Join the Virtual Learning Community Initiative at the Undergraduate Conference in Second Life on Thursday, June 17, 2010. The event is scheduled to begin at 9:30am with a series of presentations through 4:15pm (CST). The conference will begin with panels led by UT System instructors and undergraduates currently working in the virtual world of Second Life, and by Linden Lab Educational director Claudia Linden. After the scheduled lunch break and keynote speech (12:30pm-1:15pm) the conference will speak more directly to undergraduates with a series of panels on preparing for work or graduate studies after college.

Shipyard citizen puddle Soup, one of the few from the Ionian race, appearing disinterested at an event at Rader Records.

The Shipyard Roleplay Community, showcased by Linden Labs in December 2009, introduced me to an unexpected learning experience by way of roleplay. This Bladerunner reminiscent cyberpunk sim, owned by Nadir Taov and partner BeBe Pink, takes place in future San Franscisco – a world structured by Game Master (GM) Geoffrey Welders and written collectively by its citizens.

The showcase brought in a massive wave of new citizens – many inexperienced with roleplay like myself. It was a bit intimidating at first navigating the sim “in character” (IC), which means to use the emote command (/me) to essentially distance yourself from your avatar and write their story within the community in the third-person.

Nadir Taov, who also runs two other urban noir roleplay sims, recalls similar sentiments from his first time. “I was definitely intimidated because everyone seemed to have their own stories and plots going with everyone else. However, if you stick around, observe, and be proactive, you’ll get into it. One of the things I highly recommend newcomers is to get an IC job at one of the local places. You’re bound to interact and just see how things go from there.”

The Shipyard website provides a universe guide for welcoming new citizens, which lays out basic elements of their society like descriptions of present races and political affilations. The message boards contain further information by its citizens about plot developments. (Most serious plot development depends on the interaction of the roleplayers during events Welders plans called “Sagas”.) The apparent involvement of individuals in the community can be seen by their documentation of it on their website with the boards, character blogs, flickr group, etc. – which further perpetuates the motivation of new citizens to get involved.

I began at Shipyard working at a local coffee shop to help get used to roleplaying. Soon I was campaigning for Prime Minister of Tokyo (quite the promotion!) and discussing health care with the local hospital. In reality, I was simultaneously browsing multiple tabs doing political research for party platform inspiration, and instant messaging with a friend about learning how to create clothing in SL so that I could make a t-shirt to share with others promoting my campaign.

Warrant dressed to impress for her campaign next to a poster I made.

The educational aspect of roleplay is quite intriguing, as it seems to present itself in many forms. As I became part of the community I wanted to contribute more to push the story along, which for me meant learning new skills and researching to assist in political delegation. Fellow Shipyard citizen Lyrique India has recently begun learning Japanese on another roleplay sim. India says, “It sticks more when everyone else you are roleplaying with is using the same language.”

by Teresa Shoffner, VLCI undergraduate.

Networking while shopping

Working in Second Life for the Transforming Undergraduate Education project has been a whirlwind of fun experiences as well as frustrating challenges. I know from experience how exhausting the multitude of features in Second Life can be when you are learning, creating content, or doing anything for the first time. After using SL for more than a year now, I would like to share some resources that have made my SL experience all the more fun and exciting when using SL as an educational tool. Below are the 5 tips I find most useful.

Tip #1: Network, be friendly, be social!
When starting from scratch building on a sim, try consorting other educational sims, schools, faculty, or SL librarians. SL is filled with people who have been building, working, studying, and learning for months to years in Second Life! You can send instant messages (or even offline messages) to people and ask them questions about anything you need help with in Second Life. You don’t have to go through Second Life alone! SL was created to be a social environment where people can come to learn, build, and grow. Don’t be afraid or think that you must learn everything on your own. There are hundreds of tutorials, video blogs, and even Linden Lab employees who are online to help you with whatever it is you may need. Graduate students, professors, and registrars are all on Second Life, so why not take advantage of this more social environment and use what skills they have and learn from them?

Tip #2: Notecards are your best friend in Second Life!
Notecards are the best sticky notes in SL without actually having to use real paper! Whether you’re researching for a project, listening into a consortium from an event, or in a curriculum faculty meeting, open up a new notecard, title it properly and write notes in it! One thing that I really enjoy about SL is that when you are in a non-voice meeting, it will be held in text. This is amazing in the sense that if you find yourself behind in whatever is currently being talked about, you can “scroll up” and copy/paste whatever was just said down into your notecard to hold and reference back when you are running behind. This is also great if you are brainstorming ideas with group members and you need to take notes of items that will have to be finalized later. Jotting things down, analyzing and assessing whatever it is you write in your notecards is just like writing on paper in real life. Plus, when you need to give someone your notes, it’s just a matter of dragging and dropping it into their avatar’s inventory, versus having to copy and paste things down or photocopy handwritten notes in the real world! It saves time and paper!

