Fusion Fail To Do Their Homework Regarding Education In Second Life

I’m not quite sure what to make of Patrick Hogan’s article over at Fusion; We took a tour of the abandoned college campuses of Second Life. Patrick does not seem to have done his homework, but I’ll come to that later. The article paints a picture of Second Life from its hype cycle back in 2007 :

Colleges were among those that bought the hype of the Linden Lab-developed virtual world. Many universities set up their own private islands to engage students; some even held classes within Second Life.

Most of these virtual universities are gone –– it costs almost $300 per month to host your own island –– but it turns out a handful remain as ghost towns. I decided to travel through several of the campuses, to see what’s happening in Second Life college-world in 2015.

There are some glaring problems with this paragraph. Linden Lab reintroduced the 50% discount for educational and non-profit organisations in July 2013, meaning the cost is not almost $300 a month. Now there’s no doubt that Linden Lab’s initial to remove the 50% discount and the ageing platform did reduce the number of universities in Second Life, but even a casual glance at the Education & Nonprofits section of the destination guide reveals that there are more than a handful of universities in Second Life.

I’m a bit bemused at the timing of Patrick’s article too, he visited American universities, so term times are probably different to the UK, but the middle of August does not seem the ideal time to go looking for university classes in action to me.

Patrick does make a good point regarding the design choices of universities in Second Life :

The college islands are bizarre. They mostly are laid out in a way to evoke stereotypes of how college campuses should look, but mixed in is a streak of absurd choices, like classrooms in tree houses and pirate ships. These decisions might have seemed whimsical at the time, but with the dated graphics, they just look weird.

And weird is the overall theme of this trip, which begins in Arkansas.

Bizarre is actually good, the idea of a virtual world space should not just be to recreate the physical world space, virtual worlds provide the opportunity to do things you can’t in the physical world, that’s a plus, not a minus.

Patrick actually points out that he quite likes some of these design choices :

I actually like how most of these islands represent an attempt by education institutions to embrace the weirdness of the web. The current crop of education startups seem bland and antiseptic in comparison to these virtual worlds. I can’t take a Coursera class on a pirate ship, or attend office hours in front of an edX campfire.

And honestly, that’s probably a good thing. But it makes the web slightly less interesting.

Where Patrick’s article goes horribly wrong though is when you consider he does not appear to have done much research at all. I’ve covered education in Second Life more than once. I’ve looked at UWE Teaching MA In Virtual Worlds Within Second Life, I’ve blogged about how Valdosta State University TIES Conference explored Teaching & Learning in Second Life, I’ve blogged about how education in Second Life still has a healthy pulse, and much more.

In September last year Linden Lab blogged; Introduction to Second Life for Educators – a Course in Spanish 2nd Edition. There’s plenty of evidence of education being applied in a Second Life environment and that includes the excellent work of the University of Western Australia who were yesterday blogging; PURSUE IMPOSSIBLE: Launch of UWA 3D Art & Film Challenges 2015 :

The University of Western Australia (UWA) is happy to announce the launch of ‘PURSUE IMPOSSIBLE, the 6th UWA Grand Art Challenge and MachinimUWA VIII with a starting prize pool in excess of L$400,000. Sponsored by Tom Papas & SciFi Film Festival, Reign Congrejo & BOSL, LaPiscean Liberty & SL Artist, AviewTV, Pixel Bits, TheDove Rhode with S&S Gallery of SL Fine Art & Peace Is A Choice Gallery, Virtlantis, Phillip Vought, Dr Valerie Casey, Carolyn Steele & York University (Canada), Taralyn Gravois, johannes1977 & Windlight Magazine, Eleanor Medier & The Sim Street Journal, UWA Marketing & Communications, as well as The UWA Virtual Worlds Project. We hope you are inspired by the ‘PURSUE IMPOSSIBLE’ theme to create many wondrous works of art and film as you have been through the years! (Please note the major rule & special prize guidelines as well as the Audience Participation Prizes for watching the machinima. All machinima will be highlighted on the UWA Blog & SL Artist.)

Back in February Linden Lab asked people to share their education success stories and there are some great posts on the forum thread about that.

Then there are events such as Virtual Worlds Best Practices in Education, which of course goes beyond Second Life but highlights, well, education in virtual worlds.

Patrick Hogan could have found all of this information to prepare him for an article about education in Second Life, but he decided to dive in and explore. This does highlight an issue with Second Life, it’s possible to travel vast parts of Second Life without really bumping into someone else. Regular users of the platform become familiar with this, it does not seem odd, but I can understand how to a casual visitor, the lack of other people could feel odd and empty. However in all reality, Patrick Hogan should have been better prepared.

I’ll end this post with another example of education in Second Life and another one that could easily be found, it’s from The Drax Files: World Makers Episode 19: Virtual Chemistry and features the work of Wendy Keeney-Kennicutt from Texas A&M University.