Welcome to Second Life (SL) a rapidly expanding metaverse, or alternative universe, where the simulated situations are said to have massive potential for teaching. It could be especially effective for distance learning at higher levels and professional training, and for pupils at all stages who find it less intimidating than real life.
Universities, colleges, schools and the suppliers of educational materials have had barely a year to explore it, but they are already working fast to harness its power and develop uses for it.
Edinburgh University is trying it out for lectures and tutorials, Harvard Law School has built an SL courthouse for mock trials, Leicester, Oxford and others are giving it a whirl – literally since the avatars, the 3-D on-screen figures, fly and swoop around the SL world like so many Peter Pans and Wendys. The University of Teesside, which has a strong track record in virtual environments, games and computer animation, is already in there with a research-cum-business project to develop an application that could be the basis of many uses for SL in schools.
Brian Wilson, Assistant Dean (Enterprise) in the School of Arts & Media, who is supervising the Teesside project, says that with SL pupils can experience ‘accelerated learning’. Through their avatars, pupils can quickly sample many situations, examine options, gather and study information, make choices, see the consequences and effectively travel through time to become their future selves in a new set of situations.
‘We are working on ways of managing very extensive data and creating opportunities within the SL environment in ways that mean pupils are less self-conscious about getting involved than they would be in the real world’, says Brian. ‘It frees learning from the restrictions of time and geography.’ The work is under way at the University’s d|lab, which was set up in late 2006 by the School of Arts & Media to be a centre for research, development and innovation in design.
d|lab will be moving into the new Institute of Digital Innovation this autum and Brian, the director, says, ‘Its aim is to be an enterprise-led research facility capable of engaging with the global economy. As well as developing knowledge-based products, d|lab is a conduit to the business world to put the results into the marketplace.
‘Our current interest is in transformative technology. That is, technology which will radically change and reshape processes and markets. It’s risky, but the benefits and the potential are great. Compare it with the iPod which has massively changed the relationship between producers and users of music.
‘With SL the pace of learning is quickening in an exciting way. Pupils can project themselves into the technical environment and explore it in ways that most of them are already familiar with because they are computer literate, they’ve played computer games and used the internet and other applications.’
Pupils can be disruptive or idle in the real world but SL learning systems will have ways of dealing with them too. The metaverse is made up of distinct islands with border controls so the owners know who is visiting and what they are doing. The educational applications will have a teacher or tutor in charge. Any troublemakers will get their avatars grounded. Anyone who is inactive, either through shyness or by intent, can be identified.
The potential of SL also reaches beyond school and university settings into industry, manufacturing and service-sector operations. It can be a market research and training tool, for example, testing customer preferences in different settings – such as the layout of a bank or pub. You can tweak the design and test the behaviour again – all much faster than with focus groups and role play. All this has serious business implications in an age when technology already makes customer loyalty a fragile but precious commodity.
SL has the potential to take computer innovations off in new directions with farreaching consequences for life, work, leisure and even culture. But providers of education and training have always harnessed new technology to help both tutor and learner. Teachers in ancient Greece scratched diagrams in the sand with a stick and medieval scholars used slates. In the 15th century printed books caused a revolution in learning. The pace quickened 400 years on with photography, electricity and the birth of modern science. Sound recording, film, the overhead projector, the photocopier, video, CD-rom, DVD, presentation software and the internet all made it easier to store and share information. SL looks very much like the next leap forward.
The phrase ‘Brave New World’ is often trotted out to describe technological breakthroughs. It comes from Shakespeare’s The Tempest, where Prospero tinkers with reality and creates illusions. Towards the end he makes his famous speech ‘Our revels now are ended’. His description of make-believe cloud-capped towers, solemn temples and the great globe itself are a kind of prophetic vision of Second Life.
The difference, Prospero, mate, is that the revels are far from ended. The show is only just beginning.
If you want to find out more email dlab@tees.ac.uk