Second Life Showcase

Tip #3: Search engines are a great resource
If you’re lost on finding educational sims, or educational projects in SL in general, Google is your best friend. A few keywords typed in to the search, and voila, you have instant hits that can lead you to numerous pages that have a compiled list of places to go. A second resource is using Second Life’s search engine. Tab over to “Showcase” and from there select “Education and Nonprofits” where you can get many universities and nonprofit organizations who use Second Life for outreach purposes in getting the community to be more aware of what your missions and goals are. This is a great way to find things in SL–both educational and informational.

Tip #4: Second Life Educator’s Mailing List
In Second Life, there are a ton of educators who teach a bunch of different topics from scripting LSL code, to chemistry classes, to marine biology, and so much more! If you are interested in gathering feedback from a multitude of different educators and don’t mind being bombarded with a mass mailing of messages sent to you, sign up here! Once you sign up, you are instantly able to go through and have a great index of people who could probably help with whatever project you have going on. It could be advertising for an event or suggestions and tips for performing specific task. I used this mailing list when I was in a group and had to fundraise $L100,000 for two charity organizations that my group was sponsoring. From this, many educators helped us advertise on their sims and sent word out.

Tip #5: Torley’s Tutorials, SL Wikis, SL classes!
When you finally get into being creative and wanting to expanding your own expeditions on Second Life, you might be tempted to build and create content! Tutorials from the SL Wiki and Torley’s Tutorials are great resources online which help you expand your skill set and with tips on how to be an efficient content creator. I find that if there is something you want to do and make in SL, someone has probably had the same idea and might have already created it! You can build from what they teach you to create wild, innovative and crafty outcomes in the wondrous world of Second Life!

Have fun on your quest to discover the educational side of Second Life! If you are ever in doubt, these tips should help you get through your rut! Good luck!

by Crystal Lin, VLCI Undergraduate.

Undergraduate Brian Li demonstrates UT System island teleporting billboards

We are now almost seven months in to the UT System Transforming Undergraduate Education VLCI grant project in Second Life. Working on the TUE grant and in Second Life has shown me the commitment of UT System to technological leadership. Despite the devastating loss of our passionate leader, Dr. Leslie Jarmon, the Campus Leads are devoting great time and effort to working together on this project to create exciting initiatives and learning opportunities.

Second Life has the potential to be an experience-based learning environment that can transcend geographic, spatial, and resource constraints. So it is thrilling that with institutional support and funding, we can now teach and credential virtual world activity.

Our greatest challenge is to inspire students to see the potential of learning in-world. Based on my research in lifestreaming and online reputation, I believe we could raise student interest by allowing use of their real names in connection with their avatars. This could increase personal accountability and emphasize that virtual environments are an extension of real life, and not just a fantasy video game.

What do you think about avatar naming conventions, in Second Life or elsewhere? Does the benefit of anonymity outweigh real-world connection?

by Jessica Mullen, VLCI Graduate Research Assistant.

The Frank Lloyd Wright Virtual Museum Falls

The Frank Lloyd Wright Virtual Museum (FLWVM slurl) reopened on November 20, 2009 with a successful three-day event. The celebration included live music, a silent auction, discussion, a members only ball and fireworks. The museum itself, inspired by Wright’s design of the Unity Temple in Chicago, includes two floors of exhibits with detailed notecards and a theater on the third floor. Farther back on the sim features five homes designed directly, and with braggable accuracy, after some of Wright’s work.

The Frank Lloyd Wright Virtual Museum Help Desk

FLWVM offers a variety of scheduled lectures, guided tours, live music events and competitions to its members. The museum holds four timed “build-off” competitions a year, the next coming up in February. The contests have thus far featured Wright’s own style and the Craftsman style. FLWVM Assistant Director Rosalie Oldrich updated me on the upcoming contest. “We provided a couple of classes ahead of the build-offs [before], and will do the same in February, when we will have building in the Usonian style – an invention of Mr. Wright’s. Typically American, meant for middle-income folks.” (All are invited to the classes, but entry fees apply to the contest itself.)

