Linden Lab have slowly been trying to make peace with the education community in virtual worlds after the price change controversy a few years back. This has of course been reversed as Linden Lab seem to value the potential of educators using virtual worlds and this is further exemplified by the news that Ebbe Altberg will be the opening keynote speaker at VWBPE 2015 :

Great things are happening again this year at the Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education Conference, so don’t miss out! We are very pleased to announce that Ebbe Altberg, CEO of Linden Lab, will be back on March 18, 2015, this time as our opening keynote speaker.

Ebbe will be joined by many other noteworthy presenters such as educators, researchers, professionals and instructors representing a broad range of areas including non-profits, sciences, IT , artists and of course, education.

Virtual Worlds Best Practices In Education will be running from March 18th – 21st 2015.

I decided to dig a little deeper into the educational institutions currently active in Second Life. Unfortunately the Official Wiki is hopelessly out of date in this area. However the ever improving Destination Guide is very much relevant to the current market and better still, it includes lots of places that aren’t traditional places of learning. I decided to start my exploration at the DePaul College of Computing and Digital Media

The  thing to note is that this is a bloody impressive build. If you hadn’t intentionally teleported into an education sim, you would probably think it was some sort of roleplaying environment or a place where some serious content creators were at play. This is a very photogenic location.

Next up I headed over to The Cystic Fibrosis University. This is another impressive build and has a winter holiday theme going on at the moment.

The Cystic Fibrosis university is ran by the Boomer Esiason Foundation and they explain a little bit about the purpose of their build in Second Life on their community portal section of their website:

Second Life is a 3-D virtual world – set up and monitored by the Boomer Esiason Foundation – with virtual characters (avatars) in a cyber community. The online world allows people to socialize and communicate (via typing) “face to face.” CF University, located on Second Life, is an educational and resourceful tool that also allows people with CF to have social interaction.

Next up I headed to more familiar territory for me, The University Of The West Of England.

I have been here before, most notably when I took a look at their MA Education In Virtual Worlds. A course that is taught entirely within Second Life. The island includes some interesting concepts and makes good use of The Second Life environment. There’s more than one island here.

Next I headed off to Deep Think, a build courtesy of The Open University.

The layout of the land is described well on the Virtual MPhil page of the OU website :

Our immersive campus, called deep|think, is a large Second Life development, which has been modelled into five distinct, but interconnected small islands, each with a well-defined function:

• a welcome island, to welcome visitor and for orientation purposes;
• a study island, with special purpose meeting spaces, common rooms and exhibition facilities;
• a library island, for access to a variety of resources for study and research—a Beach Bar, is provided nearby for relaxation and fun activities, e.g., chatting, playing pool or listening to music or even dancing;
  a sandbox, for rezzing objects and scripting activities; and
• a central island with our main auditorium and related smaller theatres for large events, such as conferences, workshops, lectures and exhibitions.

However let’s not forget that education in Second Life is not all about traditional bodies, there’s also a lot of hard work done by Second Life residents themselves who help to educate people on the use of Second Life amongst many other things. A good example of this can be found at Caledon Oxbridge University.

This is another stunning build. The Caledon Oxbridge University website describes introduces the location as :

Located in the Victorian Steampunk realm of the Independent State of Caledon (ISC), Caledon Oxbridge University is a place to learn basic skills for the aetherial world of Second Life®. Oxbridge provides a complete Second Life tutorial for new residents. We also have live, walk-in classes (free) and a number of other 3rd-party interactive tutorials. In a setting based on the theme of an old English university, the orientation tutorial is spread over six “Colleges”, each covering a different area of the Second Life interface and world: Avatar Motion, Camera Control, Communication, Finding (Search & Inventory), Avatar Customization, and Money & Commerce. The tutorial experience includes not only traditional orientation posters, but also interactive exercises, free full avatars, and prizes.

Education in Second Life is alive and virtual worlds lend themselves well to many learning practices. Whereas it’s not at the days before the great price switch controversy, there is still a very healthy heartbeat regarding education in Second Life. There have of course also been RL constrainsts on education due to the realities of the global financial crash.

Education is likely to grow in Virtual World environments in the future, Linden Lab are right to court and take interest in that market.

Tweet