Virtual Lab

Sometimes it's good to go to a session just because you think you might enjoy it, rather than you might learn something from it. That's why I've just been to one on teaching chemistry and microbiology in a virtual lab in Second Life. The University of Aalto in Finland have created LabLife3D, a virtual building with clean rooms, laboratories and a lobby area where students can discuss things.

Students are taught to use equipment before entering the real lab, and have to pass certain tasks relating to lab safety, especially for the clean room. They can also perform experiments, including being able to fast forward time for cell cultures etc. It enables larger classes to be taught more cheaply, and the students to learn at their own pace and in their own time. The students rate it positively. Downsides are that it requires a lot of specialist skills to build the virtual reality, and currently mistakes or accidents in the experiments have no consequences. This is currently being developed.

A good presentation, delivered entirely from Second Life, with some current students in Finland taking part through their avatars. My main criticism is that the Second Life interface seems so clunky, especially when compared to modern gaming environments. Not at all intuitive.

The IC to join the Sistine Chapel in SL?

The final conference session was on the use of Second Life in Education, drawing on experiences from University College Dublin. With 16.6m residents, a currency linked to the US dollar exchange rate and almost totally user generated content, it is more than a game - but will it ever become mainstream? It's at a stage that the web was in in the mid 1990s and it will be interesting so see what happens to it over the next few years. Certainly if you look to analysts like Gartner they show it on the downward slore to the "trough of disillusionment" on their hype cycle. But in Education there are some interesting uses for it. You can fly up to the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel and examine the frescos on the ceiling, learn how to give emergency first aid, and walk though the Saltire Centre in Glasgow. 70% of UK universities have a presence of some kind in SL delivering classes, seminars, skills sessions and conferences.

UCD have a library in SL - it has no walls, no doors, and doesn't try to replicate real life. They've hosted lectures and tutorials in it, and provide information for prospective and new students. The future remains uncertain, and it was interesting to hear a technical view of some of the issues surrounding the use of SL. It requires high internet speeds and high spec PCs, not all operating systems are supported, and there is a steep learning curve to use it properly. I must admit I find it very difficult - my avatar seems to have a mind of her own, and I find it hard to navigate the environment properly.

The conclusion was that virtual worlds offer a lot, but Second Life might not be the right environment - other toolkits may provide a better user experience. We perhaps need to look in more detail at it with our academic colleagues who are already using it. I'm also keen to get the IC in there - especially as the Saltire Centre is there already! Can't beat a bit of friendly rivalry.

Speaking of the IC, nice to see that Google Earth have just updated their images of Sheffield, and it is now clearly visible, rather than a car park.

Edit: Just had a fly round the Sistine Chapel in SL - it's pretty good - for anyone with a Second Life account it's here: http://slurl.com/secondlife/vassar/165/91/24

Virtual worlds and intelligent objects

According to a session on virtual worlds, 9 out of 10 virtual world projects within organisations fail. The most popular virtual world is Second Life, but there are others. An area where VWs have been successful is education - I mentioned in an earlier post some examples, but they can also be used for Can be used for teaching social skills, training and simulations.
Role based and scenario driven training exercises are well understood and to do them in a virtual world can save money and reduce danger. For example, a multi agency exercise – fire, ambulance, police – simulating an incident in a city centre can be very expensive and disruptive - a lot less so in a virtual world. They're also being used for training military personnel how to
survive in an urban environment and to simulate large scale evacuations.

IBM have built a virtual data centre display information from many remote data centres
Most virtual worlds can import 3d information so buildings etc are easy to create

Avatar enabled collaboration is an area which is growing and is proving successful if the scope is kept small - for example on projects. Examples include Sun's Virtual Workspace and qwaq forums.

User interfaces will develop and become simplier (anyone who's tried Second Life will know that it's not easy - my avatar definitely has a mind of her own!). The type of intertial sensing used in the Wii will lead to a different generation of user interfaces. Alpha brainwave sensors are apparently just coming onto the market, enabling you to move a cursor or an object just by thinking about it. Even more scarily - these are already priced at only $299!

There may be a use for virtual worlds in social networking - for example replacing the coffee room and water cooler for remote workers.

Some interesting discussion on demographics - I was suprised to learn that the average age of active SL user is over 40. Other VWs are targeted at younger audiences eg Habbo Hotel for young teenagers. A new VW called Barbiegirls went from 0 to 1m users in 6months – guess who that was targeted at! The child and sub teen market is the huge success story of virtual world and 9 out of 10 virtual world residents are under 14. But - they don't have spending power, eCommerce in virtual worlds therefore hasn't taken off the way it was predicted to.

Legal matters are still one of the biggest issues. Apparently the police aren't interested if someone steals your virtual property because it's virtual, and doesn't exist - but if you sell some virtual property, then the tax office is interested.....

Some interesting discussions on avatars - can you have a sensible business discussion with a pink rabbit for example. And as avatars get more realistic they get less believable and enter the Uncanny Valley.

All in all a good, thought provoking session on how we might think about using VWs.

The last session was on context aware computing and intelligent objects. A definite theme of the conference. I just found it scary!

HE Day continued

Rest of conference blogging will probably be in note form - unless I get much free time - doubtful as I'm in sessions from 9 till 6 everyday, and with some one-to-one sessions with analysts as well! At least the sun has come out today.