The Frank Lloyd Wright Virtual Museum logo

2010 is shaping up to be a busy year for this museum. In addition to FLWVM’s exciting agenda, a Museum Hop is in the works for February 2010. Oldrich reveals, “We will join with 5-6 other SL museums/galleries for an afternoon when we will all be offering special tours, a small gift for each visitor, a big sign at each site with the LMs for all the participants, and we’ll end up with a dance at FLWVM at the end of the day. A good way to introduce people to the variety of museums in SL!”

ProjectImagine@UTSA team member Cogito Ultsch greeting at the event.

The University of Texas San Antonio celebrated the opening of a virtual art gallery on October 9 as part of the Imagine Peace festival – an annual, worldwide event in SL and RL in honor of John Lennon. The sim itself is a new addition to the metaverse purchased with nearly 50 other sims as part of a UT System Initiative. The Imagine team at UTSA had only three weeks to create an art gallery on a blank sheet of a sim.

Luckily, the UTSA team is no stranger to SL’s art community! Previous to the UT System’s mass land purchase, Dr. Carmen Fies, an assistant professor in the Department of Interdisciplinary Learning and Teaching, founded UTSA’s Tejano Tech sim. Her work here placed an emphasis on STEM education (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) that is reflected through the sim’s art galleries. “Art and STEM do mutually constitute each other,” Fies explains. “It all is really just different expressions of the same. All we know (and even don’t know) is one…and there are different sparkles to it.”

UTSA signed on for the festival last minute. Fies and three of the Tejano artists (Sapphoria Shilova, Gary Kohime, and Cogito Ultsch) comprised the Imagine Team that brought it all together. Kohime organized the featured artists and managed impressive contributions from some big names in SL art. Featured artists Bryn Oh, Sasun Steinbeck, and Spiral Walcher are interviewed below about their involvement with the art community.

A hidden element of Bryn Oh's "Willow".

Bryn Oh

Self-proclaimed hermit Bryn Oh was persuaded to leave her home at Immersiva, contributing Willow for the big event. She confesses that her excuse for interaction was driven by curiosity about Yoko Ono’s avatar, “I never did see…but I heard she looked like herself. I kind of hoped she would be something very creative.” Bryn Oh is the pixelated concept of a real life oil painter using SL as a medium for ideas that mistranslate onto canvas. After her first week on SL, she says, “I realized that this was the medium I had been looking for. A medium where I could create a painting that you could enter and explore rather than passively look at.” (Hint: Keep the explorative aspect in mind when you visit her work!)

Cogito Ultsch showing her favorite piece - Sasun's Morphing Sculpture.

Sasun Steinbeck

A must see at the new gallery is Sasun’s Morphing Sculpture. Sasun Steinbeck began working on the sculpture in 2005. The menu-driven sculpture provides infinite options thanks to four years of intensive scripting that began with simple “prim torture” sample scripts that twist prims. The sculpture truly displays the exactitude Second Life is capable of, and all with regular tubes and toruses. As the sculpture developed she sought other artists for feedback and became inspired to create the Art Galleries of Second Life list. She is excited to see the evolution of the “artist” on SL and notes that, “there’s a real blur between ‘scripter, ‘artist’, ‘designer’, and ‘builder’. The penultimate SL artist is some combo of these things.“

inside Spiral Walcher's forest

Spiral Walcher

Spiral Walcher shares two versions of a sort of digitalized forest with the new UTSA gallery – one a spring version with butterflies, and an autumn version. “Cool” is the word – and several fun snapshots a must! After spending a couple of months in SL, Walcher casually decided, “I wanted to see what this whole ‘building’ thing was about. As it turned out, it all came pretty naturally to me.“ Walcher hopes to someday transfer this newfound talent into RL and create light sculptures, but in the meantime appreciates the frugality and creative leverage SL has to offer.

Story and images by Teresa Shoffner

the NEREUS classroom in Second Life

Finally, the notion of “interdisciplinary” learning has taken on new meaning in light of the capabilities for rapid, virtual collaboration among faculty. In a pilot, undergraduate students enrolled in a design course taught by Riley Triggs on the UT-Austin campus have designed and built NEREUS, Nautical Environment for Research, Exploration, and Understanding of the Sea (a virtual oceanography research simulation). NEREUS is a virtual underwater “classroom” space representing the Gulf of Mexico for both classroom and online students who will be enrolled in a future semester at UT’s Marine Science Institute (MSI) in Port Aransas. The MSI students will learn about oceanography and how to conduct research and collect and analyze data. These kinds of completely new and enriched learning experiences, at dramatically reduced costs, are possible only because of the instructors’ bold and imaginative foray into virtual worlds.

