrived in Modesto on June 24, 2008.

Skoolaborate

Westley Field, Director of Online Learning at MLC School Sydney, founded the Skoolaborate Project in 2007. Skoolaborate works with junior high schools around the globe to foster students collaboration, involving the use of digital technologies: wikis, blogs, virtual environments and other online learning tools. The Skoolaborate learning space, also on the Teen Second Life Grid, is a private, secure area with an invitation required to access it. “Skoolaborate now has 14 schools from Australia, New Zealand, Taiwan, Japan, Singapore and the USA.”

Global Challenge

“In the Global Challenge, teams of US high school students collaborate with international counterparts from October to May to address global climate change and compete for prizes and scholarship awards.”

Approximately 2,000 students have already participated in their program.

The merger

Kyoto Gakuen has been working with both Skoolaborate and PacRimX independently since the genesis of each program in 2007. This is how a relationship developed between the directors of the programs, which ultimately led to the merger between the two. The Global Challenge program was brought in separately, to complement the work of the others.

The resulting merged program, featuring input and participation by 17 schools from across the globe, is now the world’s largest virtual environment project, designed for kids of junior high school age.

“Schools collaborate using a variety of online tools and environments to share experiences, thoughts and ideas from around global understanding, social and environmental education.”

Thoughts

Having a private project on the Teen Second Life Grid could have been a great way to ensure that students encountered a slow-moving, sterile environment, with great homogeneity of culture, opinion and thought. However, this partnership should bring together a rich and diverse mix of folks, students and educators, which should create a varied, stimulating environment in which to learn.

Linden Lab is in flux, and the cause is not at all clear: speculation is rife and rumors abound, and the Lab has all but cut off communications with it’s residents. The Millennial Generation does not seem to be the target audience for the Second Life “platform” - this indicates that there is unlikely to be an “Education Grid” any time soon, or perhaps at all. It looks like the program developed by the combined force of PacRimX, Skoolaborate and Global Challenge will be the one of the largest contenders for an alternative.

The question is: will the Teen Second Life Grid remain active for long enough for any of their goals to come to fruition?

Popularity: 8% [?]

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