Future of eLearning

Lots of Gartner survey data - 50% of courses delivered by elearning in some form – no increase over last year although increases noted in all previous years - has plateau been reached? Top two reasons for using eLearning are meeting student demand and pedagogical advantage – has moved to top. Previously top two were cost savings and generating revenue.

Another trend is OSS – huge increase – up to 35% now – 10% increase from last year.
But commercial software still used to deliver most courses ie lot of institutions trying out open source software - influenced by Blackboard/WebCT merger. Moodle being considered by 53% of institutions in EMEA compared to 23% in North America.

Have to consider changing students – growth in consumer devices, social software, virtual worlds, gaming. In 2000 the producers were in charge – controlled distribution, production, marketing. Not today – consumer are in charge – cheap production tools, multiple channels, new methods of discovery, viral and social networks.

Social networks -Myspace has 65m users with 1% yearly growth. Facebook has 28m users but 77% yearly growth. Can't ignore the gaming experiecce – look at what’s happening in online games. There are 77m World of Warcraft players - more than golf players!

Changing teaching – Is there a place for social software and virtual worlds in teaching?
Should social software/elearing platforms be combined?

Look at Peace Innovation on Facebook, a Stanford University course. You can see documents, videos, share files, and discuss the material. None of it delivered by the central IT service - so how can we add value? University of Mitchigan provides ther library search through Facebook, because that’s where their students are.

Virtual worlds - a demo of teaching applications in Second Life - Chemistry simulations, Genome island, Anatomical models, Clinical simulations.

Changing technology – change in sourcing options. Application overlap – course management systems, student information systems, library systems, CMS and repositories, CRM all have functionality which overlaps.

Notes to self! Must look at Second Life, ( should we buy an Island?), iGoogle (are our students using it?), RSS feeds to get info to students via Facebook etc (eg info from plasma screens, especaily PC availability).

Does a Second Life avatar use as much power as a Brazilian?

Yesterday I spent the day at a JISC consultation event in London. This was an opportunity for various representative groups, including UCISA of which I’m Vice-Chair, to tell JISC what our concerns and issues are, and for them to tell us what plans they have for the coming year.

UCISA do a “Top Concerns” survey amongst it’s members every year, where senior IT Managers have to suggest, and then vote on, which issues are important to them, and what issues are likely to become significantly more important over the next year. The results of the last survey are here. The ones we discussed with JISC were:

Funding – particularly sustainable funding. We are constantly being asked to do more as technologies become more functional and critical to the organisation, but resources do not usually increase. It is also easier to obtain capital funding rather than recurrent, and yet it is in staffing that many of us need to invest. Capital funding can come from number of sources, including SRIF, and the JISC themselves, and I personally have been in the situation of being allocated money, and not having the staff to spend it.

Another issue we discussed was the whole area of “Green IT”. I’ve mentioned power consumption of PCs and Data Centres in previous posts, and I have heard that IT accounts for 2% of global carbon emissions – more than the airline industry. There’s a lot of work to be done to reduce our carbon footprint, and we need to be looking at the what happens wherever students are learning, not just in the University but at home and in student halls, as well. Even Second Life avatars leave a footprint…

The third area was the whole area of e-learning, including the changing needs and expectations of students, and the use of new technologies (blogs, wikis etc), as well as virtual learning environments.

The JISC outlined a couple of communication themes to us, including Libraries of the Future, and Changing Student Expectations. Some of this will be informed by a project carried out by UCL for the JISC and the British Library looking at the behaviour of the researcher of the future, or the google generation - it's an interesting read.

Oh, and don't you think my Second Life avatar has pretty hair?

and the rest of Wednesday

Several sessions on virtual worlds and social networking. The Center for Digital Media in Vancouver has a masters degree with a physical world - a real building on their campus, and a virtual world - a digital campus in Second Life. They are developing something they call participatory pedagogy, where students contribute to the learning process. The virtual world was interesting - it's completely modifiable, and reality does not apply! Not sure how it contributes to the learning process though. I have an account in Second Life but it's sessions like this that make me realise how little I know about it and how little I can do. I did learn about griefers, and what do do if a student shoots you while you're teaching him. You set him on fire of course.

Sessions on the use of social networking such as facebook, blogs and wikis were disappointing. Nothing new or earth shattering, apart from a realisation that I think we're way ahead in the UK with using these tools.

A surreal experience in the last session where a group of us had gravitated to the edge of the room to plug our laptops into the power sockets. A Facebook friend and colleague Tony was blogging the conference and managed to post a photo of me during the session. He was blogging live, I was commenting on his blog, while we were listening to a session on the use of blogs.

Lots of laptops here. At least half, probably more, are Macs.
This conference is huge - at least 1000 were turned away because bookings closed before the conference started. The British contingent are using Facebook to keep in touch, arrange where to meet etc.
It's interesting to watch the tactics the exhibitors use to get you to go to their stands. Cisco has a magician! Others have nice chocolate.

It's been a long day - sessions start at 8am and finish at 6pm. Collapsed in the bar for a quick G and T with Sue after the last session. We told the waitress to keep the tab open as we might need another. "Well you can't fly on one wing" she said. Too true.