NEREUS Course instructor, Tracy Villareal

UT Instructor Tracy Villareal says “UT sold the Longhorn due to high maintenance costs & an inability to support the ship’s daily operating costs. We have no ability to provide actual field experiences for many of our marine related courses. The potential to simulate oceanographic sampling in SL has opened up many new possibilities & has permitted me to consider whole new horizons for what I can do in my courses. SL allows me to create (with collaborators) a universe to sample.”

Brian Li and Crystal Lin training Villareal's students in Second Life

Villareal is now teaching the first NEREUS class, OCEANOGRAPHY: HUMAN EXPLORATION/EXPLOITATION OF THE SEA (MNS 367K , Fall 2009): “Review of the history of ocean exploration including major oceanographic expeditions. Discussion of current topics in ocean exploration and exploitation of marine resources, the impact of resource exploitation on biological systems, and the development of marine policy. Student presentation is required.”

Students presenting their projects in NEREUS

The goals of Villareal’s class:
Review of the history of oceanography, including both exploration and the development of current oceanographic concepts and technologies. Present the current hot topics in oceanography. Learn how oceanographic data is collected and use virtually collected data to map unknown waters for their gradients in physical and chemical gradients. Examine how oceanography has been used for oceanic exploitation by examining specific case-studies in terms of economic & social importance, effects on the ocean environment, and management methods & effectiveness. Place current events into a larger context of initial exploration & development of ideas leading towards the ability to exploit the oceans. Explore the cost and consequences of current marine management strategies.

Villareal and students

The following are Learning Objectives for the class:
1. Students will be able to plot oceanographic data in standard professional software
2. Students will be able to identify major oceanographic features in the data
3. Students will be able to list the major oceanographic expeditions and provide historical context for their findings
4. Students will be able to list the major means of extracting power from the ocean and describe the principles behind them
5. Students will be able to describe harmful algal blooms and list the major types of seafood poisoning that result from them.
6. Students will be able to list the major fisheries of the world and describe the types of regulatory environments that are used to manage them.
7. Students will be able to describe the historical trends in overfishing and discuss the differences between derby and IFQ managed fisheries.
8. Students will be able to research a topic relevant to the course, organize the material and present it in a coherent fashion (either directly or virtually) to their peers.

Students inside NEREUS

Campus Leads meet Second Life officials

Campus Lead Bob Sterken talks to the team

Campus Leads Sunay Palsole and Oneita Burgess

The team brainstorms

Campus Leads David Ford, Bruce Niebuhr, Bob Sterken and Jane Lemaster

Lynn Jones Eaton (CIE/DIIA) and Campus Lead Susan Franzen

Campus Lead Mike Sullivan talks with PI Leslie Jarmon

Campus Leads Joe DeCristoforo, Bruce Niebuhr and Kimberly Ashley

Campus Leads Jane Lemaster and Mike Sullivan

Pat Francis and Jeff Cole (UT System)

Campus Leads Sarah Jones, Kimberly Ashley, Jennifer Cuthbert and Abby Kratz

The team meets their Linden Lab concierge in Second Life

As part of its Transforming Undergraduate Education Program, the University of Texas System has initiated a statewide Virtual Learning Community of students, faculty, researchers and administrators. This Initiative offers a creative approach to undergraduate instruction through the innovative use of the online virtual world technology known as Second Life. It is a pioneering effort and the first such initiative in the world with the creation of a 49+ island educational archipelago in Second Life.

Designed for extensive inter-campus, intra-campus, and out-of-state collaboration, the VLCI has Institutional Review Board-approved research and assessment integrated throughout and takes into account the most current evidence-based research on pedagogy in virtual learning spaces. When fully implemented, it is hoped that this first-in-the-world project will make a significant contribution by helping the UT System extend its operations into virtual world learning environments, increasing student access to quality higher education, reducing instructional costs, and serving as a model for other public statewide systems of higher education.

We are all learning, so the overall approach for the year is an exploratory, open-learning approach. Based on the research, we encourage project-based (inquiry-based; problem-based) learning explicitly grounded in a course’s learning objectives. Mindful of the growing carbon footprint created by delivery of instruction in the physical world, our overriding theme is sustainability: reliability and efficiency of resource use.

It will be the degree of collaboration with one another across the 15 campuses and with other educational institutions and knowledge workers in the virtual world that will truly impact the level of success of this initiative.